Helping Students Excel, In College and Beyond

When Alex Bernadotte received her acceptance letter from Dartmouth College, she thought the hardest part was behind her. The daughter of Haitian immigrants, she was the first member of her family to attend college, and the pressure to succeed was staggering. “My parents told me the way I could honor the sacrifices that they had made was to go to college. That earning a college degree was the path to elevating myself, my family, and my community,” she remembers.

After arriving on campus, she soon learned she was unprepared for the many rigors of higher education. “I struggled academically, socially, financially, and emotionally, in every sense of the word,” she explains. Luckily, Alex was able to turn things around and make it to graduation. But nationally, a third of students don’t return for their sophomore year. 

“I began to think, ‘Why did this happen to me? Why does this happen to many students with similar backgrounds to mine? What could I have done differently? What could the institutions I attended have done differently to prepare and support me?’” Alex recalls. 

In an attempt to find answers, she landed a job as a funder at the NewSchools Venture Fund, where she worked with charter schools and charter management programs. “These schools were having great success with getting their students accepted to college, but when I asked what was happening to their students once they got in, the answer was that they didn’t know.” 

As a solution, she decided to start her own organization, one that would not only improve a low-income student’s chances of getting accepted to college, but also ensure that they had the support to graduate once they got there. In 2009 she launched her nonprofit, Beyond 12, a feedback loop between K-12 schools and post-secondary institutions to make sure high schools are preparing students for future success. The program also matches at-risk students with a college coach to assist in the transition and provides students with a network of peers to turn to in tough times. 

Beyond 12 is currently tracking 19,000 students and coaching close to 2,000 more at 28 different colleges and universities. The organization’s success has not gone unnoticed. Earlier this year, Alex was named a Fellow by Ashoka Changemakers, and she also won a three-year sponsorship from Intel. “The sponsorship could give us the ability to help students transition not just to college, but also into their careers and professional lives as well.” 

Alex attributes the secret of her success to a lesson she learned when she was an undergrad: “You have to be willing to ask for help. When I took that leap of faith to start Beyond 12, it was with the knowledge that I would not repeat the mistake I had made at Dartmouth. Ask for help, reach out to your network, and be ready to take the jump.”

–Lindsay Putnam