Committed to “creating opportunities for young people to thrive,” Charisse has dedicated her life to supporting equity and excellence in education for young people from marginalized communities.As a college and career counselor at the same college access program she attended as a high school student, Charisse had the opportunity to give back to the community that nurtured her own success. By developing new programs and partnerships that increased the organization’s capacity to move from serving 60 high school seniors to providing services for over 600 alumni as well. After several years, Charisse took her passion for program design and implementation to the New York City Department of Education, where she was integral to the design and implementation of several large-scale citywide initiatives, totaling over $110 million in public and private funding. These initiatives focused on racial and gender equity, in addition to increased access to computer science education and careers in the tech sector for the largest school district in country serving 1.1 million students. Charisse earned a B.A. in Psychology from Smith College, a MSSW from Columbia School of Social Work, and is currently a doctoral candidate in the Doctor of Education Leadership program at the Harvard Graduate School of Education.
