Our programs provide students of color from low-income backgrounds with the educational opportunities, career skills and experiences, and financial freedom they need to meet their goals and thrive. Here are some of the highlights of what that looked like in 2024 and a preview of what’s to come in 2025.
Making Waves Education Foundation earned a $100,000 Ad Grant from LinkedIn to support workforce development for young professionals overcoming barriers. Making Waves is using the funding to make career resources more accessible and support college students and recent graduates in reaching their career goals.
We implore you to step into diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging, or DEIB, work, not back away. Here are some of our key learnings that we hope help your efforts too.
We are excited to share some incredible news – this fall, the Contra Costa County Board of Education unanimously voted to approve Making Waves Academy’s five-year charter renewal. The vote was met with both applause and tears of joy from the over 150 supporters who filled the room (with more joining online), proudly wearing Making Waves shirts and sharing the essential role Making Waves plays in the lives of students and families in the Richmond community.
If you’re an aspiring or new CEO, having an incredible team is one of the most important levers for driving organizational impact and outcomes. This means a top priority will be building your team and embedding diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging in how you and your team operate. CEO Patrick O’Donnell shares learnings from his first five years as CEO.
Making Waves CEO shares why we need to build the pipeline of first-gen college grads and how this can be done without all the student loan debt.
Drive impact. Build community. Do hard things. Learn and grow. Promote equity. These are the five core values that guide the work of Making Waves Education Foundation. Making Waves chief operations officer and people and culture manager share the ways that Making Waves instills their core values throughout the organization.
Research shows that salary negotiation is an inequitable process that marginalizes women and people of color. On July 1, 2022, a no negotiation policy took effect at Making Waves Foundation as a part of a revised compensation model that allows for greater transparencies and a bolstering of equity.
At Making Waves Foundation, you’ll find a great community of people and a dynamic, collaborative, and rewarding work environment. We are proud to offer an
In December 2021, the Making Waves Foundation Board of Directors unanimously voted to approve new organizational Core Values. The values will guide the work of the Making Waves Foundation community of students, alumni, staff members, board members, and other stakeholders in pursuit of the foundation’s mission to advance educational opportunity and strategic plan to increase the college graduation rate for underrepresented students in Contra Costa County.
“In high school, a 5.5-mile bridge separated my life between two different worlds,” says Yessenia. “During the day, I attended a private high school in Marin County where wealth surfaced the city. At night, the sound of fireworks and gunshots were an undistinguishable noise in Richmond. It was then that I became curious to explore the wide range of inequalities in both worlds I lived in,” says Yessenia, who also recalls the significance of reading the Wave-Maker Affirmation—a declaration of guiding principles for Making Waves students—starting in 5th grade.
In a recent online talk that reached more than 100 members of the Making Waves community, including college access and success partners and donors, Dr.
