Rutgers Alumna Founds The 1954 Equity Project as Ode to Brown vs. Board of Education
Wendy Osefo, researcher, political commentator and Johns Hopkins professor, mentors underrepresented students and strives to make educators more effective in urban communities
"Our mentors come from all walks of life, but they all believe in the mission of our organization and the positive role that they can have in the lives of young students."– Wendy Osefo
Wendy Osefo was still a doctoral student at Rutgers University-Camden in 2013 when she was tapped to oversee a $5 million federal education initiative.
As director of Family and Community Engagement, a D.C. Promise Neighborhood Initiative for the U.S. Department of Education, Osefo implemented best teaching practices that she was learning in her public affairs program at Rutgers.
It was a testament, she says, to the strength of the program’s curriculum. “It teaches you how to be effective in the real world,” she says. “I was implementing what I was learning – and it worked!”
Today Osefo is an award-winning researcher, sought-after political commentator and a visiting assistant professor of education at Johns Hopkins University, where she founded The 1954 Equity Project, LLC, as an ode to the monumental Brown vs.The Board of Education Supreme Court decision.The nonprofit organization provides resources and mentorships to help underrepresented minority students succeed in higher education.
Osefo credits her adviser and mentor Gloria Bonilla-Santiago, a Board of Governors Distinguished Service Professor of Public Policy and director of the Community Leadership Center at Rutgers-Camden, with laying the groundwork for her future successes.
Bonilla-Santiago, the founder of the LEAP Academy University Charter School – the first charter school in Camden, serving more than 300 students in grades K to 5 – instilled a passion in Osefo for serving low-income students and their families.
[image:2:right:40]]“My first year, I remember saying, ‘I want to be just like her,’” she says. “I realized the incredible impact that an educator can have on a child’s life. Even today, I still want to be just like her.”
So building on her experience with Promise Neighborhood, the Columbia, Md., resident accepted an offer in 2014 to become inaugural director of the master’s program in management at Goucher College in Baltimore. During her tenure, the program received recognition for being the best online, graduate-level management degree in the country.
Osefo’s unabashed vocal stance on social, political and educational issues earned her media attention. And in 2015, she was asked to provide political commentary and analysis on the presidential election for a nationally televised ABC broadcast. Regular appearances quickly followed on a range of national cable news networks, radio shows and podcasts.
In 2016, Osefo, who sought to influence students positively on a more personal level, founded The 1954 Equity Project, LLC, which she calls “an ode to the monumental Brown vs. The Board of Education Supreme Court decision.”
The Equity Project evolved from group discussions she coordinated at Johns Hopkins to help students cope with the news of multiple police shootings involving unarmed black men, as well as the mass shooting at a church in Charleston, S.C. Without answers or anywhere to turn, she found students were internalizing what they were feeling and needed a platform for discussion.
“So I asked, ‘As educators, are we doing everything to provide adequate services to our students?’”
Those discussions are now held at both the collegiate and high school levels, with Osefo often leading the exchanges.
Another core feature of the Equity Project, says Osefo, is its central focus on mentorship. With her foresight – and a little modern technology – a female surgeon in Maryland now serves as an e-mentor to young students seeking a similar career path in the medical field.
“Our mentors come from all walks of life, but they all believe in the mission of our organization and the positive role that they can have in the lives of young students,” Osefo says.
At Johns Hopkins, where she arrived in 2016 after graduating from Rutgers-Camden, Osefo teaches several classes that shed light on the politics and power dynamics of education. In 2017, she received the Johns Hopkins Diversity Recognition Award for her research on diversity and inclusion and the Johns Hopkins Distinguished Alumni Award. In addition, Osefo was named a Baltimore Business Journal “40 Under 40” honoree and a Baltimore Sun “25 Women to Watch” honoree.
Now, Osefo is tasked with developing a doctorate-level course called “Partnership and Community Organizing Education,” which equips educators to be more effective in urban communities. She notes that one of the prospective course readings is a portion of her published dissertation, and Bonilla-Santiago is on the short list of prospective guest lecturers.
As she sees it, her Rutgers–Camden education is coming full circle.
“It’s an amazing opportunity to create a class,” she says. “I couldn’t think of a better way of cementing everything that I learned at Rutgers–Camden.”