Pizza with a Purpose: Students Connecting with Professionals Who Look Like Them
Interlake High School library vibrates with energy on a Thursday morning this spring. Nearly 50 students excitedly chatter, enjoying a pizza lunch, eager to ask questions, and hear about the personal journeys of four career professionals.
Interlake students visit with Dr. Ivan Duran, Bellevue School District Superintendent. Dr. Duran shared with the students, “I belong at any table, in any situation. Don’t let anybody tell you that you don’t belong somewhere.”
The gathering is a session of Pizza with a Purpose, a program that has been piloted for the last two years at Interlake by the Eastside Pathways Career Pathways collaborative. Its purpose is to expose youth of color to professionals who look like them to broaden their awareness of career options and the opportunities and challenges the professionals face.
Students co-create the sessions, contributing criteria for the professionals they’d like to meet. They design the interactions to include formats like panel discussions with student hosts posing questions and breakout groups with more informal, small-group interaction with the professionals.
On this day the students learn about the personal journeys of four regional professionals of color:
- Michelle Williams-Clark, Student Success Specialist, Bellevue Family YMCA
- Ivan Duran, Superintendent, Bellevue School District
- Leobardo Carmona, Photographer and Graphic Designer
- Jordan Greene, Recruiter, Microsoft
Students hosts, Anaan and Miguel, pose three student-generated questions:
- What sparked your interest in your career?
- If you could tell your younger self something, what would it be?
- What is one of the biggest challenges you faced in pursuit of your career or in your career?
The professionals share very personal stories and advice. Many first-generation college graduates, their stories are sprinkled throughout with challenges they faced, in particular those related to being a person of color, but the overwhelming message from each is encouragement for the students to follow their dreams and passions.
The message from Michelle Williams-Clark was clear: “Don’t be defined by your worst experience . . . Your barriers won’t stop you from achieving your dreams . . . Always believe in you. Don’t let other people define your greatness.”
Pizza with a Purpose spring session hosts, Miguel and Anaan.
Miguel, a student from Interlake High School, had this to say about the event: “Pizza with a Purpose provides students with the inspiration and connections they are looking for, both for their education and future plans. Having professionals from marginalized groups like ours come and share their success stories shows us high school students how we too can achieve our dreams. Through Pizza with a Purpose, I met Dr. Gjanje Smith MD, who works at Kaiser Permanente. Thanks to her guidance, I was able to get a position in MRI at Kaiser Permanente’s Bellevue Medical Center, which is now an important stepping stone helping me be one step closer to my dream of attending medical school to become a doctor.”
A Successful Campaign
Monika Steen, Career Pathways Collaborative Convener, Eastside Pathways
After the event, we sat down with Monika Steen, long-time Eastside Pathways volunteer and the convener for the Career Pathways collaborative. Using the success of Pizza with a Purpose as a guide, Monika reflected on the components she sees as mandatory for an effective campaign—the way the partnership experiments with system improvements targeting better outcomes for youth falling into opportunity gaps.
Treasure and Leverage a Passionate Visionary: Monika identifies the need for campaigns to leverage the energy and skills of a passionate visionary or visionaries. She places huge credit and gratitude for the success of Pizza with a Purpose with Michelle Williams-Clark.
“She’s absolutely amazing. She created a vision for this project, gave it a great name, and brought her passion for student success and great leadership skills. She has deep and trusting relationships with many students of color—something that has been incredibly important. While lots of folks have contributed and worked cross-sector to pilot the program, Michelle is really the driving force behind Pizza with a Purpose.”
Start with the Audience: Another critical component of a successful campaign is co-creating solutions to pilot with the community. In this case, the team started with the students to find out what they needed and wanted. These students remained integral to the process, not only providing input at the outset of the program but continuing to contribute step-by-step with the project team throughout.
Develop a Supportive Structure: An effective campaign also needs a structure in place to support it. In this case Interlake High School’s College and Career Advisor, Tracy Gasca, as well as the Bellevue School District provided a location, access, inspiration, and communication with the students with additional logistic and technical support provided by the Eastside Pathways partnership.
Involve a Caring Community: The program also required the commitment and participation of regional professionals of color. These professionals openly shared their personal journeys and thoughts in order that the students might learn. Their passion about student success and their willingness to be vulnerable and share challenges built a rich, realistic experience for the students.
Improve Continuously: Finally, Monika identifies the important role that continuous improvement plays in a successful campaign. “It’s probably not going to be ideal right out of the gate. As we work to tackle difficult challenges and systems change, we have to be willing to bravely experiment and learn from our journey, continually adjusting and improving to better solve the challenges we face.”
Our Challenge Moving Forward
This year’s final Pizza with a Purpose session is scheduled in June. As we bring the pilot to a close, the hard work of building from the success of the pilot, scaling it, and integrating it throughout high schools in the Bellevue School District now challenges the district and the Career Pathways collaborative. Early conversations have considered rolling the program up and extending it throughout the Bellevue School District through mentoring and the Boom and Shout! Program.