Marketing roots.
Systems thinking.

In 2023 I stood at the podium as the keynote speaker for Hide In Plain Sight. I had also been the second student the program ever supported. I was telling the same story from the other side: from the student who needed help to the person invited back to show what that help had made possible.

During my junior year of high school, my mother and I moved between five homes in a single school year. It was an unsettled stretch, but I stayed focused on graduating early, earning good grades, and finding a path to college. I saved what I could, and college was still financially out of reach.

A connection through Black Diamond Eye Care eventually led me to Hide In Plain Sight. The program, and the people behind it, gave me scholarship support, mentorship, confidence, and help when an unexpected expense could have knocked the plan off course.

That is the “almost” in the title. Before the bachelor’s degree, the master’s degree, the board seat, and the keynote, there was no guarantee college would happen at all.

What the program is

Hide In Plain Sight helps students experiencing homelessness or housing instability pursue higher education. The name makes the argument: the students it serves are not always visibly in crisis. They are in classrooms, turning in assignments, while many people around them have no idea where they will sleep. That invisibility makes the need easy to miss, and easy to underfund.

I was the second student accepted into the program and the first, with its support, to earn both a bachelor’s and a master’s degree. The degrees matter less here than the structure of the help: it was specific, sustained, and designed to remove barriers over time. The program did not earn the degrees for me. It gave me room to keep moving forward.

The board years

I served on the board from 2020 to 2023, applying the same skills I use professionally: strengthening the brand, improving digital fundraising, and helping tell student-impact stories in ways donors could understand and act on. It is the only board seat I have held, and the work reinforced something I already believed: mission alone does not guarantee support. If a nonprofit cannot explain the need clearly, fewer people understand it, fewer donors act, and students feel the consequence.

Why the talk changed how I work

A keynote compresses the job I now do every week: take something complicated and personal, find its structure, and help a room understand it in twenty minutes. There is no second attempt and no document to explain what I meant afterward.

The talk clarified a principle that now guides how I build: wherever possible, create capability rather than dependency. Doing a task for someone helps once. Giving them a tool, a process, and the confidence to run it themselves can keep helping after you leave.

That was the shape of the support I received. Hide In Plain Sight did not earn the degrees for me. It removed barriers and gave me room to earn them. Every system on this site is designed with the same goal: the team should be able to run it without depending on me. The real test is month three, after the novelty fades and the system has to stand on its own.

The unglamorous sequel

Much of the enablement work I do now happens through regular working sessions: what changed, what to try, and where people got stuck. Those conversations keep implementation connected to the work people actually need to do.

Rollouts can lose momentum after launch. Regular working sessions surface questions early, make useful examples visible, and help employees keep building confidence with the system.

If your AI rollout has no recurring room where people can ask questions, share wins, and admit where they are stuck, you do not have a rollout. You have an announcement.