Over the past year, Lauren Ford, who serves as the project director for the Promise Scholars Program (and former campus recruiter) has held a prestigious fellowship as the Higher Education Fellow with the Biden Foundation located in Washington, D.C. As a proud member of the inaugural class of Biden Foundation Fellows, Lauren was the only remote fellow who continued to live and work in California, visiting the D.C. office once a quarter.
Through weekly check-in calls, she received assignments and updates from the higher education team. Her assignments included writing policy memos, creating event plans, conducting research on higher education trends, drafting social media content and writing literature reviews. In addition to providing important content and serving as a community college expert for the Foundation, Lauren also documented her experience through a variety of blog posts published on the Biden Foundation website.
As part of her fellowship, Lauren was able to work with the National College Promise team with Martha Kanter, former undersecretary of education within the Obama administration. She also helped to launch a joint initiative supported by Achieving the Dream (ATD) and the Biden Foundation: Community College Women Succeed (#CCWomenSucceed). CC Women Succeed is an initiative that aims to help adult women students — including single parents — succeed in community college.
In her final blog post, Lauren shared the following sentiments:
“I appreciate all that I have learned and the opportunity to contribute to a nationwide discussion on community college reform. I really appreciate the Biden Foundation team for allowing me to work remotely and making me feel welcomed each time that I visited the office.
I also thank the 2018 Fellows for joining me on this journey and working hard to advance a national conversation around ending violence against women, ensuring LGBTQ equality, strengthening the middle class and supporting military families. I want to end by thanking the Bidens for creating such an amazing organization that is doing important work that will impact the lives of people throughout the country.”
You can read more about Lauren’s experience as a Biden Fellow at bidenfoundation.org/news/blog/.
Article by Lauren Ford
