LEDA featured in the Washington Post
March 27, 2018
The Washington Post
"Invisible no more: How advising programs are finding new talent for top colleges"
by Nick Anderson
Leadership Enterprise for a Diverse America, with backing from private donors, including Princeton, provides intensive mentoring to 100 scholars a year. All are from public high schools. Ninety percent come from families with income of less than $66,000 a year, and the average family income is about $36,000.
Founded in 2003 and based in New York, the program recruits nationwide through road trips to rural towns, outreach to counselors and others, and word-of-mouth from older scholars.
“We’re looking for a cohort of super-bright young people who have tremendous leadership potential,” executive director Beth Breger said. The scholars, she said, are diverse, “representative of our country in many different ways” and “hungry for opportunity.” But in their upbringing they were not necessarily exposed to the full range of possibilities of higher education. “You cannot dream what you cannot see,” Breger said.