When people ask where the idea behind Life Heroes comes from I have to refrain from giving them an earful trying to tell my life story. However it's hard not to because it really does come from the culmination of all my life experiences. More accurately, it comes from the same story you see painted across the world. The kid who grows up in the city streets shrouded by gang culture, drug addiction and survivalism. The kids who never had the representation around them to prove that they could be the next brain surgeon, lawyer or geologist. The kid who had no choice in taking part in an educational system that labeled them with a graded number system instead of building them with motivation and creativity. That kid wasn't just me, that kid is part of our families, neighbors and in our communities.
Last year at the start of July, I parted ways with a tech focused benefits broker working in sales to start Life Heroes Inc full time. My time at Bennie showed me the direct impact of technology on healthcare. I couldn't stop thinking about what technology could do for education. Even more, working for a small company motivated me. It showed me you didn't need a million people to make a difference. You start with yourself and eventually life will surround you with 99 other people who want the same thing you do. I knew I didn’t have a million dollars to create a gamified virtual world, available on all platforms, centered around teaching youth about careers. But, what I did have was an idea, motivation, and the experiences that blessed me with design skills, a finance education and sales experience.
I spent the summer of 2023 learning Webflow to build the Life Heroes website and connecting with career leaders in order to put together a kids magazine to prepare for the 2023 school year. The idea of starting with a magazine came from my cherished memories of using kids scholastic magazines. The Life Heroes in Business magazine would be filled with real life heroes that featured a Corporate Lawyer, Mail Carrier, Financial Advisor and Investment Banker. Each hero was a real person with a real story that collaborated with us to fill the magazine with insights into their careers, fun facts, word banks and hands-on activities With a physical product I believed could make a difference it was time to start calling schools to pitch the idea and form our first partnership. We connected with the amazing education team at Tech Boston Academy and their belief in our mission fueled our first partnership with the Boston Public School System.
A partnership is never just about the product. It'’s about the collective mission and the collaborative learning that occurs. Life Heroes was able to connect with school staff, teachers, and guidance counselors. We learned something in every conversation. Some of the more memorable things were:
The lack of funding in public schools make the support of our sponsors pivotal to our mission. One of my personal Life Heroes and now retired Boston College Philosophy Professor, Patrick Byrne left a life long impact on so many undergrad students through his wisdom, selflessness and commitment to service. The final group project that he designed to conclude the end of the course, consisted of students designing their own service organization. As an undergrad, I questioned why such immense detail was required in building an imaginary non-profit, however, this summer I caught myself taking on the same project. This time around, instead of a grade, Patrick Byrne provided Life Heroes with funding. This generous gift would fully fund a classroom through the 2023-2024 school year and became living proof of the impact heroes have on our lives.
Life Heroes quickly realized that a magazine was not enough to empower the next generation of heroes. We find ourselves in a society where we need to do more to keep the youth engaged. Even more, we’re in competition with corporate giants who spend billions on strategies to capture the youths attention. It's more important than ever to leverage creativity in learning. It was apparent that students needed something that was engaging and enriching. Life Heroes used the feedback we got and went back to the drawing board and spent the next 3 months:
Before we knew it, the first half of the school year concluded. We had plans in place for next year that would pilot our first ever Life Heroes Workshop in 2024.
We quickly learned that the public education system was extremely difficult to navigate without strategic planning months in advance. The teachers at TechBoston needed flexibility to be able to offer the 4 session long workshops, flexibility that they wouldn't have until the next school year. Still eager to provide students with interactive learning we worked to create a learning experience during the month of February in celebration of Black History Month. This experience involved 4 history heroes Hattie Carthan, Floyd Norman, Gerald Lawson and Leah Chase. These heroes made careers that connect to hobbies we all can relate to; namely, the outdoors, television, gaming and food. Life Heroes used this as a way to show the youth they can have a career that comes from one of the hobbies they love.
In hopes of still forming a partnership to bring our workshop directly in the classroom we started reaching out to other schools. Through the Boston College network, we were able to connect with the amazing team at Nativity Prep to offer their 8th graders our workshop.
Forming a partnership with another school meant we got the opportunity to work with another amazing group of educators. Namely, guidance counselor Sammy Kominiarek who was immensely passionate about early career exploration for students. We had the opportunity to take in more feedback and get back to the drawing board. With the help of Sammy, who took it upon themselves to empower the 8th grade students with early career learning, we were able to collaborate to develop a career cluster quiz that leveraged the Life Heroes badge system. This career exploration quiz is now something that students everywhere will be able to benefit from.
The quiz served as the perfect precursor to the Im A Hero workshop. We coordinated planning with the education team at Nativity and the students got to take part in the workshop to end their school year. To say the least, we were blown away by their engagement and participation. We quickly realized that Life Heroes is more than just a badge system, it's a collective community of changemakers eager to figure out where they can make a difference in society. Life Heroes is the passionate educators, the eager students gleaming with potential and the heroes in their families they felt inspired to talk about.
Instead of giving a biased opinion of how great our workshop was we wanted to share one thing students said that could improve the workshop in an anonymous survey. The number one answer was, “more time with each other”. Lucky enough our workshops are designed to be 4 sessions long and we couldn't be more excited for the next classroom we get to visit. It was sad when our final session came to an end, but our initiative to deliver online learning and educational videos will ensure that students can continue to engage in career learning well after that final session.
