Since its founding, The Posse Foundation has experienced incredible growth and a steady broadening of its national footprint. What started in 1989 as an initiative to send five public high school students from New York City to attend Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee, has become a national movement that serves thousands of remarkable young leaders from all across the country each year. Today, Posse boasts partnerships with 38 top colleges and universities, sites in seven of the country’s largest cities, more than 3,000 selected Scholars and over 1,200 Alumni.
As Posse has grown, so, too, has the impact of Posse Scholars on campuses and of Posse Alumni in the workforce. Our Scholars have built a reputation for outstanding student achievement and represent a uniquely diverse pipeline of talent. As Alumni, they are succeeding in fields such as finance, fine arts, education and medicine, and ensuring a brighter future for all Americans.
We have always known that there are many more incredibly gifted students than there are ways to identify them—which is why it is Posse’s mission to cast a finer net, to help reach promising young people who are full of aptitude but too often lacking in opportunity.
This year’s annual report celebrates Posse’s 20th anniversary. But the journey is far from over. By the year 2020, Posse will operate sites in 10 cities, work with 80 college and university partners, and claim over 6,000 professionals in the workforce as Alumni. To get there, we will rely on the strength of our partnerships, the generosity of our supporters and the firmness of our conviction that diverse teams of driven individuals can accomplish amazing things.