Shradha Agarwal

Our Vision: Every young person will have an equitable opportunity to achieve their greatest postsecondary aspirations. Our Mission: To close the degree divide in America. Our Approach: We’re a postsecondary access and success organization working with high schools, districts and states to provide high-quality college and career planning services through our classroom-based model and Leadership Network to dramatically increase the percentage of students from low-income communities who earn a postsecondary education.

Student Holdings provides educational, hands-on business experiences to Northwestern University undergraduate students by giving them the opportunity to launch, operate and grow services providing goods and services to the Northwestern University, Evanston and Chicago communities. Student Holdings also provides jobs and work experiences to Northwestern University students. Our primary activities include operating businesses to provide a practical and hands-on business education to our members, providing employment opportunities to Northwestern University students, and supplying goods and services to the aforementioned communities. Through their revenues, these businesses provide funding to sustain their activities, finance other new business ideas which will serve the same purpose, and support our other educational programming. Student Holdings has three primary businesses that provide experiential learning opportunities to Northwestern students: NU|Tutors, RezEssentials, and InkTank.

Uniting Voices Chicago (Josephine Lee, President) is a nonprofit organization that inspires and unites youth from diverse backgrounds to become global leaders through music. Founded in Hyde Park at the dawn of the Civil Rights Movement in 1956, Uniting Voices Chicago (formerly Chicago Children’s Choir) has grown from one choir into a vast network of in-school and after-school programs serving thousands of students across the city of Chicago. The organization has impacted the lives of more than 50,000 diverse youth throughout its 65-year history. Since its founding, the choir has focused on building programs that reflect the racial and economic diversity of Chicago. The majority of youth served are from low-to-moderate income homes and participate completely free of charge. All singers in Uniting Voices Chicago programs receive some level of subsidy. High school seniors enrolled in Uniting Voices Chicago have a 100% graduation and college acceptance rate, becoming global ambassadors who carry on our core values in a wide array of professional fields. Under the leadership of President and Artistic Director Josephine Lee, Uniting Voices Chicago has achieved new heights and revolutionized the youth choral arts through innovative creative partnerships and new artistic endeavors. Recent projects include the world-premiere hip-hop musical Long Way Home, written and directed by the renowned Q Brothers Collective, which played to five sold-out houses in 2018; performance in a new staged production of Leonard Bernstein’s MASS under the direction of Marin Alsop in July 2018 with two frequent creative partners: the Chicago Symphony Orchestra and Ravinia Festival; and collaboration on Chance the Rapper’s GRAMMY winning 2016 mixtape Coloring Book. Uniting Voices Chicago has served as a model for youth choirs across the country including Boston Childrens Chorus, Denver Children’s Choir and Indianapolis Children’s Choir.

The Chicago Public Education Fund (The Fund) accelerates student achievement in Chicagos public schools by building high-performing teams of principals and teachers, improving evaluation and accountability system-wide, and reinventing classrooms with the innovative use of time, technology, and talent. The Fund’s investors represent a broad cross-section of Chicago’s business, civic and philanthropic leaders. They have committed $50 million to The Fund since 2000, attracted by our track record of results and our mission and values. We identify high-quality programs and outstanding management teams in which to invest financial and human capital. We track the performance of our investments, provide strategic and operational management assistance, and leverage the business acumen of our directors and management team to generate results for our investors. The Fund raises a series of funds approximately every four years focused on a set of clearly defined priorities. Our team shares an unyielding commitment to providing all children a world-class education, and we value collaboration, innovation, and integrity.

Our Vision: Every young person will have an equitable opportunity to achieve their greatest postsecondary aspirations. Our Mission: To close the degree divide in America. Our Approach: We’re a postsecondary access and success organization working with high schools, districts and states to provide high-quality college and career planning services through our classroom-based model and Leadership Network to dramatically increase the percentage of students from low-income communities who earn a postsecondary education.

We seek out and collaborate with community leaders, other values-aligned social change organizations, foundations, individual philanthropists, and regional SVPs to co-create an ecosystem where magic happens — the magic of increased experimentation, rapid learning, and local-regional-national-global connections. In cultivating and expanding this network together: We catalyze more resources We catalyze and mobilize financial resources — both our own and from others — applying them toward cross-sector and multi-community solutions and innovations. We shift these resources away from traditional systems that only benefit a few, and we move them to collective and collaborative approaches that benefit many. We disrupt traditional philanthropy We demonstrate ways to disrupt and shift traditional philanthropy, moving it from being individualistic and disconnected to being community-centered in addressing root causes of injustice. We are embedded in the communities we serve, co-creating with them for the long-haul, not just in single touch points. We influence change We inspire individual philanthropists to understand the priorities that communities have — and how to strategically partner, fund, and give agency to community leaders in advancing change.

Student Holdings provides educational, hands-on business experiences to Northwestern University undergraduate students by giving them the opportunity to launch, operate and grow services providing goods and services to the Northwestern University, Evanston and Chicago communities. Student Holdings also provides jobs and work experiences to Northwestern University students. Our primary activities include operating businesses to provide a practical and hands-on business education to our members, providing employment opportunities to Northwestern University students, and supplying goods and services to the aforementioned communities. Through their revenues, these businesses provide funding to sustain their activities, finance other new business ideas which will serve the same purpose, and support our other educational programming. Student Holdings has three primary businesses that provide experiential learning opportunities to Northwestern students: NU|Tutors, RezEssentials, and InkTank.