College Summit
College Summit is a nonprofit organization dedicated to transforming the lives of low-income youth by connecting them to college and career. In high schools across the nation, College Summit trains and deploys teams of influential juniors and seniors to drive key actions by classmates that will improve postsecondary enrollment and success and create a college-going culture for their entire school. This team of students - Peer Leaders - provide high schools with the additional capacity they need to ensure that all students achieve their college and career aspirations.
Over two decades, College Summit's one-of-a-kind youth-driven college access service has placed more than 350,000 students from 500 high schools on the path to college and career success. Partner schools have experienced increases in college enrollment rates up to 20% and college persistence rates equal to the national average for students of all income levels.
In 1996, Keith Frome Ed.D, J.B. Schramm and Derek Canty started a teen education center in the basement of a low-income housing project in Washington, D.C., working with students who had the intelligence, resiliency, and grit to succeed in college and careers. Through this program, they saw firsthand how the influence of one student could push friends on the path to a higher education. They founded College Summit by answering a simple, yet important question: "Who is the most influential person to a 17-year-old?" The answer: "Another 17-year old." From that modest experience and critical insight, College Summit has grown over the past two decades into a national movement harnessing the power of peer influence to transform the lives of low-income youth.
In 2015, College Summit launched PeerForward, an initiative built on decades of experience as well as third-party research about what really works in schools. In the 2017-18 school year, 114 teams of influential 11th- and 12th-graders trained by College Summit mobilize to impact the lives of 110,000 of their classmates and peers. The goal for the next decade is for PeerForward to help 1.8 million students from 1,000 schools across the nation unleash their potential. A Stanford Social Innovation Review essay, “Cutting Costs to Increase Impact” analyzed this innovative approach to achieving scale.
Since its founding, Frome, Schramm and Canty have remained actively involved with College Summit. In 2015, Keith Frome became College Summit's second-only CEO with a vision to scale the organization's impact on college access and success by leveraging the power of student-driven change. Prior to his appointment as CEO of College Summit, Frome designed and then led the King Center Charter School, an innovative K-8 on the east side of Buffalo, NY, successfully creating a college-going culture among that city's at-risk elementary and middle school students. Earlier, he served as Headmaster of the Elmwood Franklin School in Buffalo and Assistant Headmaster of the Browning School in New York City. J.B. Schramm currently chairs the Learn to Earn initiative at New Profit, a venture philanthropy and social innovation organization that provides funding and strategic support to help the most promising social enterprises achieve scale. College Summit is a longtime coalition member of New Profit, and an integral part of their grant portfolio. Derek Canty is also founder of Winning Edge, Inc., a Las Vegas-based company that helps individuals, colleges and nonprofit organizations achieve maximum personal and organizational effectiveness. In addition to providing ongoing training and coaching to College Summit staff, students and schools, he also played an integral role in the pilot program of PeerForward, College Summit's signature initiative.
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