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Dear Donors and Advocates,
When I sat down to write this message to you, I looked back at what I wrote last February: "the days are short, dark, and cold, and there are a lot of challenges in the world." The challenges of that moment seem quaint right now.
Still, our students (24 junior High School Fellows, 13 senior High School Fellows, 19 College Student Leaders, 2 Program Resource Fellows, and 4 new Plainfield Leaders) give me hope. They navigate the stress of worrying about their families and communities. Many now shoulder extra responsibilities. Yet they keep applying themselves and sustaining each other in our MTB community.
Thank you for supporting our work. I hope you will be inspired by the example of our MTB students and continue to support our growing community!
| | Help Us Find Others Who Might Support MTB | |
Thank you for your generous donations on Giving Tuesday and your Year-End Gifts! We are very grateful to our repeat donors who support MTB every year, and we welcome everyone who made their first donation this year to MTB!
Another way you can support us is by connecting us with others who might want to learn about our work. Please consider helping us make a connection! You know you have friends who would like to know how to support young first-generation college students! Tell them about MTB, or even better, make a warm introduction for us!
| Meet our New Plainfield College Student Leaders | |
Our Program Resource Fellows and Passaic Leaders have been hard at work recruiting, selecting, and onboarding our new Plainfield Leaders. They will spend the next few months learning about MTB and shadowing our Passaic students. Nikitha, Fernando, Kalista, and Jess will then help us recruit and select the inaugural class of Plainfield High School Fellows.
We are grateful to the Westfield Foundation for helping us launch MTB in Plainfield.
| Congratulations to Manan and Ashley | |
Congratulations to Program Resource Fellows Ashley and Manan! Both have completed all their coursework for their degrees (and in less than 4 years because of AP and dual enrollment classes). Officially, they graduate in May, but they are now finished and
first-generation college graduates!
Ashley was one of the inaugural class of MTB High School Fellows, so we are extra proud of all that she has accomplished and how much she has given back to MTB.
Manan is off to Madison, WI, for a new job in data science, and Ashley is working at IACO, an immigrants' rights organization, in Paterson.
| Congratulations to Melissa | | |
Following graduation from Dartmouth in June, Melissa completed the Sonia and Celina Sotomayor Judicial Internship Program. She served as an intern at the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of New York.
She also applied and made it to the final round as a finalist for the Rhodes Scholarship, which was an amazing journey. She was not selected, but we couldn't be more proud of her!
While preparing for graduate school/law school, Melissa is working as a Dartmouth Lombard Fellow at Mi Casa Es Puebla in Passaic as well as serving as the inaugural MTB FAFSA Fellow. In this capacity, she has trained MTB's high school and college students and organized several events, in and out of the schools, to help our students help others #DoTheFAFSA.
| | MLK Day Event and Helping Others #DoTheFAFSA | | Every year, we hold an event on Martin Luther King, Jr. Day. For the second year, we partnered with the Mayor's Youth Council and Montclair's Bonner Fellows to host an even bigger MTB event. The young people put their financial aid training to work and helped students and families complete the FAFSA and the HESAA (for state aid). We are grateful for the partnership of Mayor Hector Lora, Judith Sanchez, and Massiel Sanabria as well as TD Bank's Ivette Tejada. | | New Board Member - Cassie | | |
Cassie Crawford has been working with MTB for a long-time. She came to us as a volunteer through the Catchafire Program. She has served on the MTB Advisory Board and is now stepping onto the Full Board.
Cassie leads the MTB communications team, producing on-brand materials that tell our story.
| | | New Advisory Board Member - Felix | | | | |
Welcome to Felix F. Fernandez Pizzi. We welcome Felix to our endeavor to build a community of first-generation, underrepresented students who empower each other to access and succeed in higher education.
Felix F. Pizzi, MSEd, LCMHC, NCC, CCMHC, has dedicated the last 20 years of his career to working
| | in College Health and Student Affairs, focusing on student well-being, medical and mental health care, suicide prevention, crisis intervention, and basic needs support. In his current role as Assistant Vice President for Student Health and Well-Being at Southern New Hampshire University, he oversees services for 3,000 campus students and digital wellness and mental health resources for more than 200,000 online learners. | | In case you missed it, please check out our Impact Report and read about our successes in 2024-2025. We are very proud of what our students have achieved, with the support of our board, volunteers, and donors! | | As we grow, we are so grateful for your continued support. Consider making a recurring donation to MTB, so that we are better able to plan to support our increasingly large family of students. | | |
Audrey Fisch, Ph.D., President, More Than Bootstraps
audrey@morethanbootstraps.org | (908) 397-0893
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MTB was founded by educators who understand the significant obstacles that first-generation college students face on their journey into and through higher education.
To succeed, they need More Than Bootstraps
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