Meet our VISTA Summer Associates, Melisa & Ian!

Hello everyone, my name is Melisa Santizo and I am excited to be one of the two All Ways Up Foundation’s AmeriCorps VISTA Summer Associates!

I am currently a rising senior at Harvard College majoring in History & Literature, with a minor in Economics and a focus on Latinx Studies. Although I’m still not sure what my post-graduate plans will entail, I want to continue the promotion of educational access and social justice for all communities, regardless of their gender, race, class, sexual orientation, and citizenship status.

Reflecting upon my last four years, college has been a roller coaster. Throughout my time at Harvard, I’ve taken classes taught by leaders in their respective fields and participated in internships in Mexico and Peru. I’ve also met some of my closest friends and developed a deep love for coffee. However, I’ve also experienced the challenges that first-generation, low-income college students face from navigating what classes to take or figuring out how financial aid works. It is without question that the support of my family and organizations like the All Ways Up Foundation and Minds Matter of Los Angeles were invaluable in overcoming them. From academic questions to time management and personal circumstances, they were there to lend a hand or a shoulder to lean on.

I am honored to work with the All Ways Up Foundation this summer, especially after all the support it has given me over the last four years, both academically and professionally. I can’t wait to e-meet and support my fellow scholars in any way I can! My hope is that by working at the All Ways Up Foundation, together we can continue the conversations and be part of the drive to address the systemic causes for inequity both within and outside of the classroom.

Best,

Melisa

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Hi everyone! My name is Ian Taylor and I was born and raised in Pasadena, California, where I was brought into a very distinctive environment that consisted of varying financial and cultural backgrounds across the City. When attending Blair High School, I became involved with College Access Plan, a non-profit organization that helped to prepare me to be a competitive and informed college applicant. With such impactful resources, strategies, and support received I was admitted to the University of California, Los Angeles in 2016.

Through my participation in the College Access Plan, I was introduced to the All Ways Up Foundation and all of the valuable resources and people that are a part of the Foundation. I was a gracious beneficiary of the scholarships, development workshops, and events that All Ways Up provided and used those resources to fuel my ambitions in college and spread support to my peers. As a peer counselor, coordinator for a mentoring program, quantitative and qualitative researcher, and liaison for high school students at UCLA, I looked to create change and support networks, being inspired by the support that I received from All Ways Up.

I recently graduated from UCLA with a Bachelor’s of Arts degree in Sociology, with minors in African-American Studies and Public Affairs. I also served as the Mentorship Coordinator of UCLA’s Academic Supports Program, an organization that works to increase retention rates and improve holistic development of Black undergraduate students. My passions for change lies in my research, which interrogates how restructuring internal and external societal factors impact Black individuals. I aspire to obtain my Master’s Degree in Public Policy, striving to influence local, state, and federal policy to dismantle policies that oppress Black communities and other marginalized identities. I am very excited to be working with the All Ways UP Foundation as a summer associate since I am now able to provide other students with the opportunities and resources that I had been able to access as a scholar. It is a great privilege to be in a position where I am able to be someone that students can have as a source of support and knowledge, just like I had as a scholar.

Take care,

Ian