Pyramid of Student Achievement Foundation was founded in 2014 by Santanisha Chang.
Santanisha Chang, Director of Pyramid of Student Achievement Foundation (POSA), a 501(c)(3) educational non-profit organization headquartered in Herndon, Virginia. POSA was founded to provide support and guidance to underrepresented and disadvantaged youth with the goal of achieving academic equity and opportunity for all children.
Ms. Chang is an educator, academic advisor and child advocate with significant ties to the Northern Virginia area. She grew up in McLean, VA and graduated from Langley High School. Her passion for academic achievement is a credit to her parents who were strong believers of the importance of education to the advancement of their children, and were very active in the local community. Ms. Chang is the mother of graduates from Langley High School and Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology and is, therefore, well adept at the necessity for strong advocacy through the critical period of ninth through twelfth grade.
Ms. Chang has held many committee and leadership roles within the Fairfax County Public Schools system. As a member on the Minority Student Achievement Committee, her strategic input increased parental participation and student achievement. Ms. Chang also spends time as a substitute teacher for Fairfax County Public Schools. Her experience and background in education aligns with her passion for helping underrepresented and disadvantaged students prepare for and achieve in a university setting.
Prior to starting her foundation, Ms. Chang worked for over 20 years as a paralegal in litigation and corporate matters at various multi-national law firms. Ms. Chang earned her Bachelor of Arts degree in Political Science from the University of California at Berkeley. She also pursued an MBA in International Management at Golden Gate University, San Francisco.
| Ramona Neveu, Director, MESA program at Cal State East Bay, has held progressively more advanced leadership positions in college access and academic preparation programs for educationally disadvantaged students for more than 19 years, and brings a powerful combination of executive management experience and direct program service delivery to the table. She has developed and executed numerous successful models and projects with demonstrated success in increasing the college-going rates and academic achievement levels of many under-represented students throughout California.
From September 1996 to June 2000, Ramona Neveu worked as the associate director of minority outreach and retention at the California Institute of Technology; two years as a guidance and academic counselor at the Illinois Mathematics and Science Academy; and two years at MESA’s Statewide as the Assistant Director overseeing operations for 24 MESA pre-college centers in California. In 2007, she accepted the position at California State University to develop a pre-college MESA program to provide STEM academic programs at bay area schools. In her present capacity, she oversees more than 25 school-based MESA sites in several school districts. She earned her bachelor of science in Sociology from UC Berkeley, and masters in Organization Management from the University of Phoenix.
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