IYT Welcomes New National Board of Directors
Improve Your Tomorrow (IYT) is proud to welcome five new members to our National Board of Directors: Sonali Nijhawan, Felipe De Jesús Hernández, Nicole Parra, Angela Bass, and Valerie Utsey. They join the dedicated men and women who serve on our board, helping us stay true to our mission, opening doors, and lending their expertise to the strategy guiding our growth.
Champions of the IYT Mission
All five landed in Sacramento this August for our 2026 National Board Summit, where they were formally inducted alongside their fellow board members, who all took the oath as champions of this mission.
Their arrival comes at a decisive moment, as IYT was created to address a problem that hasn’t moved much in the last ten years. Picture ten young men just out of high school. In 2022, about three of every ten Black men aged 18 to 24 were enrolled in college, and fewer than three of every ten Latino men. Ten years before that, both groups stood at roughly one in three. Black men have gone essentially nowhere. Latino men have slid backward, from about one in three to closer to one in four. Latino men earn a high school diploma at nearly the rate Latina women do, 89 percent against 92 percent. They are half of all college-age Latinos. Yet they are only 40 percent of the Latinos who actually enroll. Something breaks between the diploma and the first day of class. For Black students, the same break shows up as a number that is hard to hold in your head.
Over the past decade, more than 600,000 Black students who were expected to be in college never got there, a larger shortfall than for any other racial group, according to the Schott Foundation for Public Education's 2024 report Love is the Foundation for Life. These are not gaps in talent, they are gaps in support and investment. Closing a gap this persistant takes more than a good program. It takes people who can create systemic change.
Each of these four leaders brings something specific to that task.
Meet our newest National board members
Valerie Utsey
EVP, Chief People Officer, ICBA
Valerie leads people strategy for a national association, which means she spends her working life on the question IYT's Brothers eventually walk into: who gets hired, who gets developed, and who gets to lead.
That makes her useful in a particular way. IYT's model does not end at a diploma. It ends at a career. Valerie knows what the far end of that pipeline is actually looking for.
“The heart of IYT, in my opinion, is the community,” she shared. “Their outcomes are data-driven, and they’re resulting in their Brothers getting through college. Once you get someone through college that means they’re coming back to their community, providing work and providing opportunities for that next generation.”
Sonali Nijhawan
Chief Program Officer, The EdRedesign Lab, Harvard Graduate School of Education
Soniali Nijhawan’s work sits where education policy, systems design, and community all intersect. After a leadership role at AmeriCorps, she was named EdRedesign’s inaugural Chief Program Officer in August 2026, serving in its first class of By All Means Senior Fellows. The throughline of Nijhawan’s career has been tackling the question of how institutions should be designed, to deliver for the young people they were meant to serve.
It’s exactly that question, of how we design IYT to provide better support to our members, that we’re asking as we scale. Understanding how a program succeeds is important, but knowing how to sustain that support is equally so. Nijhawan’s appointment to our board is particularly exciting precisely because of her fluency in the latter.
Thankfully, her career path brought her into contact with IYT also runs straight through IYT's map. She entered that Harvard network representing Stockton, and began her service career with City Year in Chicago and Sacramento, the city where IYT is headquartered.
“The term brotherhood is not just something that IYT says. It is who they are. The connection to one another, the sense of belonging that they create for young men in our society today who feel isolated or alone. IYT is a place where they get to be together and connected, and it is so special. If young men thrive, our society thrives.”
Felipe De Jesús Hernández
Staff Attorney, National Prison Project, ACLU
Few people understand both the inside of this organization and the systems it works against as well as Felipe does.
His relationship with IYT goes back more than a decade, and has been an active supporter since 2014. From 2015 to 2020, Felipe served as our grants manager and program specialist in Sacramento, and now brings a legal and advocacy lens to the board. His frame of reference at its core is shaped by his work on the systems that too often intercept the young men we serve.
“I am committed to ensuring that all young people from historically marginalized communities, especially young men of color, thrive in our society, fulfill their dreams and goals, contribute positively to the world, and that we dismantle the systemic barriers that continue to cause suffering, inequality, and injustice in our world. Together we can create a more equitable world.”
Nicole Parra
Vice President, Community Affairs, California Resources Corporation
Nicole brings deep experience at the intersection of public policy, corporate responsibility, and community investment. She understands how decisions get made in the rooms where resources are allocated, and how to open those rooms to organizations doing the work. Her connection to IYT started on the ground, in Stockton.
“I met Michael Lynch over two years ago in Stockton and have seen first hand the difference IYT is making. Life changing opportunities, especially for young men in the Central Valley.”
She joined this board already carrying an agenda, which is exactly what a new director should do. She has committed to reaching out to Central Valley superintendents about bringing IYT to more schools, families, and community organizations in the region. What drives that, in her telling, is what she keeps hearing about young men in Kern County who are neither working nor in school.
Reflecting on a colleague's response to it, Nicole put it plainly: "Don't we want to change that? Yes, we do."
Angela Bass
Director, Mississippi First
Angela leads education policy work in Mississippi, one of IYT's newest regions, and she came to this board with her reasons fully formed.
“Being a Black woman from the Mississippi Delta, I know what it means to be counted out. In many ways, our country has also counted out young men of color. I serve on the IYT board because I believe we have the power and the responsibility to change the status quo and create a future where young men of color are expected and empowered to thrive.”
Not tolerated. Not managed. Expected to thrive. That is the standard she is holding this organization to, and it is the right one. During the summit, Angela visited a live IYT site at Natomas High School where she met a student. She reflected:
“He described to me his dreams and aspirations. He talked about all of the challenges and barriers to getting there. And I think IYT is preparing him to reach his dreams despite whatever obstacles may come his way. They’re preparing him to even look beyond what he can think about today, and prepare for a tomorrow that he hasn’t even dreamed of yet.”
Interested in Connecting with IYT?
If you are a district leader, employer, funder, or community partner who wants to talk about supporting IYT or bringing our programs to your region, please hit the link below and get in touch.
