From being a teenage mom to turning into a frontrunner on the Jeremiah Program final 12 months, Tiana Stowers Pearson, 48, has remained decided to battle in opposition to the various boundaries, together with poverty and lack of entry for pupil moms and households. She is intent on “breaking the programs” that prohibit these weak communities from receiving the help they require.
The Jeremiah Program is a nationwide group that gives sources and assist for single moms who need to pursue schooling. Pearson took on the function of govt director for the Brooklyn campus final August.
An lawyer by commerce, Pearson has an extended profession of advocacy and is captivated with ensuring different moms have entry to the identical sources, packages, assist programs, and scaffolding that she relied on and was in a position to profit from.
“I wouldn’t have gotten right here with out the neighborhood assist,” Pearson advised the AmNews “I feel that’s why I see myself as like a strategic disrupter, as a result of I’m going to name out the systemic points on a regular basis.”
Born and raised in Seattle, Pearson says she at all times prioritized teachers. Even after turning into pregnant at 17, she was on monitor for a profession in regulation, turning into a paralegal due to a twin enrollment program in highschool. By means of the assist of native regulation companies, she would later obtain her bachelor’s diploma from Washington State College and her juris physician from Idaho Legislation College. It was whereas working at these companies in household regulation that she noticed firsthand the problems with home violence. After a fellowship with the Harvard Authorized Help Bureau, Pearson pivoted absolutely to non-profit and authorities area in working to alter coverage for victims and essentially the most impacted communities.
At age 32, Pearson moved to New York along with her children and have become the senior director of the Manhattan Little one Advocacy Middle. It was right here Pearson noticed how poverty and the moms having not been in a position to afford conventional childcare resulted in dangerous citations for the kid.
She started working with New York Communities for Change and the Black Institute to intently support Black immigrant households who handled their very own distinctive hurdles. One report from the Institute confirmed how the New York Division of Schooling had recruited high academics from Caribbean nations to come back to New York, however did not safe the right visas for as much as 700 households that moved right here, and consequently, had been left undocumented. By means of her work collaborating with the Congressional Black Caucus, particularly Rep. Hakeem Jeffries and Rep. Yvette Clark, they had been profitable in altering laws to permit these households to obtain Deferred Motion for Childhood Arrivals (DACA).
She was later related with the Richmond County District Lawyer’s Workplace, the place she labored to offer sources for households who got here in touch with the felony justice system, together with the offender, providing trauma assist. She helped set up the Heroin Overdose Prevention and Schooling (HOPE) program, a pre-arraignment and diversion program different to incarceration, which has been expanded all through the town and the nation.
Pearson mirrored internally on why she felt compelled to depart her function, following the homicide of George Floyd and dealing within the Staten Island DA’s workplace specifically. “You’re within the management of the DA workplace, and you’ve got two Black boys, and the truth that your place doesn’t make you’re feeling any safer to your two Black sons. That was so exhausting for me,” Pearson mentioned. “If I really feel like this, and I actually can choose up the telephone and name the DA if something occurs to my children, how do different black moms really feel?” Nonetheless, she says she is grateful for her expertise there, because it helped mould her to the place she is now.
Pearson says her work on the Jeremiah Program is a fruits of her expertise each professionally and personally, having handled home violence in her personal family, involving her estranged husband.
“Plenty of the programs that I used to be really working in, my household grew to become in touch with. As an illustration, I used to be working the kid advocacy middle, and my household had an ACS case due to my husband’s substance use,” Pearson mentioned. Her story is without doubt one of the issues she desires to be clear about with the victims she works with to be sure that there is no such thing as a barrier between them.
With Trump administration insurance policies, Pearson says pupil moms will probably be much more in danger, highlighting points like meals and housing insecurity, and pupil loans, which had been already disproportionately impacting this demographic. One case she handled since being at Jeremiah Program was a younger girl who couldn’t settle for full-time employment as a result of she would lose her housing subsidy, and the place nonetheless wouldn’t have coated her lease.
“Oftentimes, we’re advised that with your personal grit and grind, it’s primarily based on advantage and meritocracy, the American dream. And what we don’t spotlight sufficient is that there are over 4 million mothers who’re pupil dad and mom, and these mothers are doing all of the issues that they’re advised they’re presupposed to do,” Pearson mentioned. “They’re juggling motherhood, they’re juggling their faculty tasks, and but there are these institutional and coverage boundaries which can be getting of their means of them actually attaining their goals.”
Pearson says the Jeremiah Program is collaborating with different neighborhood associate organizations to verify moms get the complete suite of providers whereas additionally supporting the work of these teams. Particular pursuits must be shifted, highlighting the financial advantages of single moms receiving their diploma. She says stories from organizations just like the City Institute and Brooklyn.org must also be referred again to.
Pearson is now pursuing her doctorate and feels at dwelling along with her work within the Jeremiah Program, coping with households and dealing to have an effect on coverage. She is hopeful extra can be a part of within the battle.
“There’s a generational influence. It’s possible you’ll be working straight with them, however the work that you just’re doing, the assist that you just’re doing, goes to influence their household life for years to come back.”
