Meet Ann Meyers Drysdale of Elevate Phoenix

Today we’d like to introduce you to Ann Meyers Drysdale.

So, before we jump into specific questions about the business, why don’t you give us some details about you and your story.
Elevate Phoenix was founded in 2009 by Bob Barbee a Ford Dealer and resident of Paradise Valley and Tom Lehman PGA Championship golfer. In the first year, I became a founding member of the Development Board led by Tom Lehman.

As VP of the Phoenix Suns and Mercury, I saw it’s unique accredited urban public school character, life-skills, work and career readiness classrooms combined with professional 24/7 mentoring availability to HS students representing the most challenging at-risk urban student population as something I wanted to help succeed here in Phoenix.

The model is based on a 40-year field tested relationships based educational program with almost 100,000 students participating over four decades and success rates in the ninety percentiles. We were the second local business and civic leader privately funded location to replicate through an associational approach with no cost to the schools.

Today we have become a leader in implementing a successful replication among the 9 cities it has started in to date with 98% graduation, 90% postsecondary entry and 100% of students being equipped with a postsecondary success plan for work and career. A highlight is seeing it multiply itself as HS students become peer mentors to elementary students, middle school students led by staff becoming successful HS students, going on to successful postsecondary achievement and come back to serve younger students as interns and staff.

Has it been a smooth road?
As a new program, awareness building is the key challenge and a struggle at the beginning. Funding too for a new non-profit. That is where the Mercury and Suns became early champions for the program in a unique nonprofit partnership arrangement. As awareness was created others would come and visit the program wanting to get involved too. Funding began to grow to expand the program to multiple schools and almost 4,600 students now from the original class of 28.

Phoenix Country Club through many of their members and foundation were the key in building awareness including helping us launch the first Tom Lehman Celebrity Gala and Invitational working with the Charles Schwab Cup Championship week each November generating three-quarters of a million dollars in its first year, 2017.

Other professional sports teams like the AZ D Backs, Phoenix Cardinals plus the Thunderbirds and Fiesta Bowl along with numerous companies like the Carlisle Companies and Foundations like the Bob and Rene Parsons Foundations have provided support.

The Phoenix Union HS District helped overcome the challenge of accreditation of curriculum and program strategies and assured us of putting a viable program in their schools to help the bottom tier of the student population that could go 50/50 either way to drop out or graduate and go on to postsecondary success, reduce crime rates, break generational poverty cycles and better their communities.

We’d love to hear more about your business.
Elevate Phoenix is a wrap around collaborative program taking urban students and developing long-term, life-changing relationships with them helping them discover their futures. We believe the key component in education is motivating students through caring relationships who will hold them accountable and walk with them through life needs, emotions and crisis. We are known for creating education and mentoring pipelines helping students and schools connect all the dots for students success within challenging urban public school and community environments.

We do it through urban public school systems. School counselors assign students who needs motivation and support from caring adults who will stay with them as they grow up in good and bad times to help them succeed in life. We specialize in the most at risk students who others may have given up on, are in foster, single parent or no parent homes facing poverty, crime and perhaps no futures they can believe in.

We are unique in being accredited in the school system with students earning a grade as an elective for classes. We achieve high results with full time employed Elevate Teacher-Mentors who pour their lives as role models into students 24/7 with availability to be there for those 3am crisis calls. Where volunteers can come and go we provide staff, equipped with a fleet of vans to help them become mobile with a variety of life and learning experiences. We stay with students through their school careers, into postsecondary and for life with a strong alumni approach where students become volunteers, interns and Teacher Mentors themselves.

After school, weekend, summer and year around activities partner with many other nonprofits. Tutoring and literacy support are part of the equation. We are unique in being no cost to the already cash strapped school systems. We are unique in creating team teaching environments with male and female teachers directing our classrooms, mentoring and other programs in teams together. We are a unique in focusing on multiplication where students are trained as peer mentors to each other, elementary students and even within their community and family units.

Is our city a good place to do what you do?
Yes! Phoenix is a fast growing city where a diversity of cultures meet needing a sense of community to understand each other. Our classrooms and programs stir that diversity into a mix of students caring for one another and those around them in life, families, school and community service. It teaches character where there is none, holds hope for someone until they can hold it for themselves and provides safe and creative environments and accountability for behaviors. It provides simple common sense life-skills and equips for the responsible work force and career roles for each student.

While Phoenix can be a tough charity funding market we’ve discovered that if you build a unique program with high ROI the community will invest in it to help the next generation of leaders have a way up. We know this because we started in the depths of the recent recession.

Someone just starting out should find out where needs are not being met, have a viable and unique strategy that thinks long term and provides in depth services to build a strong return on investment for people who give their money to support the cause.

Elevate Phoenix has done that. Evidence of such is retaining it’s original investors and growing new ones through sight observations and offering an ability to talk with the students who are being helped to experience their life transformations.

The city should vet and support programs with high ROI as should individuals of means and businesses giving back locally,l even winter visitors and transplants, to make Phoenix a safe and good place to live where urban diverse populations are given a way up the ladder through education and creation of healthy nurturing environments.

Pricing:

• $500 supports a student in community college for a semester through the Ann Meyers Drysdale scholarship fund. $300 dollars supports a student in the Elevate progam to receive services

Contact Info:

• Address: 3750 W. Indian School Road. #1
  Phoenix, AZ 85019
• Website: www.elevatephoenix.org
• Phone: 602-532-4873
• Email: lmata@elevatephoenix.org

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