Alysha Rashid ’11

Member of Adelphi University’s 10 Under 10

Former Director of Program and Operations, America Achieves
Graduate Student at the University of Chicago Harris School of Public Policy

After working in Adelphi’s Office of Admissions all four years of college, she seamlessly stepped into an assistant director role in admissions upon graduation. “I recruited in Brooklyn, Manhattan, Suffolk County, and Washington throughout my time there,” she said. “While I encouraged and successfully helped many students apply to and enroll at Adelphi, I felt a strong commitment to supporting students in their college application journey to find the best school for them.” 

After two years at her alma mater, she took a position at the education and social policy research organization MDRC, where she worked at Abraham Lincoln High School as a college match advisor. “The College Match Program focused on combatting ‘undermatching,’ a term used to describe when students attend a college or university that does not meet their academic rigor,” she said. “We advised top students on colleges and universities that were academic matches to create the best possible outcomes.” 

Following this one-year program she continued her work in the college access world. Over time, she made her way to the management side of the nonprofit world at America Achieves, where she started as a project manager for the CollegePoint initiative. “CollegePoint is dedicated to increasing the number of high-achieving, low- and moderate-income students applying to, attending, and enrolling in top colleges across the country,” she said. Given her interest in and affinity for data, Rashid then moved into a data manager role, and shortly after, a director role. “I was able to explore more of my interests in data, as well as continue to develop skills around program development and implementation,” she said.

“Our team has worked with roughly 50,000 students over the last five years, and it’s been an honor to be part of that growth,” she said. “As the initiative changed and grew, I changed and grew, which led me to my greatest personal accomplishment—getting accepted to the University of Chicago’s Harris School of Public Policy.”

Rashid, who is now transitioning into a full-time graduate student, plans to further explore the potential that data holds for future endeavors. “Data, or big data, has become a hot topic in today’s society, but we are still far from utilizing data to solve some of our nation’s most complex social issues,” she said. 

“If we make it a point to utilize data in the way that we do for big corporations and our economy, I believe we’ll make incredible strides in the social sector. I plan to refine this theory and my analytic skills during my time at Harris,” she said.

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