Detroit Drives Degrees Blog

• Trying Not to Become Another Statistic

  By Vanessa Yates I have been writing and telling stories my whole life. I have always had a quirky personality, and at 20 years old, I now cherish who I am. That wasn’t always the case. My family had very …

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• Dream Deferred: The Path to Accomplishing Career Goals

  By: Afrkah Cooper  It seemed to happen overnight. D’ante Whitney, a 13-year old from Detroit, woke up with a deep voice – a really deep voice – and he knew he was destined for a career in radio. Throughout high …

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• Business Leaders: Education Reform and Job Creation Will Help Michigan ‘Live Long and Prosper’

  Detroit Regional Chamber President and CEO Sandy Baruah and Education Attainment Manager Melanie D’Evelyn spoke at the Michigan Solutions Summit on Thursday, March 22 to share insight on the Chamber’s ongoing efforts towards education reform, job creation, and talent retention …

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• Chamber Honored for Strengthening Student Success Through Education Partnerships

  The Detroit Regional Chamber was recognized with the “Beacon Award” during a special ceremony at the Michigan College Access Network’s (MCAN) eighth annual Conference on Monday, March 12. The award recognizes recipients for continually uniting programs, activities and operations in …

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• Young professionals paving the way for other young professionals

  While in school at Bowling Green State University, Brittany Mobley fell in love with public relations after watching The Devil Wears Prada, a movie about a recent college grad who lands a job at a high-end fashion magazine as a personal assistant. Brittany was intrigued with the work the actors did to promote their company and thought being a publicist might be her calling.

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• So, You Think You’re Ready for College?

  I had been preparing for college my whole life, but I still felt unprepared when I got there. The two most important members of my family, my mother and my grandmother, both have their associate degrees but, unfortunately, sharing their college experience with me didn’t prepare me for mine.

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• Jumping Through the Hoops of Higher Education

  I’m Afrkah Cooper, a senior at Wayne State University (WSU) working as a communications intern with the Detroit Regional Chamber’s Detroit Drives Degrees initiative. In our work, we do a lot of research on student access to higher education, graduation rates and talent retention. Sometimes it’s hard to see people through these numbers. One of my goals as an intern is to help share stories of students, which we’ll do in a blog series called “Student Voices.” To get the conversation started, this blog shares a bit about me and my journey through higher education.

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• Keep Talent Here: What happens After 5?

  After talking with more than 500 young people in Southeast Michigan through our talent survey and focus groups (get some background on the project here), we learned that helping people find their “after 5” community was the best way help them feel connected to Southeast Michigan.

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