Kiiera Robinson, Ed.D, MPH, MA’s Post

AHHHHHH!!! IMMA BE A WHOLE DOCTOR AND I’M DOING IT IN MY CITY!!! 🤩🙏🏾❤️😱📚😜👩🏾💻💙🤭 | #PennGSE Testimony Time: A Black girl from Philly attends the top high school in the state where she’s told that New York University is her “reach” school. She also has no idea how she’s going to pay ~80k a year to go. But, she prays, applies, and gets accepted with a full-ride as a UNCF Gates Millennium Scholar, receiving bachelor’s, master’s, and doctoral funding amongst less than 2% of 53,000 applicants in the last cohort of the scholarship. She then graduates from NYU two times with a BFA in Recorded Music from thee NYU Tisch Clive Davis Institute and a MA in Digital Media Design for Learning from the NYU Steinhardt School of Culture, Education, and Human Development. As a multimedia artist and social entrepreneur, she brings what she learned back to her community and starts a nonprofit called Stories In My Backyard (SIMBY) to provide Black youth access to culturally relevant media arts education that she wishes she had growing up. So, she comes back to her hometown to do this work and is led to pursue her doctorate of education. She submits one doctoral application to the University of Pennsylvania and is accepted as the only incoming student in the Ed.D in Teaching, Learning, and Teacher Education program this fall. In a few years, she will join the less than 3% of research doctorates earned by Black women and become the first doctor in her family. She is me and I am HER!!! 🥹🥹🥹 It’s one thing to dream about the life you want as a kid and it’s another thing to live to see it happening after you’ve sacrificed, overcome so much, and remained steadfast on your own path. Thank you God for giving me purpose and favor, leading the way, keeping my mind, protecting my heart, and uplifting my spirit at every turn. I could have never crafted a story this beautiful but I’m so glad that You’re the orchestrator. It’s bigger than me and I’m excited to see how my story continues to unfold as a scholar-practitioner and contributor to the future of education. DR. KYRA WILLIAMS IS LOADING!!! ☺️ I have to thank my family and friends for taking the coolest ride with me. I’m so grateful for every person that God spoke through who encouraged me to take this leap in the last year and a half. I also could not have done this without my mentors and Gates sis who supported me throughout the application process: Dr. Matthew D. Morrison, Dr. Pamela D'Andrea Martínez, Dr. Kiiera Robinson, Ed.D, MPH, MA, and Shelley Wolfe. 🫶🏾 📸: 🙋🏾♀️ #BecomingDrWilliams #FutureBlackDoctor #PennGSE #NYUAlumni #NYUTisch #NYUSteinhardt #VioletPride NYU Entrepreneurial Institute #Philly