“Say More” with Tulaine Montgomery and Alex Bernadotte
August 19, 2020Episode two of Tulaine Montgomery’s Instagram live interview series — “Say More: Live Conversations with Tulaine” — featured visionary social entrepreneur and activist Alex Bernadotte. Alex is the founder and CEO of Beyond 12, a former New Profit grantee-partner that addresses the college completion challenge at its root by acting as a data and service bridge between K-12 and higher education. Learn more about Beyond 12 here.
Alex is one of many social entrepreneurs in the New Profit network whose lived experience, and proximity to inequities in post-secondary life, became the basis for her entrepreneurial vision and venture. As a first generation college student, she found herself challenged by the lack of a network of support for people like her, and Beyond 12 was created so that other students wouldn’t have to struggle in the same way.
Beyond 12 currently works with over 97,000 college students. By 2025, Beyond 12 will have assisted 1,000,000 students nationwide. The organization uses data to connect to each student on a personal level; their data platform also provides actionable feedback to high school programs about their college preparatory efforts. Beyond 12’s statistics show significant impact: 85% of students coached by Beyond 12 for four years have graduated or remained enrolled six years after entering, compared to 42% of the national average for similar students.
Education is the foundation of liberation.
The “Say More” conversation with Alex began on the topic of individualism, digging into America’s defining “pull yourself up by your bootstraps” ethos. In the interview, both Tulaine and Alex interrogated this idea, including from the standpoint of individualism carrying with it immense pressure. Tulaine and Alex both connected over the external and internal pressures they felt regarding career paths and familial expectations. This sense of duty—to fulfill a certain profession and space of notoriety in society—can come with anxiety and, when these expectations aren’t met, shame. “It took me a while to release that internal pressure,” described Alex. “I had to forgive myself. There is this array of opportunities for us to use our gifts and talents in professions that speak to us very deeply, and the work I am doing now feels like destiny. That was true healing — to get to that point where I feel like I am living my purpose and fulfilling my calling.”
Sisterhood is medicine.
In expanding on this theme of healing, the pair discussed the one thing each individual can control: the stories we tell ourselves. Tulaine described that, when it comes to the stories in our heads, we are omnipotent. She identified that the first step to controlling the stories we tell ourselves is to develop self-awareness and reframe the narrative to what we know to be true.
We have to tame our inner gremlins, that inner story, and reframe it. The thing that works for me is taking a step back and asking myself, ‘what do I know to be true?’ I know the truth, so how do I disentangle what I know to be true from the story that I am telling myself. When I come back to the truth, it helps me think about the story differently and tell one that serves me.
Tulaine encouraged viewers to decolonize their imaginations, to become aware of the limits individuals put on their beliefs due to the structures of white supremacy. As Tulaine explained, systemic racism embeds harmful beliefs in the collective consciousness, and we must rectify these narratives. By doing internal work to reframe thoughts and stories, we can create change in our lives and society. “I believe that our energy has to go into transforming versus being distracted by the pain,” noted Tulaine. “When we need to grieve, we grieve. When we need to sob, we sob. When we need to rage, we rage. Once we go through grieving and raging, let’s get busy redesigning and reinventing and creating.” In making this point, she emphasized that it’s not about pretending that everything is okay or swallowing one’s rage or grief; rather, it’s about coming together, doing the work, and moving forward to redesign our society.
We are divine architects.
Prior to COVID-19, Alex described that she would have never imagined that half the nation would have organized protests on behalf of black Americans, or that CEOs of companies would be rushing to close down for Juneteenth. In these instances, white supremacy colonized her imagination; yet, the newfound societal rally for radical, systemic change and justice proved her limiting beliefs wrong. She asserted her hope that these actions go beyond the performative to solidify societal change. “I want to figure out how to capitalize on the shift of this moment because I worry that we are going to stop there — the gravitational pull to normal is so strong. It is so easy to go back to our colonial ways. You hear a lot of people talking about how to get back to normal, without the admission that normal was insufficient for the majority of us.”
The pair ended their conversation by encouraging viewers to pursue conscious self-reflection, embrace humility, and break out of the individualistic, self righteous trap that holds us back from doing the dramatic, equitable re-architecting of America that is needed.
Alex spurred self-reflection with a few final questions:
How do we bring healing into our communities? How do we heal ourselves? How do we craft our own liberation? Instead of waiting for external forces to give us that liberation. We are here at this moment and it's for us to design. What does that look like internally?
To watch the full episode with Tulaine and Alex, click below:
Key References:
- Soul of Money by Lynne Twist
- SF Chronicle Piece on Beyond 12
- Alex Bernadotte named an Ashoka Fellow
- NBC News article on Beyond 12
To understand the profound impact Beyond 12 has had on students, see here: