Kimberlee Sia
CEO, KIPP Colorado Schools Denver
I grew up in a single-parent home in a farming community in Iowa. There was not an expectation that anyone would go to college. My mom worked multiple jobs and so my job was to take care of my sisters. The only time I was really excited about anything was when I was at school. When I was in middle school, Iowa passed an open enrollment law where you could go to school wherever you wanted. This was the first school choice that I didn't realize then, but I chose to go to a more urban high school than my rural high school of 100 students. While I was at that high school, I started to realize that college was an option and that people went to college and that this was something that I could do to think about where I would want to go next in my life.
I was a first-generation college student, the first person in my family to go to college. I have three younger siblings and of those three, one other one went to college as well. As you talk about how you start to make changes in terms of generations, and the work that's happening, slowly starting to see that in my family. I never actually planned to be a teacher.
I thought I was going to be a businessperson and I was going to go out and change the world and make lots of money and never return to the farm in Iowa. Because of my family's financial status, when I was in college, I had to work a number of jobs and most of the jobs I worked involved children — tutoring or helping at schools or volunteering for summer programs that came to the campus. I finally realized my senior year that I needed to be a teacher and that I wanted to give back in the same way that people had given to me over time to help me to make a shift in my life. That's how I became a teacher and that's what gets me up every morning is our students and that I want to be able to make a similar impact that others have made for me over my career.
