"Until we get equality in education, we won't have an equal society..."

I hope everyone is having a great fall. My kids are making their way through a kids’ book on Sonya Sotomayor, and I was reminded of her amazing autobiography, entitled “My Beloved World”. For those unfamiliar, Sonya Sotomayor is the 11th Justice of the Supreme Court in the US, serving since August of 2009. She’s the first Hispanic justice, born and raised in the Bronx, who knew at age 10 that she wanted to be an attorney. She entered Princeton University on a scholarship, and was one of the few Latino women there at the time. While she described Princeton as like “a visitor landing in an alien country”, she worked hard, found mentorship, and ultimately succeeded, going on to win the Pyne Prize and graduating summa cum laude. She went on to Yale Law School, worked as an assistant district attorney in New York, and later enter private practice. In May 2009, President Barack Obama nominated Sotomayor to the Supreme Court, and she was confirmed in August of that same year.

During a Q&A session at a quarterly meeting of the Philadelphia Bar Association, Sotomayor said “Until we get equality in education, we won't have an equal society.” The work that we all are doing, as part of the Impact Network, is helping to combat this inequality. When you think about a world, or even a country trying to obtain this level of equality, it can feel daunting. What I liked about Sotomayor’s words is that it made it local – as a society, as a community, we can all work towards meeting this goal. In our Impact Schools, we can provide a quality education to our 6,000 students. And bit by bit, we can do our part to making sure that our students have a fair shot in the world economy. You all help make this happen, day in and day out. Without you, there is no Network, and there certainly wouldn’t be an Impact!

-Reshma