About your SEL partners
We became friends in 2014 as members of a group designed to help purpose driven entrepreneurs be emotionally healthy and thriving in all areas of life. With 30 years combined experience we have taught in both conventional and unconventional classroom settings.
This collaboration between Ever Forward Club and Socially Creative represents our shared passion for creating opportunities and experiences that help everyone feel like they belong.
" I didn't know my father until I was 22. Upon returning from a year long immersion in Ecuador my dad picked me up from LAX airport. The engine hummed as I sat passenger on the bench seat of his pick-up truck.
The moment that followed changed everything. His phone rang. "Bueno," he answered. It was his sister from Mexico city.
Prior to that trip to Ecuador I didn't know Spanish (my dad's first language). In near shock with tears filling my eyes I observed. I now saw layers of expression I had never seen before.
That moment taught me that no matter how close people may be there is so much more to know and that may never be fully understood simply because the different ways we relate, or speak, to the world.
I am passionate about bringing more art to the world because it's a bridge, and means to convey something that might be impossible to share with words."
Jeremy Capdevielle | Founder at Socially Creative
Ashanti Branch | Founder at Ever Forward Club
" I was born and raised by a single mother on welfare in Oakland, California. I took a rode less traveled, got out of the ghetto, and graduated from a premier university with a degree in civil engineering.
After tutoring struggling students I realized my true passion was teaching. I changed careers and became a teacher. With fire re-ignited, I started the Ever Forward Club in 2004 during my first year teaching with the intetnion to support young black and latino men who weren't achieving their true potential.
I spent over 19 years mentoring youth (10 of those as a math teacher educating inner city youth.) and received multiple awards including: a Fullbright Exchange Fellowship to India, a rotary Club Cultural Ambassador Fellowship to Mexico, and a 2010 teacher of the year award from the Alameda-Contra Costa County Math Educators.
I'm on a mission to change the way students interact with their education and they way schools interact with students."