Plenty of people have been there. Dead-end jobs. Few long-term prospects. Dreams of doing good or moving up — all frozen in place.
Then comes a light at the end of the tunnel. In this case, an Austin nonprofit called Capital Idea, an “education first” proponent when it comes to jobs.
Twenty years ago or so, the career dreams of Teresa Garza, Lori Lucas and Shirlet Oriakhi had stalled. The three knew that the next critical step in their lives had to be higher education and job training. Yet they needed guidance and support, as well as career placement.
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Capital Idea, an Austin nonprofit founded in 1998 by interfaith and business leaders, has provided all those services for more than 1,900 students over the years, most of whom have tripled their annual earnings. Thousands of other students have received some measure of help or counseling from Capital Idea, which operates on a $6.3 million budget fueled by public funding, private foundation grants, corporate giving and individual support.
Now Garza, Lucas and Oriakhi are the ones doing the guiding.
As professors, the trio, who trained in the healthcare fields at Austin Community College, now teach others in different departments of ACC. With Capital Idea at their back, they also have formed permanent, interlocking networks of support for themselves and others.
Professor Shirlet Oriankhi: ‘Don’t give up, don’t stop’
Shirlet Oriakhi’s first job was flipping burgers at a Short Stop.
“I don’t remember all the other places I worked,” Oriakhi, 50, says. “What didn’t I do? The last job was at the Department of Public Safety in special crimes. I reviewed photo lineups of suspects and police reports. It was a nightmare job. I felt helpless. I thought: ‘You gotta get out of here.'”
Now an associate professor in the vocational nursing program at ACC East View campus, she was born in Austin and went to LBJ High School. She credits a strong home life for getting her through most of her early challenges.
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“My stepfather was a bus mechanic for Cap Metro,” Oriakhi says. “He coached Special Olympics. My mom worked for the Austin school district. When I first became a student at ACC, my pastor made it clear: one course at a time.”
She took classes wherever ACC had an opening.
In 1999, she spotted a flyer on the wall at the ACC Riverside campus, which offered a nursing program. It pointed to help from Capitol Idea.
“They offered me all sorts of tangible and intangible things,” Oriakhi says. “Most important is the immense sense of belief they have in you. Their expectations are high. You try to lower your goals, and they say, ‘Nope, you’ve got to come back up where we are; we’re not going to go down where you are.'”
Her first goal: to become a nurse. Nursing and teaching had always been on her mind.
“I asked my mother at age 5 — teacher or nurse? — which one makes the most money?” she says with a laugh. “I didn’t know you could be both.”
She kept returning to those passions, despite periods of doubt.
“When that thing typically happens, you need to re-spark it again, build the fire back up,” she says. “Don’t give up, don’t stop. Get them in your corner, you in the middle, Capital Idea on one side, whoever you pray with, whoever live with on the other.”
She says Capital Idea is one part of a “huge encompassing support system.”
“They do a lot for you, but not everything,” she says. “They say: ‘You can, you will, and this is how you are going to do it step by step.’ The most profound thing is that they don’t forget about people.”
Oriakhi realizes she has beaten the odds.
“I was a teenage mother,” she says. “I wasn’t supposed to go to college. I now have a master’s degree. Part of it was because of people on the outside of my family, who have nothing to gain, but truly, authentically believe you can do it.”
Professor Teresa Garza: ‘We can remove any problem’
Born and raised in San Marcos, Teresa Garza dropped out of what then was Southwest Texas State University when she was 18.
“I was working toward a biology degree,” Garza, 46, says. “But I was a typical 18-year-old and everything was more important than school. I wasn’t in the right place doing the right thing, so I didn’t really enjoy it. I didn’t want to go anymore.”
So Garza, now a professor of radiology based at the ACC Round Rock campus and an alumni representative on the Capital Idea board of directors, took a job at the local outlet mall.
“I was a sales associate for years, making very little money,” she recalls. “I never married and had no kids. But I started in the radiology program in 1999. I was working on prerequisite courses, but didn’t have the money for school.”
At the time, Garza studied health sciences in the basement at the ACC Riverside campus.
“Financial support is what draws you to Capital Idea,” she says. “They paid for textbooks, tuition, uniforms, scrubs, shoes — simple basic things — gas money. I lived in San Marcos and drove to Riverside.”
With Capital Idea counselors and navigators, she met in small groups, which also provided social support from other participants.
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“There was always somebody to push you along,” she says. “A counselor who would say: ‘We’re going to figure this out.’ Never an excuse. ‘We can remove any problem.’ All the things you didn’t expect.”
Time commitment was big for Garza, who worked full-time while taking classes and doing clinical training.
“I was a bit of a procrastinator,” she says. “I still am one. How do I juggle everything? Especially with the intensity of the ACC programs and the extremely rigid curriculum. It was not easy at all. I mean, I loved every bit of it, but it took everything I had, mentally and physically.”
Recently, she’s been thinking back to 1999 and the start of this journey.
“Working at the outlet mall, I got the sense that I could do more with my life,” Garza says. “I’m folding clothes, ringing a cash register. But I was curious about going back to school and changing careers. I was so tired of doing this. I had an inkling inside.”
Capital Idea lit the flame and propelled her forward.
“I was that girl on probation at Southwest Texas,” she says. “But I earned that associate’s degree, that bachelor’s degree — summa cum laude — and that master’s degree, now with 40 students of my own.”
Professor Lori Lucas: ‘We all need each other’
Lori Lucas, 55, who teaches nursing at the ACC Round Rock campus, was born in Ohio but grew up in Central Texas. Her father was a rancher, her mother a licensed vocational nurse in Hico north of Lampasas.
She earned a cosmetology license, got married and had children.
“We needed supplemental family income,” she says. “We had a daughter in high school and two boys in elementary school. My husband is a plumber. It’s hard on only one income and I wanted to set a good example.”
Lucas started college in 2003 and encountered Capital Idea in 2005.
“Friends told me about it,” she says. “So it was word of mouth. I was studying at the ACC East View campus and needed practical things like tuition, uniforms — which are a big deal; we have to look good — and new shoes, another big deal.”
Lucas was lucky enough to attract an exacting mentor in Sister Anne Nguyen.
“‘She was like, ‘No! You need to do this, or make this objective, and meet with me once a month,'” she says. “Help from a professional helps you be a better professional.”
Lucas says that if she were a millionaire, she’d pour money back into Capital Idea.
“I’m in a doctoral program now,” she says. “My children — now 26, 28 and 33 — want to see my grades. I work at Hospice Austin’s Christopher House in my time off. You know, I never really believed in myself. I was shy and didn’t have the necessary rigor. The rigor of community college is not to be underestimated. I needed help with that.”
Thinking it over again, she feels like the mentoring was the most important part of the Capital Idea project.
“Sister Anne was very strict,” Lucas says, “but very good to me. We all need each other. We need people in our lives to tell us where we can go.”
Steve Jackobs: Students’ success makes what I do worthwhile
Steve Jackobs, executive director for Capital Idea, has been with the Austin nonprofit since it was founded. Originally from Wisconsin, he earned his bachelor’s degree in social studies at Harvard University and his master’s in social and political thought from the University of Sussex in the U.K.
The field that is now called workforce development has been his adult life’s business.
“I know what it means: I come from a family with a mom and dad that wanted to go to college,” Jackobs says. “Mom attended a one-room schoolhouse. In the eighth grade, she dreamed of becoming a teacher. But then her father got sick and both parents died so she had to raise her brothers and sisters. Dad did get in a year at the University of Minnesota, but then his family ran out of money. He became a pipe fitter, but he wanted to be an engineer. He didn’t get his chance.”
Jackobs’ parents knew what they wanted for their children.
“All five us were going to college, by god,” he says. “We didn’t know we could stop. My brother and an older sister earned Ph.D.s at the University of Iowa and Purdue University. Two of my siblings earned master’s degrees at the University of Wisconsin flagship campus in Madison.”
At fundraising events, Jackobs can sell the idea of Capital Idea in the abstract. Yet that’s not how admirers become true believers.
About three years ago, however, he and I started talking over coffee about the backstories of Capital Idea’s graduates. Since then, the Austin area’s cost of living has continued to skyrocket and the only jobs that can keep families afloat often require ever more education and training.
Jackobs: “These stories make all the other stuff I do worthwhile.”
Michael Barnes writes about the people, places, culture and history of Austin and Texas. He can be reached at mbarnes@statesman.com.
CareerUp with Capital Idea
A “CareerUp” is a free info session that takes about 30 to 40 minutes. Capital Idea helpers go over the support that the group offers, the careers that they are recruiting for, and the group’s qualifications, along with other information. Call 512-457-8610 or go to capitalidea.org to sign up for a virtual CareerUp session and learn about next steps.
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