Cyndie Shepard

Cyndie Shepard founded Creating the Future, a program that offers direct academic tutoring in elementary, middle and high schools that lack funding, staffing and energy, to improve the achievement gap in her community. By providing relationships and academic help to diverse, low-income students, Creating the Future inspires young students to get engaged in their schools and dream big about their futures. In addition to receiving tutoring and mentoring, more than 15,000 fifth-graders have toured a university campus, placing a vision of themselves in college and setting the goal of post-secondary education in their minds.