Meet Our Staff!
Tichina Ward-Pratt
Tichina Ward-Pratt was the founder of LEAD. Tichina developed LEAD as a senior undergraduate at UCLA majoring in African American Studies. Tichina became interested in Algebra specifically because Algebra is a big academic barrier for African American students especially African American males. Algebra is where you get introduced to the language that you’re going to be using for the rest of high school so it is essential to solidify your grasp on that language in order to move forward successfully. The most rewarding moment for her has been needing a van to fit all the volunteers and when two LEAD scholars, Cheyenne and Kayla, got a A and an B on an Algebra test, respectively. LEAD has contributed to her personal development by teaching her how to delegate things and become more organized. Her vision for the project in the next couple of years would be for LEAD to be better funded, having more sites other than King Drew, and having LEAD liaisons that partner with other programs that need volunteers that are qualified to help in math. She would like to see LEAD develop a summer program in which the students get 2-3 week of prepping so the students can get acquainted with the topics they will go over during the upcoming year. Tichina has seen the improvement of the students performance since forming part of LEAD and LEAD will be her legacy.
Ariel Taylor
Ariel is a UCLA undergraduate majoring in neuroscience and is a LEAD program director. She joined LEAD because she was a King Drew Alumni and she wanted to go back into her community to make a difference. LEAD has taught her to be patient, understanding, and has allowed her to humble herself to see things in the students perspective. When she first started LEAD, the students were shut off and most students seemed like they did not want to be there but now the students are eager to learn . Students enjoy doing math with LEAD because we try to make it fun and we don’t try to bring material in an instructive way rather make it more interactive. Not only do we see a difference in their actions but we also see it in their performance. She hopes LEAD, in the next couple of year, expands into higher levels of math such as Geometry and Calculus. She hopes LEAD becomes a fully developed program:more funding, more resources,more support, and more notoriety.
Mara Miyashiro
Mara is a UCLA undergraduate majoring in Psychobiology and is LEAD’s financial coordinator. Mara decided to join LEAD because she was interested in learning about High Schools in the Compton community. She struggled with math herself during High school and she wanted to help students who faced this same struggle. She feels like LEAD has given the students confidence:students want to write on the board and solve problems and they raise their hands to answer questions. She hopes that LEAD expands beyond King Drew and that LEAD helps with other math topics such as geometry and trigonometry.