Partnerships

The graduating class of The Fellowship Initiative in Chicago earned $28.5 million in scholarships and financial aid while building an enduring bond of brotherhood.

Beneath the chandeliers of the Paul Robeson Theater on Chicago’s South Side, the future arrived wearing suits, tassels, and nervous smiles.

More than 200 people packed into the historic theater inside the South Shore Cultural Center on the Saturday of Mother’s Day weekend. Families gathered around clothed tables — mothers clutching purses, fathers adjusting ties, younger siblings fidgeting in padded banquet chairs. Outside, Lake Michigan shimmered under the spring sun. Inside, 44 fellows prepared to cross a graduation stage carrying the weight of their ambitions.

Together, the 2026 graduating class of The Fellowship Initiative (TFI) had earned more than 700 college acceptances and $28.5 million in scholarships and financial aid.

One was headed to Harvard University to study neuroscience. Another would attend Washington University in St. Louis on a full ride. Three had earned coveted Posse Scholarships to Oberlin, Dickinson, and Middlebury Colleges. One planned to study fashion design. Another, civil engineering. And another — a young father who crossed the stage carrying his one-year-old son in his arms — planned to study plumbing.

The moment felt bigger than a graduation ceremony. It felt like a collective exhale.

Unlike a traditional school ceremony, this graduation only happens once every three years — marking the culmination of a demanding, multi-year commitment that began when most of the TFI Fellows were sophomores still trying to figure out who they wanted to become.

For many families, the ceremony represented years of sacrifice, long commutes, financial stress, neighborhood violence, illness, loss, and the uncertainty that shadows so many families trying to help their children reach adulthood safely.

“TFI has opened doors we would have never seen if he had not gotten into this program.” — Eric Gabriel

Every Saturday 

For three years, these fellows — most from low-income households and more than half first-generation college students — spent Saturdays each month commuting across Chicago for TFI, a college access and leadership program launched by JPMorganChase and implemented locally by Youth Guidance that supports youth who face systemic barriers to economic opportunity from all backgrounds.

While participants could have chosen to spend their Saturdays sleeping in, working jobs, or hanging out with friends, these fellows boarded buses and “L” trains to spend hours in workshops on leadership, professionalism, public speaking, financial literacy, college access, and networking. Each fellow was paired with a mentor from JPMorganChase.

Luis Morales-Lopez rode the Blue Line from the North Side to downtown meetings at Chase Tower, where the cohort originally gathered before temporarily relocating this year to the Illinois Institute of Technology during renovations. His mother, Ruby Trejo Lopez, often worked weekends and couldn’t always drive him.

“He always made it there,” she said. “I never had to wake him up. I never had to remind him. TFI really showed me how the program motivates these young men toward independence, confidence in their own thinking, and ultimately becoming responsible men.”

Luis, the oldest of her children, will attend Dickinson College in Pennsylvania as a Posse Scholar — farther from home than anyone in the family has ever gone.

Cultivating Excellence 

Above the entrance to the South Shore theater hangs a plaque bearing the name Paul Robeson, the legendary actor, athlete, activist, and singer who lived from 1898 to 1976 — a period spanning several significant civil and social moments in the United States. Robeson spent his life challenging America to imagine a fuller version of democracy, one where Black brilliance was not feared or diminished, but cultivated.

On this Saturday, that vision felt alive inside the theater, where families with roots stretching from the American South to Mexico, Nigeria, India, and across the African and Latin diasporas gathered to celebrate the next generation stepping into its future.

At a time when so many conversations about young men focus on crisis, the ceremony offered a counternarrative rooted in discipline, community, and possibility.

Ayomide “Ayo” Olatunji sat near the front before the ceremony began, waiting for his family to arrive. Soft-spoken and reflective, the EPIC Academy senior said he once imagined attending the University of Chicago. Instead, he’ll head east this fall to Harvard University on a full scholarship, where he plans to study neuroscience.

“I think sophomore year, I was more reserved,” Ayo said before the ceremony. “I was ambitious, but I stayed to myself.”

TFI, he said, changed that.

“It helped me step out and build meaningful relationships,” he said. “That’s been the greatest part.”

“This program has always been about more than college. It’s about…expanding your sense of what’s possible.”

— Kourtney Cockrell

Ayo still talks regularly with his JPMorganChase mentor, Melissa, and with Ju’Juan Day, a TFI program specialist at Youth Guidance whom students affectionately called “Unc.”

“Perseverance is key,” Ayo said, reflecting on what the program taught him. “And networking. That’s very emphasized in TFI.”

Around him, families streamed into the theater.

Gabriel Peña’s mother, Patricia, remembered first hearing about TFI years earlier from a teacher whose own son had completed the program.

“When they start, they’re so young,” she said. “The young men who start the program aren’t the same young men who finish.”

Her son, Gabriel, earned a full-tuition Posse Scholarship to Oberlin College, where he plans to study communications.

“TFI has opened doors we would have never seen if he had not gotten into this program,” said Gabriel’s dad, Eric. “I’m just grateful. I’m thankful. It really does take a village.”

What’s Possible 

In his keynote remarks, Pastor David Williams joked about interviewing one student for the 2026 cohort who conducted the entire interview holding a sausage link in his hand.

“You know what kind of confidence you gotta have to interview with a sausage link in your hand?” Williams said, causing the room to erupt in laughter.

But beneath the humor was something deeper.

“You came in baby-faced,” Williams told the graduates. “Now y’all got facial hair. Changed up your style and everything. But we saw the brilliance in you from the beginning.”

The ceremony moved between celebration, testimony, grief, and joy — sometimes within the span of a single speech.

Kourtney Cockrell, Vice President and Regional Director of Global Philanthropy and Corporate Responsibility at JPMorganChase, addressed the students from the stage.

“Each person here represents someone who has poured into you,” Cockrell said, reflecting on the families, mentors, and staff who supported the fellows throughout their journey. A first-generation college graduate herself, she told the students she understood what it meant to carry not only their own dreams, but the hopes of their families as well.

“I’ve seen you grow from young boys into young men,” she said. “This program has always been about more than college. It’s about experience, brotherhood, leadership, and expanding your sense of what’s possible.”

Michelle Morrison, CEO of Youth Guidance, reminded the TFI graduates that success would not always come in a straight line.

“You have already proven that you know how to persevere,” Morrison told them. “You’ve solved problems, overcome setbacks, and leaned on your community for support. Those are the exact skills that will carry you through whatever comes next.”

Tribute to Travon 

Then the ceremony shifted to honor Travon Freeman, a 17-year-old EPIC Academy honor roll student and TFI Fellow who was killed in a shooting just a block from his school last fall.

Travon, who had plans to run for student council president, was remembered throughout the ceremony not only as a gifted student, but as a joyful, magnetic presence whose absence left a profound void in the lives of classmates, mentors, and friends.

Will Irvin, Youth Guidance’s Director of Career Readiness & Postsecondary Success, spoke during a tribute to Travon.

“It’s not right that there’s an empty chair here today,” Irvin told the room. “It’s not right that we are missing a friend as his classmates cross this graduation stage.”

Irvin then reflected on losing one of his own close friend, Frankie, to gun violence while he was in college.

“I’ve thought many times about how similar Frankie and Travon were,” he said. “They were both the kind of people who could walk into a room and light it up. And Travon, even at a young age, understood one of life’s greatest joys: being there for other people.”

Travon’s mother, Rosetta Coger, later addressed the audience herself, thanking the TFI families for their empathy and support.

“I read all the sympathy cards. They made me laugh, they made me cry,” she said. “You made me a firm believer in the saying that, “When one mother hurts, we all hurt. When one momma cry, we call cry. I appreciate you all for that.” 

A Family Affair 

But grief never fully overtook the afternoon. The ceremony insisted on hope.

Christopher Lewis spoke about watching his son Ahmir persevere through his mother’s breast cancer diagnosis while growing from a shy teenager into a confident young man willing to “bet on himself” by pursuing music composition instead of computer science.

Another parent, Abby Adasiak, reflected on raising children on Chicago’s South Side, where young people sometimes learn too early to distinguish fireworks from gunshots.

“Society often looks at our Fellows,” she said, “and labels them before they even get a chance.”

Then she turned toward the TFI staff seated nearby — Will Irvin, Ju’Juan Day, Chikamso Odume, Cristian Romero, and Danny Vazquez — the mentors, coaches, and program leaders who had spent the last three years guiding the Fellows.

“Your dedication, commitment, and unconditional support does not go unnoticed,” she told them.

Again and again throughout the afternoon, the ceremony returned to the same idea: no one arrives alone.

As the ceremony closed, each Fellow learned he would receive a laptop for college — a graduation gift for the next chapter ahead. The announcement detonated across the room like fireworks.

Lasting Bonds 

Afterward, graduates zigzagged across the theater to pose for celebratory photos with friends, mentors, and family members. Others spilled into the afternoon light along the lakefront, gathering beneath flowering trees and near the stone terraces of the cultural center for more photos. Mothers adjusted graduation tassels. Fathers wrapped sons in hugs that lingered a little longer than usual.

Among them was Darius Townsel, the graduate who crossed the stage carrying his one-year-old son, Kayden, as his mother, Katherine, and father, Demetrius, cheered him on.

Darius had been part of Youth Guidance’s Becoming A Man (BAM) program since middle school. He commuted from the West Side using public transportation to attend TFI sessions every Saturday.

“God protects me all the time,” he said of his weekend journeys on Chicago public transit.

Now 18, he plans to study plumbing at Kennedy-King College. He said becoming a father changed everything.

“Every time I see him,” Darius said of his son, “it’s motivation.”

Around him, fellows lingered long after the ceremony ended, taking photos, exchanging hugs and grips, promising to stay in touch.

Three years earlier, many had entered the program as strangers.

They left as brothers.

Johnathon Briggs, a former Chicago Tribune staff writer, is the director of marketing and communications at Youth Guidance.

Photos courtesy of K-Benson Studio.