Tulaine Marshall Continues to Address the Needs of Communities

Tulaine Marshall has been a part of some incredible youth initiatives in her career and Citizen Schools is proud to claim her as a staff alumni.  In fact, Tulaine is one of the original staff alumni due to her role as a founding staff member of Citizen Schools.  In the organization’s infancy, Eric Schwarz approached Tulaine and recruited her to assist in reshaping the Citizen Schools’ concept paper.  Tulaine was exhilarated and had a wonderful experience with the task because “the model made so much sense and the team had a real alignment and chemistry and shared approach.”  Along with her own skills and experiences, Tulaine involved organizers from the House of Blues Foundation, where she was working at the time.  This was just the launching pad for Tulaine’s success with Citizen Schools and with multiple youth initiatives that followed. While at Citizen Schools, Tulaine held various positions in which she experienced the full trajectory of our mission.  She started as a campus director before transitioning into the first ever program director role.  After continuously exceeding expectations, she was promoted to the Chief Training Officer where she was able to share her expertise with the many fresh new faces to Citizen Schools.  In her career arc with Citizen Schools, Tulaine spearheaded many programs that are still at the core of our program model today, including the Teaching Fellowship, the Master’s degree program, and the first Summer Institute.  As a result of her great leadership and commitment to growing community partnerships, the annual award for a staff member who most closely emulates her work and vision was established, called the Tulaine Shabazz Marshall Village Builder Award.  At present, the honor is awarded to one program staff member and one program support staff member annually.  Tulaine also continues her relationship with Citizen Schools by co-teaching the “Leadership and Community Engagement” class at Lesley University to Teaching Fellows in year two.

Tulaine’s spirit and personality shine through in her strong desire to work with middle school students as well.  She finds that “middle schoolers keep you honest – you have to really know the content. They keep you honest about your depth of knowledge, the real level of your organization, and your ability to follow-through.”  Based on these realities, Tulaine believes that if you can teach middle school students effectively, you can do anything!  With this sentiment in mind, Tulaine went on to do fantastic work with YouthBuild USA as their National Director of Graduate and Youth Opportunities.  In her role at YouthBuild, Tulaine supported their mission to “harness the resources, intelligence, and power of young people who have been given up on” and works to draw out the “benefit from the energy of these young people who are being pushed out of our educational system and our work force.”  In this program, youth are able to reengage with education, the workforce and learn about advocacy, the political system, and how they can have an effect on the future of the country.

After YouthBuild, Tulaine became VP of Community Impact at United Way of Massachusetts Bay and Merrimack Valley where she co-founded a program called the Road to Opportunities – an innovative model that engages “disconnected” youth in academics and  career development that prepares them for 21st century success and leadership. United Way partners with, supports, and provides access to youth development programs, state agencies, educational programs, and other philanthropic organizations.  Currently, Tulaine is the founder and CEO of the consulting firm New Resource Strategy. New Resource Strategies (NRS) provides a range of consulting services that help mission-driven organizations address major operational, fiscal and strategic challenges.  A major piece of her work at NRS is leading the Higher Ground Initiative, a program that was inspired by the Harlem Children’s Zone.  She describes this project as focusing on communities with high levels of distress in health, housing and education; Higher Ground helps “change the story of what it means to live in these neighborhoods.”

Tulaine is aware of the potential impact she could have on the communities she works with and is aware it takes a generation for change to really take effect.  That is not stopping Tulaine anytime soon as she describes her career aspirations as “driven by need and where my interests and skills can address that need.”  Don’t expect Tulaine to slow down anytime soon!