Raising the Bar... and Then Some: CEO's Passion for Education Buys a Ticket Out of Poverty

by Rosemary Segura, Coordinator for Web and Print Communications

The saying goes that “Children are likely to live up to what you believe of them.” Often, when circumstances are stacked against them, we’re tempted to set the bar too low. We then watch as they slip into poverty or delinquency, somehow believing their fate was inevitable. Fortunately, among those children are some who beat the odds, rising well above expectations. Case in point: Cynthia Le Monds (B.A. ’96, M.P.A. ’08), CEO of SA Youth. If she’d only lived up to what others believed her capabilities to be, she would have never graduated from high school, let alone accomplish much else. Instead, she helps thousands of children in San Antonio live up to their own potential and avoid falling victim to the same unfortunate outcome predicted for her.

Poor, but Determined

A child of the Mississippi Delta, Le Monds grew up extremely poor. The daughter of migrant farmhands, she was eight years old when she worked her first field. “The Delta is a farming community,” she says. “We moved from town to town looking for work; when it was available, my father would load all of us up to go work with him.” When there wasn’t any work to be found, her father—who Le Monds says never even set foot in a classroom—toiled as a woodcutter or sold the skins of game he would hunt. “He would do whatever it took to survive. Many times we didn’t have electricity or even running water. For a time, the only food we had to live on was the rice and cheese provided by the government. It was no way to live,” she says.

In the same way that Le Monds grew accustomed to enduring economic hardship, she and her seven siblings—who eventually dropped out of school—got used to being ridiculed by others. School administrators and educators labeled them “disadvantaged,” a term that, for Le Monds, implied she and her siblings didn’t have anything going for them and, ultimately, were destined to fail.

Despite this humiliation, a few teachers took a vested interest in Le Monds’ learning. Collecting books and buying school supplies for her, those beacons of encouragement fueled her desire to pursue her education.

Have Trunk, Will Travel

Le Monds’ teenage years were just as challenging as her childhood. At 14 years of age, she separated from her family, bounced between relatives’ homes, worked two part-time jobs, and had her entire savings stolen from her. At 16, with nothing more than a travel trunk, a few belongings and a bit of determination, she arrived on the campus of the University of Arkansas. Of that day, Le Monds says, “It was my last year of high school and I was desperate for a way out of the Delta. I called the university’s Chancellor and told him my story. He invited me to his office, telling me that he would enroll me personally and give me a full scholarship that would allow me to finish high school courses through correspondence during my first year of college.”

A few semesters later, Le Monds packed up her trunk once more, heading for San Antonio where she was accepted into St. Mary’s to complete her undergraduate studies in political science. It was then that she met Professor Steve Neiheisel, Ph.D., whom she calls her “lifetime mentor” and the person whom she credits as having the most significant impact on her life’s direction.

In Neiheisel, Le Monds found a rare and welcome source of support who took her under his wing and exposed her to the nonprofit world. He recommended that she complete community service hours at the Downtown Youth Drop-in Center—now SA Youth—and she soon found that she was in for quite a learning experience.

Answering a Call

After the Mississippi Delta, San Antonio looked like the land of prosperity to Le Monds. But at the Center, she soon learned that poverty wasn’t confined to a single geographic location. There was an enormous amount of work she’d have to do to help the Center’s children. Calling to mind her own childhood, Le Monds says, “I was driven to provide a better place for the kids. The Center was run down, but those kids deserved better. They lived in poverty every day—they didn’t need to come here to be reminded of it. I may not have known that day what being nonprofit meant, but I knew that the Center was struggling, and I knew that there was money in the city. We just had to ask for and get it.”

Within months, the Center began building momentum, securing additional funding and gaining attention from the media. As things began to improve, Le Monds left for law school. But she couldn’t ignore the Center’s pull. After a successful first year, she left law school and returned, quickly working her way into the Center’s chief executive position. At just 24, she became the youngest CEO in the Center’s history.

At that time, the Center had an operating budget of $80,000. Under Le Monds’ leadership, it has grown to more than $4.8 million and the agency now operates nine centers throughout San Antonio—with a tenth in the works—serving 1,600 youth a year. Through SA Youth’s dropout prevention and recovery programs, the agency has helped countless children, ones that society might ordinarily deem wasted lives. Many have earned their high school diploma; others have finished college or acquired professional job training. SA Youth graduates are contributing members of society. They are young people of good character, who are beating the odds and realizing their dreams, all because someone believed they could be more than what was expected of them.

Motivated by passion and the belief that education is the ticket out of poverty, it is Le Monds’ hope that more children will overcome their circumstances and stop family cycles of dropping out of school. She and the agency are succeeding. As Neiheisel puts it, “Cynthia had the courage to listen to her calling and as a result, has helped save and change thousands of young, at-risk lives. San Antonio is a more caring city because of her.”

Despite her modesty about her accomplishments, Le Monds, who often returns to St. Mary’s to share her experiences with current students, says she is by no means finished. “There’s the story of a young boy who came across a vast number of starfish stranded on the shore. He began tossing them back into the ocean, one by one, making a difference for one starfish at a time. I want the ocean to stop throwing them out. And until that happens, I’m not done. I can do more. And I owe a lot of what I have been able to do thus far to St. Mary’s. There were many people who helped me and I feel I have a responsibility to continue sharing that with others.”