Peer-to-Peer Advising

For nearly two decades, Dr. Kristy Clementina Perez has dedicated her career to helping students find their voice, build confidence, and see themselves as leaders. After beginning her career as a classroom teacher, she joined Baruch College’s SEEK program as a graduate student intern, where she went on to become a counselor and create the Urban Male Leadership Academy Scholars Program.  Today, as Director of Baruch SEEK, Dr. Perez continues to champion the power of relationships and sees peer mentoring as not only a way for students to support one another, but as an opportunity to develop the advising, communication,…

For more than 40 years, CHLDC has worked alongside residents to create opportunities, strengthen neighborhoods, and invest in the future of Cypress Hills, East New York, and surrounding communities. Today, Ben Carey acts as Division Director of their College Success Programs. He oversees four programs across the Thomas Jefferson and Franklin K. Lane campuses, including two Student Success Centers, the College STEPS persistence program, and the Community School at Franklin K. Lane. Ben has worked in college access for nearly two decades, and his connection to CARA stretches back many years. Cypress Hills created  one of the city’s earliest Student…

For the past several years, CARA and Commonpoint have worked together to strengthen college access across Queens through a shared belief in the power of peer leadership. Commonpoint is the lead CBO for Richmond Hill High School, Flushing High School, Queens High School for Language Studies, and Veritas Academy. As Corina Liu, Director of Postsecondary Programs at Commonpoint, noted, “we loved the model so much within those partner schools that we wanted to try it out with one of our community schools.” So this year, Commonpoint brought CARA’s models to Martin Van Buren High School. The integration of CARA’s models…

When Sade Switzer first encountered CARA, she was working at Metropolitan High School, a community partner of Phipps Neighborhoods. CARA’s training courses stood out as a resource that could help build a shared understanding of college access across an entire organization. During this time period, as Sade explained, “we were kind of in different schools, in our own ecosystems, doing our own thing.” Years later, when Phipps Neighborhoods made postsecondary pathways a larger organizational priority, Sade was promoted to Director of College Access across programs and knew CARA was the right partner to help bring that vision to life. As…

Robert Schwartz has served as Assistant Principal at Richmond Hill High School in central Queens for over a decade. In that time, he has become a leader in building school-employer partnerships and transforming post-secondary outcomes for students. When Rob stepped into his role in 2014, only 40% of graduates matriculated to college. Today, that number has risen to approximately 75%. For Rob and the broader RHHS community, CARA has been both a catalyst and an anchor, sparking a critical shift in the school’s vision while continuing to serve as core infrastructure for delivering equitable, informed, and student-driven postsecondary pathways. Rob…