Vinice Davis

Venture Partner

Location: United States

Focus Area: Littlest Learners / Adult Learners

Regional Focus: United States

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Meet Vinice, a venture partner at Imaginable Futures. She leads the US team and strategies which focuses on furthering early childhood education and the postsecondary success of adult learners with children with an explicit focus on equity.

Prior to joining Imaginable Futures, Vinice served as the chief operating officer of Purpose Built Schools Atlanta, a partnership with Atlanta Public Schools established to turn around several of the city’s lowest performing schools. She was responsible for developing the infrastructure for finance and accounting, human resources, facilities, IT and operations for the organization.

In previous roles, Vinice was vice president of improvement services for AdvancED where she led the systematic evaluation of multiple low-performing schools throughout the US and designed the principal capacity assessment. At KIPP Atlanta, she served as the managing director of operations and led the implementation of talent management and school operations for more than five years. Vinice supported charter school openings at the New York City Charter Center. In addition, she was a human capital consultant with Ernst & Young. Vinice currently serves on the boards of All Our Kin and TNTP, Inc.

Of what professional accomplishment are you most proud?

I’m most proud of building a sustainable back-office infrastructure and helping to open new schools (creating more than 1,000 new high quality seats for children) at KIPP Atlanta.

Q+A

Why do you love coming to work?

I love coming to work because I get to work with people who truly believe in centering the voice of the learner in our work and endeavor to impact the most lives as possible.

What lessons did you learn early in your career that you keep with you today?

Hold true to your integrity and show up as your authentic self every day.

What did you want to be when you grew up?

When I was 7, I changed my aspiration from wanting to be a lawyer to a judge because I wanted to be the decision-maker.

Where is your happy place?

Besides home, lying on a beach when the sun is at its peak.

What’s the closest thing to real magic in this world?

The sound of children playing.

If someone narrated your life, who would you want it to be?

Angela Bassett

Favorite season?

Spring. I love listening to birds chirp, seeing flowers bloom, and feeling the progressing heat.

Favorite quote:

“Without courage we cannot practice any other virtue with consistency. We can’t be kind, true, merciful, generous, or honest.” -- Maya Angelou

What do you imagine or wish for the future?

For our future, I imagine a world where all children and their families have the resources to live thriving, safe, healthy, and curious lives.

Read more from Vinice Davis

If our partners are doing the transformative work of envisioning a better world for all of us, then as funders, we must use every tool at our disposal to support them.

Nearly 4 million US parents attend college, and despite earning higher GPAs than non-parenting students, less than half graduate. The Kids on Campus initiative aims to help more parents complete.

Creating college communities that are open and welcoming to parenting students is one way colleges and universities can continue making progress on diversity, equity and inclusion.

New research underscores how much we ask of student parents in order for them to get a degree. Last month’s debt relief announcement is welcome news for the 1 in 5 college students raising kids.

As the pandemic catalyzed a renewed push to address child care, we’ve seen how the inclusion of home-based child care in the conversation has strengthened the child care movement’s case for change.

Our nation’s higher-education system has too often failed to support students who don’t fit the traditional mold. To achieve economic mobility and racial equity, we must support student parents.

Upswing is an integrated student services platform, designed particularly for working adult learners, student parents, and students of color, improving college persistence and driving completion.

We invested in Career Karma because it is a promising model that helps learners access middle-to-high skill tech jobs, many of whom are women, students of color and student parents.

Student parent judges Lesley Del Rio and Ariel Ventura-Lazo chose College Unbound to receive the $100,000 Risers’ Choice prize. In this Q&A, we find out why and what made College Unbound stand out.

Life before the pandemic was not working for most student parents. Now, to survive through the pandemic, the higher education field was forced to adapt and innovate quickly.

On Higher Learning Advocates’ blog, Vinice Davis calls on philanthropy to advance innovation that supports student parents by seeding and incentivizing promising ideas and evidence-based solutions.

Student parents make up 22% of the undergraduate population. This report from Imaginable Futures and Lumina Foundation shares the solutions that exist & the opportunities to support and lift up them.

In this Q&A, we asked the team behind Morehouse College’s Fathers to the Finish Line Initiative to share the inspiration behind their program and their experience participating in the Rise Prize.

Winning solutions of the Rise Prize, announced in early July, embodied the 6 C’s for improving the success of student parents. We highlight how the winning solutions fit into the framework.

Vinice Davis co-authors this op/ed in Philanthropy News Digest calling for support to two groups of students left behind in the pandemic relief aid: undocumented students and student parents.

With the crisis likely to extend into the fall, we need more philanthropic investment in emergency aid for students left behind by federal programs.

By investing in student parents & organizations that center their lived experiences, Imaginable Futures is committed to helping Generation Hope turn the statistics on student parents around—for good.

Twenty-six finalists from more than 300 applications are selected for innovative solutions that support student parent success, in a joint initiative of Imaginable Futures and Lumina Foundation.

We have a keen eye on how the strengths of student parents can improve the academic outcomes of not only their children, but also will have a broader societal impact.

PelotonU is rising up to support students and families, quickly adapt their program to the new normal and undertake deep reflection to ensure long-term impact and sustainability themselves.

We need bold ideas now more than ever to help student parents not only survive this crisis, but thrive today and in the future.

When 10 tornadoes ripped through the Dallas, it left $2 billion in damages and thousands of displaced people in its wake. Many of them were college students.

Through guided play and exploration at Ms. Kelly’s family child care program, Nevaeh builds math, literacy, and social emotional skills in a nurturing, educational environment.

Sarah was a teacher’s aide and wanted to take her passion for children to the next level and become a certified teacher. Alejandro needed financial stability, and saw a career in accounting as a path…