Portia Polk

Portia Polk is a graduate of American University with a Master’s in Public Administration and of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill with a B.A. in Anthropology and Peace, War, and Defense. Before Generation Hope, she served as an associate for the Postsecondary Success for Parents Initiative at Ascend at the Aspen Institute, an organization committed to the economic and social mobility of families through the two-generation approach to poverty. In that role, she focused on the challenges and opportunities faced by students who are parents on their journey towards postsecondary completion. Prior to that role, she served as a high school college advisor for the Carolina College Advising Corps, a nonprofit that uses the near-peer model to place recent college graduates in high schools across NC to increase the number of low-income, first- generation college, and underrepresented high school students who enter and complete higher education.