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Meet Shamawn
The Start
"Take the risk, and jump into the unknown"
Shamawn Wright
Surrounded by drugs, gun violence, and poverty, Shamawn Wright sought to use his lived experiences, as a youth growing up in East Oakland, California, to engage students with school and their community through an approach grounded in “Blackness” and culture first. Growing up in urban communities, Shamawn had to figure out who he was as a black male trying to navigate through society. He had a ton of life challenges, as he watched his biological father walk out of his life, saw his mother incarcerated, having lived in homeless shelters, to being placed in group homes. Shamawn had an uphill battle of changing the narrative and taking ownership of his life.
There is a big gap with the educational system trying to figure out how to create a warm welcoming and safe environment for our young people. With the dropout rate for Black males in the United States of America being 7.8%, which is higher than the overall total of 6.2% of males dropping out of school.
With the crime rate, and serious offender for our young people at an all-time high, the goal is to keep the retention rate of students to stay in school. According to the Census Breau, 41% of African American youth are incarcerated while only 15% of America is Black. When youth are incarcerated, there is a 76% chance that they would be incarcerated after the first 3 years, and 84% after the first 5 years. As a Black male, who was formally incarcerated and struggle academically trying to find my identity my life goal has always been to decrease the crime rate with us at risk youth and turn them from at risk to high promise so they could graduate from high school and excel in life.




The Change
Life struggles for Shamawn Was still not over. When he first went to the University of California Davis, he got kicked out due to his low academic performance in the classroom. He fought hard to get back in to school, as he ended up going to summer school at a junior college, and he ended up passing the course and got readmitted into UC Davis. With his life dream approaching of becoming a professional football player and playing in the NFL, Shamawn had a season ending injury that would not allow him yo go fulfill those dreams. Once his football career came to an end Shamawn got into teaching, and as a teacher he felt like he could be doing more in his life other than teaching, so he stops being a teacher, and went back to school to get his masters.
In July 2019, Shamawn founded Bridge Builders to the New Generation, Inc. to bridge students from underserved communities in Antioch, California to higher education through access to college, leadership, and life skills. Through enriching programs, Bridge Builders seeks to keep students engaged in school and build a support network of family, validation, and support for a younger generation of Black youth from similar backgrounds. By assisting youth to become self-sufficient adults, Bridge Builders seeks to help students to create a plan post-high school either in higher education, vocational school, or a career path.
Shamawn also is the CEO/Co-Founder of Culturally Grounded Educational Consulting (CGEC) which address issues of anti-working-class Blackness in school districts that impact Black male youth. Moreover, to support educational stakeholders such as teachers, staff, administration, and Black male youth with the necessary theoretical and practical grounding to produce Black male success outcomes in a culturally grounded way that leaves youths identities intact.

The Evolution
Shamawn struggled academically is whole life but after he got released from Juvenile detention center is when he started to take ownership and accountability over his life. He knew in order for him to make some significant changes in his life then he needed to do well as a student. He went from a 0.0 GPA to a 4.0 GPA, by putting his energy in the things that mattered the most and that was controlling what he could control and that was his attitude and effort. As he was still trying to build capacity within himself to understand his own identity, and understand his environment that he grew up in, he still continued to push forward to his dreams.
Shamawn lives by a quote, " you have to save yourself before anyone else could save you", and that is exactly what he did. Since he put his effort in the things he could control and did well academically. When his mother kicked him out the house and he called his high school football coach to come pick him. His high school football coach ended up picking him up, his wife said that he could stay there for 2 days, 2 days turned into two months, two months turned into 4, and next thing he knows his high school football coach took him to court to get emancipated so they could have full guardianship over him. After that the rest was history.
Shamawn turned it around, he graduated from Antioch High School in 2011 and received a full ride football scholarship to the University of California, Davis. He majored in Sociology Organizational Studies and received his B.S. in 2015 as well as a Master of Art from the University of San Francisco in Higher Education and Student Affairs in 2021. He is currently in his doctorate program at San Francisco State University in Educational Leadership.
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