Aisha's Story
“Becoming a better writer is so important. I never wanted to cancel a tutoring session, even when I was dealing with a tsunami of personal hardship.”
Aisha Redellant is a very busy woman. She’s working towards an MPA in public policy and administration at John Jay College of Criminal Justice, she mentors formerly incarcerated women through College and Community Fellowship, and she’s involved with multiple social justice campaigns around New York City. But no matter how busy she was, she never missed a session with PGP volunteer tutor Chris Ahn. “Becoming a better writer is so important,” Aisha explains. “That’s why I never wanted to cancel a tutoring session, even when I was dealing with a tsunami of personal hardship” during the spring 2022 semester. “I don’t think Chris will ever understand how much he means to me,” Aisha continues.
Aisha earned a bachelor’s degree from the Fashion Institute of Technology over a decade ago. But that college experience didn’t prepare her for the rigor of the MPA program. “At FIT I learned about the business side of fashion—that’s totally different from reading laws and studying policy,” Aisha explains. “Being back in school was like learning how to swim in the deep end.”
The writing requirements were especially challenging. Aisha’s previous academic experiences didn’t require the type of writing that the MPA program requires, and the assumption that incoming students already have those skills meant that Aisha was on her own. That changed when she was paired with Chris. They were matched because Chris has expertise in public sector financing, a course Aisha was taking. But at their first tutoring session Aisha let Chris know that she wanted to focus on strengthening her writing skills, so that’s what they did. “At the start of every session Aisha would say what she wanted to learn—a grammar rule, how to structure an essay, how to write more concisely. She set the learning agenda and I was there to support her,” Chris explains. They even developed a customized resource on grammar and writing in a shared Word document, where Chris entered information and rules, formatted and organized to Aisha’s specifications.
“Aisha is such a driven student. She’s anchored in her long-term goals—to be an advocate for formerly incarcerated women—and she knows how important good writing skills are for that work. She made every minute of our tutoring sessions count” Chris recalls.
Although her interest in advocacy as a profession is new, Aisha has been supporting and empowering underserved members of the community for her entire career. “When I worked for Sephora on 34th street, people came in with low self esteem, cancer, domestic violence survivors—those are the customers I loved most” Aisha recalls. “I loved helping them, transforming them, making them feel better—those are my people; that was my way of giving back.”
“That’s what activism looks like: it’s understanding that in order for there to be change, you have to support new leaders on their educational journey. I am one of those new leaders, and the PGP’s support is creating change.”
Aisha’s determination to switch gears was sparked by a stay at Rikers Island as a result of a long-term abusive marriage. She was spared a prison sentence, but even that relatively short experience of incarceration was enough to change her professional trajectory. “When I was in Rikers, that’s when I made the decision to go back to school and change the system because it’s so unjust,” Aisha explains. “I know that I was supposed to be in Rikers—as traumatizing as it was—but being there, it was so inhumane, it activated the activist in me. I couldn’t go back to simply being a makeup artist after being in Rikers,” she remembers.
Her path through graduate school has been bumpy, with academic and personal challenges often piling up, and the work of healing from the trauma of domestic violence an ongoing demand on Aisha’s energy and attention. But the tutoring support Aisha received from the PGP has made a tremendous difference. She recently passed the MPAQE, a written qualifying exam that’s a prerequisite to graduation, and she's on track to graduate from John Jay in 2023.
“I want to express my gratitude for the PGP,” Aisha says. “I don’t know whose brilliant idea it was—but that’s what activism looks like: it’s understanding that in order for there to be change, you have to support new leaders on their educational journey,” Aisha muses. “I am one of those new leaders, and the PGP’s support is creating change.”