Alumni Spotlight: Yolaine Jean

This month, we’re proud to shine the Alumni Spotlight on Yolaine Jean.

Yolaine attended St. Brides Grade School and watched her parents work hard to provide a private Catholic education for her and her brother. As a first-generation American of Haitian descent, she felt the weight of that tuition and sought a way to ease her family’s financial burden. When recruiters and teachers introduced her to Link Unlimited Scholars, she saw a bridge to a future that felt both exciting and uncertain.

As a member of LINK’s Class of 2004, she attended Maria High School. Through the lens of a teenager, she found some aspects of the program to be a challenge, but she recognized the power of the exposure it provided. She became a leader among her peers, taking the college-readiness metrics she learned at LINK back to her high school friends to help them strengthen their own applications. 

She also navigated the weird new world of mentorship with a professional couple — Carol Rivers and Dean Walker, a lawyer and an advertising professional — who helped her begin to understand professional ecosystems. “I think LINK did a better job of connecting me to my future than my high school did,” she remarked. “My high school could not have met me where I needed to be to get to where I wanted to go.”

Two specific moments of intentional support defined her LINK experience. The first involved a counselor named Jacinta Warney, whose sweetness and Creole roots allowed her to connect deeply with the Yolaine’s non-English-speaking parents, helping them navigate the complex college process in a way that felt like home. “As a first-generation American college student, I was just trying to think about how to make it work, not only for myself but for my family,” Yolaine said. “To this day, I’m very grateful when someone stops and tries to speak in my family’s first language.”

The second moment was a lunch organized by Pam Brown, who gathered Black alumni from Union College to meet Yolaine before she left for school. This intentional act ensured that when she arrived at her primarily white institution (PWI), she already had a community waiting for her. “I appreciate Pam Brown for putting in the extra effort to make sure she was preparing me as much as possible for the space where she was sending me,” Yolaine said.

At Union College in Schenectady, New York, Yolaine studied English literature and cultural anthropology. Although she initially envisioned a career in law, the 2008 recession changed her trajectory. Facing the prospect of $180,000 in law school debt during an economic crisis, she pivoted to education. She moved to the Bronx to serve as a GED instructor, eventually finding her calling in the nonprofit sector where she could focus on volunteerism, community support, and uplifting Black and Brown populations.

Today, Yolaine serves as the Director of Community and Capacity Building at the Chicago Jobs Council, where she advocates for job seekers and workforce development. She is most proud of the fact that she is living a life her eight-year-old self would be proud of — a life defined by travel, resilience, and service. “LINK offered me a foundation through volunteerism, through kindness, and through supporting others that has really become the basis for a life that I am very proud of today,” she said.

Reflecting on her journey, she laughs at the letters she wrote to herself during LINK, and she would tell her younger self, “Stop being so dramatic; these are not forever years.” Her advice to the Scholars of today is born from the resilience she learned navigating an uncertain world: “Just keep putting one foot in front of the other, and remember that no one does this alone.”

Congratulations on your success, Yolaine! We are so proud of you and your accomplishments!