Tiffany Green on How Uprooted Academy Reimagines Advisory and Social Capital

Shownotes

In the latest episode of the Getting Smart Podcast, host Victoria Andrews engages in an enlightening conversation with Tiffany Green, the visionary founder of Uprooted Academy. This innovative platform is designed to transform the college application journey for young students by incorporating holistic elements such as financial literacy, wellness, and community engagement. Tiffany shares her personal experiences and insights, revealing how Uprooted Academy is not just about getting students to college but ensuring they thrive through comprehensive support that tackles often-overlooked areas like mental health and family involvement. By employing technology and AI, Uprooted Academy personalizes the college preparation process, making it more accessible and equitable for underrepresented communities.

Tiffany discusses the systemic challenges faced by students in navigating the complex college application landscape and how Uprooted Academy addresses these issues through a community-centric approach. The platform’s unique features, like the AI assistant Rudy, provide students with tailored guidance, helping them manage stress and build a support network. With a mission to redefine educational equity, Uprooted Academy equips students, families, and educators with the tools and knowledge needed for long-term success. This episode is a must-listen for anyone interested in leveraging technology and community resources to close educational gaps and empower the next generation of learners.

Outline

(00:00) Introduction to the Getting Smart Podcast
(01:28) Tiffany’s Personal Journey and Inspiration
(05:44) Holistic Approach to Student Support
(07:11) The Role of Technology in Uprooted Academy
(10:27) Building a Supportive Community
(18:13) Challenges and Overcoming Obstacles
(26:02) The Importance of Wellness and Co-Regulation
(29:34) Empowering Students and Communities
(32:08) Conclusion and Final Thoughts

Introduction to the Getting Smart Podcast

Victoria Andrews: You are listening to the Getting Smart Podcast. I’m Victoria Andrews, and here at Getting Smart, we’ve been reflecting on community, what that means, how it shows up, and the different ways community can really catapult young people to the next levels by being crafty and creative with community. Today, I am joined by Tiffany Green, the founder of Uprooted Academy, which is an online college success support platform. It takes a very different spin because it doesn’t just focus on college success. It focuses on other aspects that are normally missed and skipped over, like financial literacy and wellness, and family involvement. Tiffany created Uprooted Academy, and they are doing amazing things, continuing to support Black and Brown young people as they journey into the college application process. So thank you for having us. Thank you for being here, Tiffany.

Tiffany Green: I’m so excited to be here. Thank you so much for that introduction. I’m excited for the chat.

Victoria Andrews: So tell me a little bit—not just me but also our listeners who may not be familiar with Uprooted Academy—what do you guys do, and how did you guys get started?

Tiffany’s Personal Journey and Inspiration

Tiffany Green: Yeah, so actually, it’s really interesting. When they talk about the proximate founder, that’s me, right? I think about my own story. I was a future first-generation college student and then became one. I was low-income and went to a Title I school, so I checked every single box. You know, through that process, I was also a very high-achieving student. Up until the moment of college applications, my parents knew how to get involved. But at that point, everything just kind of went out the window. The only North Star was our school counselor, and our school counselor was overwhelmed. That has not changed over the last 20 years. Students who are deserving—and I’m not just talking about high-achieving students—every single student should have a pathway outside of high school, and they just don’t have the capacity. It started because I needed this, so it became the resource that little Tiffany needed. In our team meetings, I’m like, “Guys, this is for little Tiffany.” This is for little— you know, I have a staff member, Antonia, who is a first-generation college student. It’s for little Antonia. It’s for all of our littles, right? We deserved more. Unfortunately, for my particular story, that deserving more put me in a cycle of reaching something without the support, and I had an anxiety attack.

Victoria Andrews: Mm.

Tiffany Green: That anxiety attack told me that even if I had more information, it wasn’t enough. I needed the social-emotional support to help ground me through this really scary process. Unfortunately, the only thing we still tell students to this day is to have grit. I had all the grit in the world. I went to D.C. when I was in high school; I got invited to study abroad. I had done all the things; I was doing the right things, but there was a time when grit ran out, and I was powering through, and then I powered down. So it started with me, right? That’s the origin story. Then I became a therapist. I worked with trauma and in academic settings. I worked at a university, taught undergraduate psychology, and then ended up working at a really high-achieving charter school, which really transformed my hometown. I’m really thankful for it because kids that lived on my street now had the resources to get there, but I still realized they had mental health concerns. So from that, I said, “Oh my gosh, we have to figure this out.” We can no longer just chase after social capital; we have to think about the entire element of the ecosystem of support. Uprooted challenges this narrative that if you want to get somewhere, it depends on you. We’re bringing back everyone, so like community cultural capital and not just social capital. That’s kind of how we started. We use technology because we believe it’s an equity bridge builder. It’s a game changer. It’s going to outlast gentrification; it’s going to outlast when these place-based resources go away. We’re excited to share more about it.

Victoria Andrews: I love that you took all of your lived experiences—the therapist, the teacher, the college professor—all of those pieces are like basically what makes a gumbo for Uprooted Academy. The fact that you guys have in your purview, “What resources did I need to be successful?” There were so many pieces of your story that felt familiar when you shared that. I’m one of four, and going through college or trying to navigate that application process, my brother was already in college, but then there were some family dynamics that shifted, and so I was trying to figure that out on my own, in addition to trying to figure out a major. For so long, I remember thinking to myself, “I’m not trying to just become a teacher or whatever; I’m just trying to make it through college,” because it was like the financial aid office and the registrar’s office and the department and all of these pieces and these deadlines that were arbitrary to me but meant so much. To have a guide and that support for young people is invaluable. You brought up something that I want us to dig a little deeper into: not just the social impact of participating in Uprooted Academy but also the economic mobility and support. Can you talk more about all of those pieces that go into what students receive when they go through the program?

Tiffany Green: Absolutely.

Holistic Approach to Student Support

Tiffany Green: I think what makes us really different is this holistic perspective. I’m going to journey you through it as if you’re a student joining our platform and organization. When you come in, you take two assessments. The first assessment is about what you want to be. Do you want to go to a four-year school, two-year school, or workforce? There are resources for you. We take that information, and then we give you a stress assessment. That stress assessment helps me understand how much you can actually manage given all sorts of data inputs that you give us. You let us know if you have really strong wellness habits, if you’re involved, how much sleep you’re getting, and from that, we determine if you’re going to be at a high, medium, or low level of stress. From that, we customize your internal platform to fit your needs. I’m a nerd, right? I was faculty, so I’m bringing in all the theories. We know cognitive load theory lets us know that people with high levels of stress don’t need to see a lot. If you have a high level of stress because, say, you have very little familial support because they’re not familiar with the process, but you want to go to a highly selective school and you’re involved in 10 activities, your stress level, from what we know from proxy data, is really, really high. When you log into our platform, you’re only going to see a certain number of activities at one time because we want to make sure that you can manage. We don’t want to add to the stress. Our platform’s visibility is built with wellness; it’s like stepping into a spa.

The Role of Technology in Uprooted Academy

Tiffany Green: But like for college and career planning, we call it the Uprooted Academy Community Center because we have this concept of if the Boys and Girls Club had a digital space, this is what it would feel and look like. Now you have this four-year roadmap plan. When students join, they can get a four-year plan depending on their long-term goals, and it has wellness embedded. Our AI is trained in a well-being coaching model that uses all of the work around what it means to have wellness and how we put that at the forefront. So Victoria, if you come in, Rudy is our little AI dog.

Victoria Andrews: Yes, I’m so glad we’re talking about Rudy because Rudy is a cutie.

Tiffany Green: It was fun because when we were doing the naming convention, we worked a lot with students from LAUSD to help us build out some of these elements. Now we have a design fellow program where high school students across the country help us. With Rudy, it was cool how it came up because of Uprooted Academy. It was like, oh, Rudy, and he’s there to root for you. That’s his thing. He wants you to be the best. To combine your answer with workforce development, we see ourselves as part of this journey. The problem with the journey of workforce development and socioeconomic mobility is it’s really a marathon. It’s a highway, and we are part of that process. We cannot see ourselves as not part of that process because when we see ourselves as siloed from that journey to reaching economic mobility and workforce development, we actually make kids really burnt out and they miss part of it, and they never make it. In being mindful and having a systems perspective, not like, well, we got our metrics, sorry for y’all, we need to make sure that we’re caring for kids during this process because this is part of the journey. If we have kids that make it through the college application process, yay, they get on campus, and they’re too burnt out to finish college, then we fail the whole process. What was it for? It’s a mix of health equity, right? Are we making our kids with a lot of anxiety? Anxiety can trigger depression. We’re talking about cellular damage because of the burnout. Our kids are not even making it into economic mobility because this process alone is already exacerbated by tons of stress. We’re talking about systems-level stress because parents don’t have a role; they are often only asked to give their tax forms for the FAFSA. We’re talking about school counselor rates; in California, they’re like 600 to one. There’s no way that happens. Then we’re talking about a system that has now infused capitalism in it. Every single kid in America doesn’t have access to their school counselor. I don’t care if you’re in Greenwich, Connecticut, or South Central LA. That’s just the thing. The piece that’s become the excuse is, well, if parents really want this, it’s on them. So now you have to go out and pay $20,000 to $50,000 to get the supplemental support. Our students don’t have that. So now that you’re here, when you go through the next thing after your two assessments, it’s probably the most important piece for us.

Building a Supportive Community

Tiffany Green: You get to develop and build out your tribe. Within our platform, we believe that community members are so important. The tribe feature is when you join our platform, you get to add up to six members of your community to your progress. You can add an encourager, an accountability partner, a family member, a peer who’s going through it with you, a mentor, and a thought partner. We’ve built in the backend analytics so if you don’t log in for a week, your accountability partner will get an automatic text from us saying, “Hey, Victoria’s depending on you to help her through this process. Could you encourage her to get back on track?” Or if you’re writing an essay and it looks like you’re stuck and haven’t been able to complete it, your thought partner will be notified, “Hey, Victoria might need some help to figure out what she’s trying to do. Could you reach out to her?” We understand that in communities, the way they are built, it’s likely that no one in your community has a college degree. It’s not like we can say, “Oh, find someone to do that,” maybe at your church or somewhere else that you’re involved in, but it’s likely not based on what we know about neighborhoods and communities. But these people can offer other things to keep you going. When you have those things met, now when you have that 45 minutes—which is the national average that school counselors spend per kid—you can actually maximize it. Counselors aren’t going to get more time with you, but what they can get is time that feels really high-level. They no longer have to say, “Oh, this is the FAFSA,” or “This is how you make a list.” We take care of that through our curriculum. The curriculum is video-based, there are worksheets, they can finish it, they earn coins, they have a learn-to-earn kind of platform. Then when they’re meeting with their counselor, they can say, “I already know about the list. Look at my list. What do you think? What do you want to add? I know that time is limited.” So how do we help the system? How do we bring in the community? How do we help the kid? How do we ensure that they can have experts come in? We take care of all the events. We have workshop Wednesdays, so we have things around how to pick a major, which early decision. Not only do we help students, but actually what’s starting to happen is school counselors and advisors from programs like Upward Bound, Talent Search, and GEAR UP are taking our curriculum because it’s hard for them to get guest speakers. Now they’re saying, “Hey, we’re going to host a live workshop, we’re going to stream in Uprooted,” and we become the hub of information for all of these kids across the country. That is how we can use technology for good. We’re not replacing people; we’re just setting up the people who have limited capacity to be able to do their job really well because we’re taking care of all the information load.

Victoria Andrews: Oh my gosh. There are so many pieces that my… Oh, I’m serious. I was a dean, and on our system, there were college counselors. We had to be equipped with information about course class scheduling as well as college admissions. What we were even expected to do just grew. To your point, the students and young people that came in and had specific questions, it’s like, “Oh yeah, I can knock that out for you real quick.” But if it’s starting at ground zero, like “What is TASFA? I’m in Texas. What’s FAFSA?” we’re like, “Oh, okay, let’s move you back here and have this,” and sometimes that was a two-hour conversation with that student. They’ve either missed class, or we are after school, or whatever the case may be. It’s seven o’clock at night, and we’re like, “Okay, let’s walk through this together.” Time is of the essence, but building in that community is so important because it’s not just that person that’s winning, it’s that whole community that’s winning. There’s a gap that can happen of like, “Oh, Tiffany’s going off to college, Victoria’s trying to go to college,” and it’s like, “I no longer have a place in your life because I’m not on that same path or where we’re going might be different.” I love and appreciate that Uprooted is like, “Everybody’s got a place.” If you’re the thought partner, accountability partner, Rudy, if you’re just going to root for everybody, go for it. Everybody has a place. That emphasis on community means a lot to me, and I can imagine it’s invaluable to the students and young people too.

Challenges and Overcoming Obstacles

Tiffany Green: You know what’s interesting? I was an orientation leader, and let me tell you something about being an orientation leader. The first group gets the best of you because the second group is like you’ve worked out the kinks, they might get a better experience. But by the fourth group, I’m tired because I know this is the first time you’ve asked it, but this is actually the 100th time I’ve answered it. I think about counselors who have to say the same thing every time. At some point, they’re exhausted, and kids aren’t getting the best—they’re getting the exhausted, you know. Imagine when a kid can watch a video and rewind it and pause it. Some of our families, we found this out the first year we started, they were actually casting our video series on their TV and watching it as a family. It’s transforming knowledge, right? What happens when the kid decides to take a year off? The system is not designed for you to be able to go back to that school counselor because now they’re overwhelmed with their new caseload. Now, because you become the gatekeeper of knowledge, you’ve also sabotaged somebody else’s ability because you’re not willing to give them understanding. In our curriculum, one of the things I tell students is, “Listen, my goal is for you to get understanding because whatever you understand, you can repeat at will.” I want you to be able to understand this process because if you need to transfer, if you want to take a break, you can repeat all of this at will. The issue is so interesting, and I’m sure you’ve seen this as a dean. You could walk a student through a process, and then they come back two weeks later and have no understanding of how they did it, so they’re back at ground zero. We’re not using this as an opportunity to help them build the skills to think and be aware of what they’re thinking and doing. That’s where the holistic wellness piece for us comes in because after they finish something, there’s a reflection time. What we know about memory and the brain is that if we reflect on it, it actually stores into long-term working memory. I always ask myself this question: I’m not the smartest person that’s ever done this work. The people who have done this work before, did you actually want to change outcomes, or did you just want to do the work to say that you did the work? For me, I’m like, let’s let communities change so Uprooted doesn’t exist in 30 years. We would have gone through the cycle of folks to be able to have a place to get understanding. Now that understanding is in the community. So whether or not you went to college, your kid had access to this, so now you know about it. Now when the baby girl at the church says, “I’m trying to go to college,” you say, “Baby, come on, sit down. I know everything.”

Victoria Andrews: Exactly, and that’s the power of community. Just because I didn’t get it or I didn’t receive it doesn’t mean I don’t want you to. I want you to have the experiences and exposure that I may not have had, so I couldn’t have. Yes, yes, yes, yes.

Empowering the Community

Victoria Andrews: We’ve talked about how you guys embed wellness, the financial literacy components, bringing in all different members of the community regardless of their lived experience or exposure to college. Can you talk a little bit about some of the challenges you faced in starting Uprooted and ensuring students are successful as they go through?

Tiffany Green: Yeah, I think the biggest challenge is that we are so used to place-based resources as a whole. Everybody wants someone to come in and do this thing and not see it from a systems change perspective. How do we equip the deans or the counselors to say, “Let us train you”? We offer free training for every counselor and advisor in America. Listen, the FAFSA has changed a thousand and one times. The information loop is too fast for you to try to keep up. Let us do that heavy lifting, and you just show up. Now we can equip you because, for most people, this is the North Star for kids, especially our kids whose families don’t know. We are thinking about a systems change, but I think historically, especially with the college and career process, people are so used to place-based resources, and I think there’s room for all of us. One of the challenges was that we were technology. People were like, “Oh no, kids don’t want to be on Zoom,” because I started during COVID, and everyone thought our platform was Zoom, like this kind of thing. I’m like, “No, it’s immersive.” They’re doing all these things. They can chat with others. They have Discord channels that they can join and have their own community. No, no, no, we thought beyond Zoom, y’all. That was a big challenge for us because everyone, when they heard “tech,” thought Zoom. It’s an experience for kids where they’re coming in and doing all these things. That was one challenge. I think the other challenge was figuring out that I didn’t just want to be tech; I wanted to be tech plus human. We’re a tech nonprofit. The main reason we’re a tech nonprofit—people are like, “Why didn’t you just VC this?”—is because I built this for little Tiffany, and I sell to schools that little Tiffany went to. It was heartbreaking to go into a school, and they would say, “Maybe next year,” or “We don’t have the budget.” I realized, “Oh snap, they’ve now made me a gatekeeper because I have this pitch to them about how transformative this can be.” Now I have to say, “Sorry, can’t be transformed.” So I said, “You’re not going to do that to me.” Being a tech nonprofit allows us to have our student platform for free. We still partner with schools because schools need data. Their counselors still need that support. For super low, every year schools can bring on their counseling team. They can see what their students are doing, and their principals can get the outputs of where all the kids are going. You’d be surprised. A lot of our school counselors in LA were using spreadsheets. Now our advisor-counselor hub has a place for them to keep notes. I think it’s important for principals to realize it’s not just the meeting times that are taking up counselor time. It’s the meeting and then the note-taking, the essay revision. I said, “Listen, I was you. I see you.” I met with little Johnny for 30 minutes. It was then two hours of extra work to find him new colleges and edit his essay. It’s super cool because our counselor platform mirrors the students. When the students are filling out their essays and whatever their stress level is, if they’ve completed certain curriculum assignments, they can report like “80% of our kids have completed the financial literacy module,” or “30% of our kids are on track for workforce development.” Now this informs programming. All of these things are data pieces that, for the most part, counselors, they go into schools and they’re like, “Okay, what do you want to do, Victoria? What do you want to do, Tiffany?” They’ve got their little checklist, and it’s making them feel more prepared and professional. I find that just the pride and also to say to their principal, “No, I’ve been doing my job. I’m tracking all of this stuff.” That was a challenge—the tech piece and the nonprofit piece.

Victoria Andrews: When we’re thinking about different divides that are already prevalent in under-resourced, first-generation communities, you guys are eliminating or minimizing those additional divides. There doesn’t need to be another obstacle in an already challenging situation. The fact that you guys, it’s not place-based. If they’re in rural Texas or all the way in suburban California, they can have access. Do they have internet? That’s a relatively small hurdle to work and overcome, but they can still have that same access. So can that school counselor who might be the only school counselor. We have to be mindful of those communities too, where it’s like they’re the one high school district, and so it’s just them for all 300 or 400 students. Helping them is just as important. I really appreciate that. The level of intentionality with Uprooted and their holistic approach, Rudy being culturally responsive as well as Rudy being very diverse in wellness and brain neurological patterns, makes a difference and matters. You guys are really taking a very human-centered approach because it is a human going through the process, and it should be handled as such and not just a cookie-cutter approach. We’re just stamping out other future students going through the college path. I really, really appreciate that.

Tiffany Green: Bringing in science, technology, and theoretical frameworks is so out of the scope of most tech resources unless you work for a hospital or something. But I’m like, no, there’s too much learning about emerging adulthood and adolescent development for us to push that aside just to say we have another tool helping them do the same thing and expect a different result. We’re super excited to rethink with wellness at the core, taking care of you first, and then when we take care of you, everything else will fall in line. The nervous system is an autonomic system. We cannot will ourselves out of it. The nervous system only responds to external stimuli, something that you smell, see, taste, touch, etc.

The Importance of Wellness and Co-Regulation

Tiffany Green: Oftentimes our students already have a lot of trauma around test-taking or applications. Because it’s an autonomic system, it can’t will itself out. Fear will approach a student. If a student has never been taught how to co-regulate with an adult, help them—this is what Rudy is doing. Rudy is helping them learn to co-regulate. You don’t feel good? Let’s take a moment to breathe. My parents, I don’t know if they helped me to co-regulate. They were trying to figure themselves out. They were already stressed and were like, “Girl, please just stop.” I’m like, “Oh my God.” So now when I’m stressed, I’m like, “Stop.” It’s a generational tendency at this point. Technically, had my parents been able to co-regulate, they could now co-regulate me, and at some point, I would have learned to self-regulate. A lot of our kids, no matter where you’re from, just don’t have the skills. What’s happening is kids are now with fear. Once your body—there are three levels to the nervous system. You could read a book, and it’s going to use words like ventral and dorsal and sympathetic, but we’re going to use simple terms. People either feel safe, like psychologically or physically safe, they feel scared, or they’re going to shut down. Those are the three levels, just using S’s. Sensory stimuli come in, and you’re going to feel safe, scared, or shut down. Once that happens, you now need to go to the next S. If you’re in scared or shut down, you need to go into survival. That’s when fight, flight, or freeze comes up. That’s what we all know. The thing we’re not often told about fight, flight, or freeze is that when your body is preparing for survival, it triggers your brain. The thinking part of your brain, involved with long-term planning and executive functions like creativity, actually shuts off. It’s like, “Oh, we don’t need to be here. You need to move. You don’t even think your way of moving, just get right.”

Tiffany Green: What is happening is because our kids are not having co-regulation skills embedded or being able to self-regulate, they’re actually doing this big important thing that needs executive functioning without the executive functioning part of their brain online. Now it’s not like they just end up back in safety. They’re just in fight, flight, or freeze. A lot of times when kids think about their college application process, if you close your eyes, your stomach will drop, your jaw will clench, your shoulders will tense because the body keeps the score. Because of that, right now we’re creating a generation of kids that are underperforming—not because they don’t have intellectual understanding, but because they don’t have access to it. They’re pushing through the survival mechanism of fight, flight, or freeze to do this really important thing. On this road towards workforce development, when kids are home and they’re at their high school where they know everyone in that community, they can push through this fight, flight, freeze, and all the discomfort their body is experiencing. But then once they get to college, if the external stimuli is more overwhelming than what they were able to get back at home and they have no skills, at some point the system’s going to break. Some people are breaking before they get to college, some people are breaking in college, some people are breaking at the peak of their first career, so they still never make it. We have to understand that we cannot use grit to override the autonomic nervous system. I think we have to rethink co-regulation and self-regulation. For me, because I know that 70% to 80% of kids are going through the college application process, I can use this as a journey to teach those skills because they’re going through it anyway. Most kids aren’t going to want to sign up for, “Oh, let’s learn co-regulation,” but what I can be is real sneaky. I always say that this is a wellness platform hidden behind the veil of college and career readiness. Third grade is the first time that kids mostly take that exam. That exam now creates a brain coding that says, however, I was with exams. I don’t even need to bring the platform there. What I need to do is make sure that third grade teachers know how to co-regulate. I used to work with athletes and entertainers, but entertainers specifically. Oftentimes when they would come to trauma therapy, they would always say, “I don’t want to lose my trauma because my trauma’s the reason I got here.”

Victoria Andrews: Wow.

Tiffany Green: That is the biggest lie, and it’s a lie because they believe it’s their trauma that fueled their success when actually it was hard work. This is why so many people say they procrastinate. They’re like, “Oh no, I’ll write my best papers last minute.” It’s like, “No, babe, that was one time because you had an emergency you had to do, and then you had to come back. That wasn’t supposed to be the cognitive loop that says this is how you write papers.” But we start to attribute these external things like biting my fingers or, you know, I eat poorly before every game, and now I play well. It’s like, “No, you play well because you practice hard.” This is not it, but our brain is—I always tell people, “Our brain is super efficient; it’s actually not that intelligent.” It’s a machine. It’s working off of efficiency, and it’s the machine that’s going to last forever. My grandmother is almost 100. Her machine has been going okay. Ain’t nothing in my house that I paid for is lasting more than 10 years. This laptop, Apple’s going to queue in the back end to turn this thing off if I don’t upgrade it. They’re like, “We had it for a long time, just cut it off.” Nothing is designed to last forever except for, and so for me, I have to use this as almost like a blessing. I get to impart wellness on kids. No matter where they are in the world, whether they’re connected digitally or not, they will now have this toolkit because they went through our platform. That for me is the legacy, not the platform.

Victoria Andrews: This is Tiffany.

Conclusion and Final Thoughts

Victoria Andrews: You have shared so many pieces that are so impactful for young people, families, communities, school counselors, school deans, superintendents, and just to know that there is a resource that is wellness-driven. One of the byproducts happens to be that they have different tools that are going to support them through the college application process, which is super impactful. It has, like you said, it’s transformative for not just that young person but also all of those people that are in their tribe uplifting them as they go down their path. If you are looking for a way to transform and elevate the college application process for young people within your learning environment, please look at Uprooted and consider some of their free resources for not just young people but also your school counselors. We are so grateful that you were here to join us, Tiffany. Thank you for the laughter and the brain lessons 101. I feel like I need a credential for that. So thank you so much. Thank you so much. Thank you for listening, and thank you for joining us. Have a great day.

Tiffany Green

Meet Tiffany Green, a therapist and expert college counselor and the founder of Uprooted Academy™, an ed-tech platform designed to give students courage, confidence, and competitiveness in the college application process. Uprooted Academy is known for its signature offering, “College Apps: 12 Steps to Finding Your Match©.” Focusing on Tiffany’s passion for understanding and helping alleviate educational anxiety for students, the college readiness program incorporates mental well-being and social-emotional learning while affirming different parts of their identity. In addition, providing the “cheat code” hidden from low-income, first-generation applicants could be vital in minimizing the social capital, opportunity, and wealth gap.

Tiffany earned her graduate degree in counseling psychology from Howard University and became a licensed psychotherapist. Tiffany is trained in trauma modalities, including Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR). Over the next decade, she worked with TRIO, AVID, the University of New Haven, Achievement First’s Charter Network, and Think Global School. She has helped guide students to all eight Ivy League schools as a college counselor and served as an admissions essay reader.

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