Yasmin Bhatia was a year away from becoming a partner at McKinsey & Company when she chose to take a detour. Yasmin and her husband decided that their philanthropy would be focused on children. While at McKinsey, Yasmin perfected a skill set that she knew could add value to the education system and communities as a whole. So, she applied to become CEO of Uplift Education, a charter school network in the Dallas-Fort Worth area. After much prep work in the world of education, she succeeded — even though her competition was a lifelong educator. Yasmin happily took a pay cut for a chance to be a catalyst for change.
When Yasmin joined Uplift in 2009, there were seven campuses and 3,500 students. Today, Uplift serves 23,000 students across 45 schools on 20 campuses, making it one of the largest charter networks in the country. With 80 percent of Uplift students coming from lower-income households and 78 percent being the first in their family to go to college, Yasmin set out to challenge the notion that college was unattainable, instituting Senior Decision Day to promote college enrollment and motivate younger students.
For Yasmin, getting students to college was only the first step. When she learned that her students moved through college at a slower rate than those from more affluent families, she created a college support program that stays with the student through graduation. When she found out that her college graduates weren’t getting college-ready jobs, she instituted a career support program to help them with their job searches. In 2023, Bloomberg Philanthropies and Uplift joined forces to create one of the nation’s first high schools focused specifically on preparing students to work in healthcare fields. “Yasmin is not only getting kids to college, but also using education as a vehicle to uplift communities,” says a classmate.
