Senior Profile: Phillip David Ellison

Phillip David Ellison is not your average graduating senior. A transfer student, Ellison found his passion creating education opportunities for others through his time at Tufts. Now graduating with a double major in Africana Studies and History and a minor in entrepreneurial leadership studies, his list of accomplishments includes winning the Gordon Institute 100K competition and receiving the Presidential Award for Citizenship and Public Service this year.

Before Ellison came to Tufts, he had dropped out from Pennsylvania State University after three years due to a lack of health care and financial aid. He then spent five years working in various places ranging from liquor stores to construction sites. From 2009 to 2010, Ellison worked in City Year's one-year national service program, which led to his interest in attending Hostos Community College in the South Bronx, where had did his service, in 2011.

"Lots of skill sets [I gained] from service [at City Year] are entrepreneurial skill sets ... like learn how to be collaborative [and] how to be adaptable," he said. "I learned about education and communities but also learned how to be an entrepreneur."

Driven by these experiences working in education and politics, Ellison was inspired by his father, who was an entrepreneur, and eventually chose to come to Tufts in 2013 through Resumed Education for Adult Learning (REAL) — a program for returning students — to explore social entrepreneurship and technology.

When taking a social entrepreneurship class in Tufts' Entrepreneurial Leadership Studies (ELS) program, he realized that many of his former classmates had limited access to resources and opportunities. As a Tisch College scholar, he began working on creating a mobile app that could make transfer processes for community college students more efficient and effective.

"I used my Tisch Scholar projects to mentor in community colleges," he said. "I went to Roxbury Community College in Roxbury, Boston. I met with a transfer advisor, and she connected with my stories and experiences and how I want to help with community college students ... That's how they became my first pilot partnership."

Ellison applied to the Gordon Institute's Tufts Ideas Competition twice with his mobile app idea but was rejected both times.

"People...didn't think it's feasible, and not many people are interested in the product for community college," Ellison said. "What changed was...President Obama has put emphasis on the community college in last two years."

Ellison and his team then went to Smarter in the City — an incubator that helps diverse, lower-income entrepreneurs create companies — in August 2015, where they were introduced to mentors and learned how to build a mobile app, the first step of Ellison's goal.

"The bigger vision is to create a digital ecosystem around educational, career and life opportunities for community college students," Ellison said. "We are going to sell data to four-year colleges so [they] can recruit and send scholarships depending on the data of community college students... Hopefully, we can get money from employers, so students can use it for free."

He explained that he and his team then hope to work on things such as geo-notification, where the app will automatically send out relevant notifications based on the student's location. Ellison and his team hope the app can solve accessibility issues, connecting community college students to relevant and important information, such as visiting schools on campus, internship opportunities or financial aid application deadlines.

"We are building a product that we want all community college students can use, but we also hope [our product] really benefits first-generation, low-income and non-white students because often these students have little money or limited knowledge about college application processes," Ellison said.

Following his graduation, Ellison will be working on his startup full-time, and City Year, Comcast and NBC Universal have given him a $5,000 fellowship to participate in the Millennial Trains Project, which leads crowd-funded transcontinental train journeys for diverse groups of young entrepreneurs to launch their products along the way.

"I am going to live on a train for 10 days [traveling to] six cities from L.A. to Detroit to test the mobile app," he said. "I am going to different schools and meet with the administrator and get user feedback for [it]."

In addition to working on his app, believing Tufts does not prioritize the needs of Black students — demonstrated by the number of Black-identified students in each class — Ellison also participated in #TheThreePercent movement last fall. Despite the fact that being older than his peers made his transition to Tufts somewhat difficult, Ellison said he was able to have access to a lot of resources and made a variety friends on campus over time.

"Those friendships I made through Africana Center, Tisch Scholar Program, the Center for the Study of Race and Democracy and my study abroad experience in Hong Kong and people who really inspired me to continue learning have been really important to me," he said. "I think I am leaving Tufts more global and having a better understanding of how the world works."