An NYC Nonprofit Saved Her From Poverty: Now This Runaway Runs It

NEW YORK — Peter Flanigan was unlike any man Debra de Jesus-Vizzi had ever met. They got acquainted in 1976, when she was staying in a group home on the Upper West Side after fleeing an abusive foster family.

Flanigan, an investment banker and onetime aide to President Richard Nixon, had an idea for a nonprofit that would mentor struggling kids and pay their way through private school. He took de Jesus-Vizzi under his wing and offered to send her to Cathedral High School, the Catholic prep in Midtown.

The offer took her by surprise. “A lot had happened to me, and when he said he would pay for my schooling I literally thought he was like a pimp,” de Jesus-Vizzi said.

“It was the first time in my childhood that I met a man that wanted nothing from me, but wanted something good for me and wanted nothing in return, other than for me to try my best,” she said.

De Jesus-Vizzi, now 56, was a test case for Student Sponsor Partners, the nonprofit Flanigan founded in 1986 that connects low-income students with financial sponsors and mentors who guide them through high school.

Now, more than three decades later, de Jesus-Vizzi is the organization’s prodigal daughter of sorts. She returned last year to run it as executive director, a position to which her story lends a certain power.

“If you would’ve told me all those years ago that I would have headed up this organization I don’t think I would have believed it,” she said. “But it really has been so useful to tell my story to the kids.”

Born to a young mother who gave her up, de Jesus-Vizzi spent her early life with different foster families, including one that physically and sexually abused her. She ran away at age 12 after she had endured her “fill of it,” she said.

She jumped back and forth between the streets and a shelter in The Bronx, often relying on soup kitchens for food. A nun at one of those kitchens encouraged her to get into a group home where she would have a safe, stable place to live.

She found one on 60th Street near Columbus Avenue run by Good Shepherd Services. Sister Paulette LoMonaco, the nonprofit’s executive director who worked at the home then, remembers de Jesus Vizzi as an outgoing, curious teenager who loved to read and had “innate talent.”

“We recognized that she did have potential and wanted to really provide the best future that we could for her,” said LoMonaco, who is retiring this year after 50 years at Good Shepherd Services.

The home is also where de Jesus-Vizzi met Flanigan, who worked at the investment firm Dillon, Read & Company and as a high-ranking financial aide in the Nixon administration.

Flanigan, who died in 2013, was like a brother and a father who was both tough and loving, she said. He pushed her to excel in school and showed her “how to be a young lady,” she said. Most importantly, he gave her the strength to open up about her struggles and seek support from people around her.

“For a man to say that he was sorry that that happened to me and that he believed in me ... those were like the first things that made such a difference,” she said. “The academics and all the other things were sort of accessory to these very important life lessons that I got from him, just from a phone call or a visit.”

“It’s not unlike our present kids that start these four-year relationships that last a lifetime,” she added.

Flanigan bankrolled the $350-a-year tuition for de Jesus-Vizzi to attend Cathedral High School, where she said she stood out from her rich classmates. She worked part-time as a file clerk for the Catholic Archdiocese of New York in an office upstairs from the school, she said. “I appreciated what I was given so I tried really hard, and I did well,” she said.

De Jesus-Vizzi graduated in 1981 — five years before Flanigan officially founded Student Sponsor Partners — and headed to SUNY College at Buffalo, where a new set of challenges awaited.

Flanigan arranged for her to stay with a family during breaks, but she didn’t have parents to send her money or care packages. Sometimes her campus meal plan would run out, forcing her to supplement one meal a day with visits to soup kitchens.

De Jesus-Vizzi also found differences between her and her college classmates. “Everybody was getting drunk and partying and I had already been there, done that,” she said. “I was pretty serious about why I was there.”

She graduated and went on to get a master’s degree in social work from Rutgers University. De Jesus-Vizzi launched a career in that field, making what she called “a natural and very conscious decision” to give other young people the same support she had received.

She started working in child welfare and foster care before shifting to child abuse and neglect work and then to a comprehensive social services agency, she said. In 2015 she became the president and CEO of the Community FoodBank of New Jersey, a position she held for about three years before taking over Student Sponsor Partners, also known as SSP.

De Jesus-Vizzi has embraced the power of sharing her story over the course of the career. She said she saw a “profound change” in kids who were sexually or physically abused when she told them of her own history. And now she’s become a “poster child” for the success of the organization she leads, she said.

“To be able to see myself in so many young people and knowing that they get to see me and see something that they could perhaps aspire to — I didn’t have that,” she said. “... The fact that I can provide that is a gift and a blessing on so many levels.”

SSP launched in 1986 with two partner schools and 45 kids each paired with a financial sponsor and mentor. Now, de Jesus-Vizzi oversees about 1,200 students attending 26 private high schools in four boroughs — including Cathedral, her alma mater. She’s about to usher in the 319 students making up her second freshman class as executive director. The organization's next orientation day is this week.

The program connects the students — all of whom come from poverty — with sponsors who can give them an academic opportunity they couldn’t otherwise afford and mentors who guide them through the trials and tribulations of high school.

Notable alumni include City Council Member Alicka Ampry-Samuel and the pro basketball player Kemba Walker, de Jesus-Vizzi said.

“There’s someplace along the journey that the ordinary kid becomes extraordinary, and I think that’s what makes us different,” she said.

LoMonaco said de Jesus-Vizzi’s life experience has made her what the sister called a credible messenger — someone in whom the students she leads can see themselves.

One such student is Donovan Cumberbatch, who is about to enter his junior year at Bishop Loughlin Memorial High School in Fort Greene, Brooklyn.

Like de Jesus-Vizzi, Cumberbatch was not raised by his parents. The oldest of four brothers, his grandmother adopted him when he was 11 and later encouraged him to attend a private high school, which SSP allowed him to do.

The Springfield Gardens 16-year-old said the school that welcomed him with “open arms” as a visitor has improved his study skills and made him more outspoken. He wants to attend Syracuse University, study psychology and possibly go into law enforcement. And he said he’s found a brother and father figure in his SSP mentor — similar to how de Jesus-Vizzi described her relationship with Flanigan.

Cumberbatch first met De Jesus-Vizzi a few months ago. They “clicked” when it became clear they had similar stories, he said — a fact that inspires him to achieve what she has.

“She really made a living for herself in a high rank, even though she’s been through that stuff,” Cumberbatch said. “Some people say it would knock you down and change you as a person, but for her it just built her up. I see that she did it, so (that) makes it seem like I can build off that. I can do the same thing she does. I could become as great as she is.”