Arlington Grad Helps Teens Stay Tuned Into Hard-To-Find Opportunities

ARLINGTON, VA — A 2023 graduate of Wakefield High School in Arlington spent the summer working with the YMCA of Metropolitan Washington as part of an internship sponsored by Bank of America, culminating with her helping to organize the YMCA’s Thingamajig Invention Convention.

Yabsera Negussie, who is beginning her first year at Dartmouth College and is majoring in neuroscience and business, worked with Home Depot to get materials needed for students to participate in the 29th annual Thingamajig Invention Convention. For example, she was able to secure $50 vouchers from Home Depot for students, helping to make the convention a more equitable event.

The Thingamajig Invention Convention challenges local students, ranging in age from 5 to 14, to design inventions and build STEAM-related, or science, technology, engineering, art, and math, skills in the process.

Negussie’s internship was part of the Bank of America Student Leaders program. Since 2004, the program connects high-achieving teens from diverse backgrounds to a paid summer internship with a local nonprofit organization, helping them gain employment experience and critical job skills.

As part of the internship, Negussie joined nearly 300 other student leaders from around the country in July for a week-long all-expenses paid program in Washington, D.C.

During her high school years at Wakefield, Negussie quickly realized that knowledge can be power and can lead to greater opportunities in life. In her sophomore year at Wakefield, Negussie met with two other young women of color as part of an internship sponsored by Virginia Tech, and they began developing an app that would help to connect students with local scholarships, jobs and other meaningful development opportunities.

The three young women recognized that it was hard to find scholarship opportunities and had become extremely competitive to get into college, especially for people of color. When trying to market themselves on LinkedIn or Indeed, they were constantly finding positions only for people who have 5-plus years of experience, well beyond their qualifications as high schoolers.

Their new app, called Tuned-In, will bring many of the programs, opportunities and scholarships together onto one platform. Tuned-In, when it launches in 2024, will be curated toward teens to break into new fields, Negussie said in an interview with Patch.

When trying to come up with a name for the new app, Negussie and her colleagues were looking at LinkedIn and began thinking that a different app would allow a certain demographic to "tune into" the type of opportunities that were harder to find on LinkedIn and other platforms.

They plan to keep the Tuned-In accessible by relying on advertising revenue, unlike LinkedIn, which uses revenue from the monthly subscriber fees it charges for its LinkedIn Premium service.

Negussie also said she and her colleagues competed in different pitch competitions to develop enough capital to start up the new app.

Companies, organizations universities will get to set up their own accounts on Tuned-In, which will make it easier for young people to find opportunities like internships and scholarships.

Negussie also recently worked with the Arlington branch of the NAACP to build an after-school program to help young people learn about the legacy of racism and pursue professional development in Northern Virginia.

After her freshman year at Wakefield, Negussie attended her first Black Lives Matter protest, where she began to learn about past racist policies in Arlington and how ongoing economic policies have led to less diversity at certain schools in Arlington, compared to Wakefield, a majority-minority school.

"I worked on developing workshops with predominantly Black students, explaining how to build a resume, developing what their dreams are, and not being discouraged," she said.

In high school, Negussie also founded the Future Doctors Society, an organization that allows students to learn about the medical field before heading to college. Through the organization, she helped introduce basic medical information to young people, including the fundamental values of science and medicine and how they work in the real world.

During her summer internship with the YMCA, Negussie worked at the YMCA of Silver Spring and at Seaton Elementary School in D.C. At the YMCA of Silver Spring, she worked on project management and marketing, including coming up with new ideas for the YMCA to better market itself in the region.

At Seaton Elementary School, Negussie did back-office work, helping to make it easier to find documents. She also interacted with students in the classroom and helped to create curricula for students.

Even though she has now graduated from high school, Negussie said she is planning to come back and stay involved in the YMCA's Thingamajig Invention Convention.

For the 2024 convention, she is hoping to create a symposium where thought leaders from around the world will gather to meet with the young people and discuss how to expand STEAM skills and learning to a larger number of students.