 Davis is a proud product of public education. It was in public school where he was able to pursue sports, music, and academic endeavors, and has since tased his success on many levels. For me, public education had been everything. I thrived because of teachers always seeing something that I'm not sure I saw on myself. Today he lives in Herondon, Virginia, and runs a successful IT services company, a far cry from the tenement housing where he grew up in Albany, New York. His second grade teacher was Harriet Sanford, former CEO of the NEA Foundation, and he landed credits Harriet and other teachers, counselors, and principals for changing the trajectory of his life. As a child, I grew up in a very dysfunctional home with a mom who had a dependency and a dad who was abusive, in fact, criminal. My father was shot after being involved in a murder himself. And so at seven years old, eight years old, my life was just in turmoil, and public school education was my salvation, so to speak. Arby Hall Elementary School, Gail Elliott was the assistant principal, and Harriet Sanford was my second grade teacher. And at the time, they couldn't have imagined all the things that were going on, but they were providing me a belief, a dream of what could be possible. And they did it through just nurturing, encouragement, love, and certainly setting a higher standard of expectation in terms of what was possible academically. And so because of that, I started to believe that I could live outside the existence of project walls and crime and abusive households and started to dream that one day I will live somewhere else. So I go from living in these project tenements to today, I'm married 23 years with three kids and I live in a county that has the largest median income in the country. And I would have imagined that. Elander remembers in great detail how each teacher or educator influenced him in some way. He was modeling good behavior, setting boundaries, or just seeing his potential. I can remember Mrs. Haith as a fifth grade teacher at PS24 in Albany, New York. After experiencing the death of my father the way we did, I kind of resorted to some behavior that just wasn't, you know, becoming or that anyone wants to deal with. In fact, I think I was about to be kicked out of school when she requested I become part of her class. And from there, I become what, I don't know if they have this any longer. I become an AT student, which is now kind of like an honors track. But she saw something and she just kept feeding it. My music teacher was John Antoni. I played the trombone and encouraged me to stay in band and believed in me. And through these elements of all that public school had to offer, I start to have this confidence about who I am and his belief that started to come from within and had nothing to do with my circumstances. So whether I had the worst clothes and lived in the worst house, my mom didn't make over $11,000. I thought I was somebody. And it was these teachers along the way. And I could name dozens of them because I remember them. You told me that your typing teacher did something for you. Yeah. So Ms. Henry, who was my typing teacher and also my computer's teacher. I recently actually ran into her. I was honored in Albany City School District Hall of Fame for some of my achievements in basketball. And I go to church on the Sunday that I'm there. And I run into Ms. Henry. And I remember in 1984 or five, it was, I'd already taken her typing class. And she insisted that I take this computer class that she was teaching. And I was saying, Ms. Henry, no, I don't want to do that. What are you talking about? Computers? Like, who uses computers? And when I saw her that Sunday back in September, we cried because she knew something I didn't know. But I also had the, and she said, you know, Linda, you had the willingness to listen and you went kicking and screaming. I said, Ms. Henry, I owe my livelihood to you seeing something I didn't see. 25 years, I've lived a great life. My kids have gone to some of the, you know, the best schools. And I have that opportunity afforded to me because of the way I make my living. And Ms. Henry knew that in 1984 or 85. I look back now and it boggles my mind. Living in project tenements oftentimes you have this hope and desire that's killed, destroyed by what you see around you on a daily basis. So you walk out and you run into somebody like a Harriet Sanford or, you know, a Joanne Capolo who sees something in you. It's hard for you to believe, but it's the last slither of hope, if you will. And the more people that see it, the more people that give you hope, the more it grows inside of you. So there became a point where I expected that I was going to go to college. I expected that I was going to get a degree. I wrote a letter to my mother. I'm playing professional basketball in Halifax, Nova Scotia. I'm dating my now wife, but I literally write out everything that's happening in my life at this moment. I tell her I'm going to marry this woman. I tell her, you know, I'm going to get a job in corporate America and I'm going to live the fairy tale American dream. And I said that like it was supposed to happen. And I think I owe that to all the people that have poured into me this hope and nurtured me and built up into me this belief that I can do anything if I put my mind to it. I work at it. And so I owe that 100% to public school education.