J.B. Schramm  
Founder & CEO, College Summit

J.B. Schramm is Founder and CEO of College Summit, a national nonprofit organization providing tools, structure, and support to schools, districts, and colleges to increase the college enrollment rate of low-income students. Widely recognized in the fields of college access and social entrepreneurship, College Summit was named in 2006 by Fast Company magazine and Monitor Group, for the third consecutive year, as one of the top 25 “groups changing the world.” Upon graduating from Yale University and Harvard Divinity School, J.B. founded College Summit in 1993 while directing a Teen Center in the basement of a low-income housing project in Washington, D.C. In the decade since, his organization has served over 10,000 students through intensive residential summer workshops and a senior-year program in high schools. 79% of College Summit workshop participants have enrolled in college, which compares to a 46% national average for low-income students—and 80% stay in college. College Summit currently has regional offices in Washington, D.C., West Virginia, Missouri, South Carolina, Colorado, and California, with several additional communities in its potential new site pipeline.

For its impact in helping communities raise college enrollment rates for low-income students, College Summit has received awards in social enterprise from Ashoka, The Skoll Foundation, and The Manhattan Institute. For his skill in conceiving the College Summit innovation and in building an efficient organization around it, J.B. was recently honored in London at the Skoll World Forum on Social Entrepreneurship, and is a past recipient of the Gleitsman Citizen Activist Award and the Harvard Divinity School First Decade Award. College Summit has twice been featured in an annual report on initiatives to diversify higher education by the U.S. Department of Education, received the National Association for College Admission Counseling’s highest award for improving college access, and was profiled in David Bornstein’s 2004 book How to Change the World: Social Entrepreneurs and the Power of New Ideas.

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