Hillary (Direnzo) Gramm’s (HHS’05) time at Purdue led her to a career, her husband, and their child, whom they gave a Purdue-themed name (Amelia, as in Earhart). And it was the unlikeliest of items that brought Gramm to West Lafayette: a baby sweat suit.

“I’m one of the first in my family to graduate from high school, but my dad had taken some Extension classes at Purdue, so he bought me a Purdue baby outfit,” Gramm says. “So when I was little I’d always say, ‘I’m going to Purdue’ — just because I knew the name.”

 As Gramm grew older, she was impressed by Purdue’s legacy. “I was like, ‘Wow, the astronauts went there! Popcorn was invented there!’” she says. “Most people pick a major and then the college, but I was totally backward. I had no idea what I wanted to do, but I was going to do it at Purdue.”

She’s now the founding executive director of HIGHER Up Texas, a new nonprofit that helps high school students develop critical-thinking skills, with the ultimate goal of giving them a broader worldview and a clear career path. 

HIGHER Up’s program, which focuses on low-income communities, exposes students to new experiences and ideas in a variety of subjects: personal finance, entrepreneurialism, multiculturalism, networking, and self-advocacy, among others.

Gramm, who graduated with a degree in selling and sales management after switching majors a few times, didn’t necessarily expect to work full time in nonprofits. But she found herself drawn to the sector because she wanted to help create positive change. And HIGHER Up Texas attracted her in part because of her own experiences after graduation.

Gramm and her now husband, Paul (AAE’05), moved to Houston upon graduation so he could take a position at NASA. But in a city where many people had relocated after Hurricane Katrina, “No one, including me, could even get a job at a grocery store,” Gramm says. She felt lost trying to navigate her new adult life.

Eventually, Gramm secured a job as a branch manager of mentoring nonprofit Big Brothers Big Sisters of America — for which she still volunteers today — and  held that position for about four years. Then she moved to Bay Area Houston to become the resource development director at the nonprofit Communities in Schools, which empowers students to stay in school and achieve in life. After a decade there, Gramm was prepared for a new challenge. When the HIGHER Up Texas opportunity came up, she was interested immediately.

“When you ask students if they know how to write checks, most of the time the answer is no,” Gramm says. “Society says seniors in high school are adults, yet they aren’t taught how to access money. In low-income communities specifically, students may not understand concepts like a mortgage because their parents don’t have one.”

Gramm plans to collect data from the first year of HIGHER Up programming at one high school and expand to three more within five years.

“Our participants are gaining the hard skills they need to achieve great things: dressing professionally, understanding a voting ballot, making connections in the industries that interest them,” Gramm says. “I want to help students go out into the world prepared for anything that comes their way.”