LearnServe Gala 2024

LearnServe Gala Honorees

Civic Champion Awardee: Aaron “AJ” Jenkins

Aaron “AJ” Jenkins is a longtime LearnServe speaker, emcee, thought partner, and friend. 

AJ currently serves as the Director of Community Engagement, DC Office of the Attorney General.  Prior to that, was the Chief Executive Officer (CEO) and Partner for North Star Strategies LLC, an equity consulting practice that provides services in public policy and root cause analysis, strategic planning, and training. He has over two decades of experience in advocacy, community organizing, racial justice, interfaith and cross-cultural dialogue and education and unconscious bias training. He is a servant leader and advocate who has worked in the non-profit, local, state and federal sectors. 

A fourth generation Washingtonian, Aaron is an associate minister at New Solid Rock Church Ministries. As a first-generation college student, K-12 and collegiate education is extremely important to Aaron. He honored this commitment by serving as the President of the Abramson Scholarship Foundation (ASF), a non-profit organization that provides critical scholarships and comprehensive mentoring to first generation college students from DC. AJ is both an alumnus and former Executive Director of Operation Understanding DC.  He is a graduate of Williams College with a BA in Political Science.

Entrepreneurship Awardee: Jordan Warren

Jordan has been an integral part of the LearnServe community for many years. Her journey began in 2019 when she joined the Fellows program.  Since then, she has been deeply involved as part of the Fellows Program, the LearnServe Incubator, and as an intern. This year, Jordan served as a Cohort Leader, using her own experience to inspire students.  She will be joining LearnServe’s travel abroad experience this summer in Zambia.

Through her vision, leadership, and resilience, Jordan exemplifies the essence of being a changemaker.  Jordan began her LearnServe tenure exploring religious persecution due to escalating conflicts affecting both Muslims and Christians globally. While her passion for this cause remains strong, Jordan’s journey has led her to a new venture idea close to her heart: advocating for neurodiversity within the Black community. This cause holds personal significance for her, presenting an opportunity to tackle the issue locally.

Beyond LearnServe, Jordan has seized opportunities to broaden her horizons.  She has served as an associate at LINK Strategic Partners and as head counselor at a dynamic summer camp.  She aims to leverage her proficiency in Russian and Latin and her interest in diplomacy to pursue a career in international relations.

LearnServe Gala Co-Chairs

Shilpa and Sam Rose – For the Rose family, social change is a generational and family project.  Shilpa, an ophthalmologist by training, joined the LearnServe family in 2019 when her sons Sam and Jordan joined the LearnServe Fellows Program in DC.  Shilpa and Sam are thrilled to be the first parent-child duo to co-chair the 2024 LearnServe Gala!

Concerned about the global clean water crisis, Sam and his older brother Jordan teamed up with the Global Water Challenge to raise funds for a solar powered water filtration system in Western Kenya.  As part of LearnServe, they took this work one step further, engaging youth athletes and professional athletes as advocates for access to clean water.  Both Sam and Jordan were featured on Kids Speak Out, a podcast on youth changemakers hosted by Barbara Harrison.

Shilpa appreciates how LearnServe offered Sam and Jordan a platform to refine their ideas, and to spark more creative and innovative thinking.  LearnServe empowered them to translate empathy into action.  Both love being changemakers and have chosen undergraduate majors aligned with their commitment to making the world a better place.  Shilpa understands that changemaking is both part of her family and much bigger than her family: For change to happen, it takes a whole community.  No one person can do it on their own.

Master of Ceremonies

Master of Ceremonies, Barbara Harrison, is an award-winning journalist with more than three decades of writing, producing, reporting, and anchoring experience at major television stations in New York, San Francisco, Dallas, and Washington D.C.   In 1981, she joined WRC/NBC4 in Washington, DC. For 38 years, she was the well-known DC anchor who brought stories to our living room. She has been celebrated for her gift of creative storytelling, grabbing the viewers interest with stirring words and compelling video, in the many features she has written, produced, and hosted. Barbara has received many awards for her work, including 19 Emmy’s. 

While her interviews are a legend, there is no doubt that Barbara Harrison’s most enduring legacy is a program she created to help children in foster care. The franchise, known as Wednesday’s Child, is credited with finding permanent homes for hundreds of children in the Washington area. It has been the model for similar programs in major cities across the nation.

Barbara’s work with children continues as she is the Founder of Kids Speak Out, an international podcast and television series where children can share their experiences and hear from other children across the country and across the world on relevant issues. 

Barbara’s many youth-centered partnerships include Children’s Hospital, Autism Foundation and The Described Media and Captioned Program (DCMP). DCMP is the country’s leading provider of high quality described and captioned educational programming funded by the United States Department of Education and administered by the National Association of the Deaf.

Barbara’s collaborations also include UNITAR, the United Nations Institute for Training Research. UNITAR launched IM2030 the Youth Empowerment Initiative for a vision where by 2030, we will have one million Youth leaders in our world.  

This January, Barbara Harrison Media and UNITAR released the documentary, “Through the Lens of the Youth Documentaries by Youth Worldwide.” Youth changemakers from various backgrounds were invited to create a short video on a particular Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) and its impact on their community. This unique platform allowed for meaningful conversations regarding sustainability, inequalities, and other global issues. This video gave student changemakers a global audience to hear their creative solutions that will impact the global community.

Special Thanks to our Sponsors

Listed in alphabetical order.

Changemakers

David Selden & Julie Wallick

Community Partners

Social Driver

Innovators

Deborah Levine & Marc Cohen
LINK Strategic Partners
Anita & Matthew Rechler
Catherine & Tom Tinsley

Community Builders

Anna Bennett & John Buckley

Entrepreneurs

DC Counseling & Psychotherapy Center
S&R Evermay
Janeen and Neil Green
Marty and Andrea Kalin
Greg and Nadine Mort
Otis Elevators
PrepMatters
Jim Taylor
Gretchen Zucker

Investors

Fenton
The Headfirst Companies
Shakirah & Matthew Hill Taylor
Moxie College Counseling
Julie Anbender & Brian Hurley
NFP | The Meltzer Group
Ricardo Neal
Seisay IT Solutions
Clarke Thomason
Franklin & Victoria Wassmer

Lead Supporters

Marsha Beller
Philip Eliot & Susan Cunningham
Paul & Andrea Franklin
Seth Goldman & Julie Farkas
Thomas & Bobbie Gottschalk
Tim Graf
Jennifer Howard & Michael Hager
Alan & Amy Meltzer
Ellen & Richard Ranard
Matt Rechler
Louise McIlhenny & Hugh Riddleberger
Fred Rosenfeld & Howard Wallick
Joann & Richard Weiner
Maurice Wilkins