Vanessa Ramirez, 2016-17

KIPP Alumna Vanessa Ramirez

KIPP Houston Public Schools Alumna

Vanessa Ramirez is a native Houstonian and the proud daughter of Mexican immigrants. She graduated from Occidental College in Los Angeles with a BA in Economics for Business and Management. Her passion for community development and education reform started in 1994 when she became a member of the Knowledge is Power Program as part of KIPP’s founding class.

Vanessa Ramirez serves as the Chief Operating Officer for SER-Jobs for Progress, where she supports the development, implementation, and delivery of program goals to fulfill the mission of SER, and the objectives of each of SER’s adult and youth programs. Prior to this role, she wore many hats within KIPP Houston Public School’s KIPP Through College department, most recently serving as the Interim Director of the Houston Scholar Program. In this role, she provided an extra layer of support to highly motivated students from KIPP and YES schools from 8th grade through 12th grade to help them make the transition through high school and college. She is also the Founder of Eight Million Stories, Inc., a nonprofit organization committed to providing communities of disconnected youth with an effective alternative to incarceration. In this role, she works with system-involved youth to identify their academic and socio-emotional needs and develop them into self-sustaining members of society who will transform our world.