The week Samantha Williams learned the nonprofit she directs, Birmingham Promise, won $1 million in funding from a national philanthropic organization, she had just returned from a trip to France where her fiancé proposed.
“It was incredible when they called to give me the news. I screamed and cried. I mean, it was, it was a lot. I told them on the phone, and I meant it, that this was one of the best weeks of my life. They had no idea,” Williams says.
In the city of Birmingham, where the median household income is $44,951 and the poverty rate stands at 23.5%, college is unaffordable for many students.
But Birmingham Promise is giving more students in the Birmingham City Schools system access to higher education and, in turn, helping to reshape the city’s talent pipeline through strategic leadership and a deep belief in the power of education.
Williams grew up in Daphne and says that in her family, she was the first of her generation to go to college.
While at Georgetown University, Williams took a work study job as a tutor in the Washington D.C., public school system.
“I would meet kids and see the schools, and it just felt criminal seeing where some of the students were in their learning and where they weren’t in their learning,” Williams says.
“I started to realize that education is the key. I was going to Georgetown, and I was from a family that was just as poor as many of the kids I was serving.”
The difference between herself and the students was that the education she received helped prepare her for college.
From her experience tutoring, Williams says she decided on a career in education.
After graduating from Georgetown University with a bachelor’s degree in history, she took a job as a graduation coach program specialist in Atlanta for Communities in Schools, which aimed to reduce school absenteeism.
But a study abroad trip to Senegal while in college had sparked her interest in Africa, so she eventually moved to South Africa to work as a residence director at the Oprah Winfrey Leadership Academy for Girls in Johannesburg.
She later took a job with Teach for All as head of the Africa region before moving back to the states, to New York City, to become global director for girls’ education and chief of staff to the CEO of Teach for All Wendy Kopp.
After having worked in Africa and around the country, Williams says she eventually decided to return to Alabama.
“I was living in New Orleans and wanted to move back to Alabama and make a difference in my home state. I wanted to work on something that would be transformational. I saw this role as fundamentally reshaping Birmingham by putting every single graduate on a path toward mobility and toward their dreams,” Williams says.
“I knew it was the opportunity I’d been looking for,” she says.
So, in 2022, she joined Birmingham Promise, a program that was a city initiative under Mayor Randall Woodfin.
Birmingham Promise provides tuition assistance for Birmingham City Schools graduates as long as they attend a public two- or four-year college or university in Alabama.
Birmingham Promise is a last-dollar scholarship program, meaning that it pays for the tuition and mandatory fees left after a student’s federal financial aid and other scholarships are applied. Fees such as housing, meal plans, parking, textbooks, laptop computers and non-credit courses, however, are not covered by the Birmingham Promise scholarship.
One of the goals of the program is to help college students graduate with less debt and prevent finances from factoring into their decision to pursue higher education or a trade.
“Our real mission is around economic mobility,” Williams says.
But besides financial assistance, the program also helps Birmingham City students overcome social and academic barriers to college.
“We have college success coaches, and their job is to help students navigate what it takes to be successful in college,” says Williams. “A lot of our students are first generation. I was first generation. Many of my staff members are first generation. We know that there are a lot of things that come up when no one has gone through those things before you, and so those coaches are also helping them understand the unspoken ways you need to move in college to be successful.”
When students are ready for the job market, Birmingham Promise coaches work with students on resumes and networking and use the program’s platform to help find employers willing to hire graduates.
“And then we also have a high-school program focused on meeting kids while they’re in high school, understanding their goals and dreams for themselves and getting them to explore what’s out there through a paid internship that is available to students to apply for in their junior year and then do the internship in their senior year, and that’s paid at $15 an hour,” she says.
While the high-school students gain work experience during the internships, they also gain social capital through the people they meet on the job, Williams says.
She says some Birmingham students conclude that the trades rather than college are a better fit for them.
“But they still need support around finding a job, and so they can do that through the internship program as well,” Williams says.
So far, Birmingham Promise has issued more than $15 million in tuition assistance to more than 1,600 Birmingham City Schools graduates. In addition, more than 350 high-school students have completed internships, according to the organization.
“We would not exist without partnerships,” says Williams. “We have a good and growing base of corporate and government organizations that support us financially, and they enable us to fund the scholarships, the internship program, and to provide transportation for the internship program, to make sure students who lack transportation aren’t kept from this opportunity.”
For helping reduce the cost of college for Birmingham students and providing quality internships and apprenticeships, the CAFE Group awarded Birmingham Promise with $1 million in funding.
The CAFE Group is a philanthropic organization that awards funding to leaders and organizations that are bringing transformational change to education and philanthropy. Its 1954 Project, inspired by the U.S. Supreme Court’s landmark Brown v. Board of Education decision, awards $1 million unrestricted funding to education initiatives seeking to improve learning in Black communities.
Birmingham Promise was one of five 1954 Project “Luminaries” awarded this year.
Williams says she plans to use the monies to fulfill major priorities of the organization’s five-year strategic plan.
“One, how do we get more of our students to finish college with a credential, whether it’s a two-year, four-year degree or certificate? How do we get more of them across the finish line?” she says.
Another priority is making sure the organization maintains a strong financial foundation for Birmingham Promise, Williams says.
“So that’s both diversifying our funding and trying to ensure that our scholarship program exists for generations,” she says.
“Our vision is to eventually serve every single student who graduates from Birmingham City Schools. And I just don’t think anyone has imagined or really thought through the implications of what it will look like when every student who graduates from the city school district is stepping into their potential.”
Gail Allyn Short is a Birmingham-based freelance contributor to Business Alabama.
This article appears in the December 2025 issue of Business Alabama.
