When she worked as a teacher in Los Angeles, Sara Millman Silva saw too many students struggling to make it through school through no fault of their own. Some were experiencing trauma at home, while others living in extreme poverty worried where their next meal would come from. Students facing these and other challenges would often drop out of school, or be expelled and enter the juvenile justice system. 

Silva ’94 Lib believed the students needed counseling and support that some large public school systems struggle to offer. In 2012, she co-founded EntreNous Youth Empowerment Services, a Compton, Calif.-based program that offers vulnerable 18-to-29-year-olds the support they need to earn a high school diploma and job training in high-demand fields such as construction, hospitality, and culinary arts. 

Silva says that too often in education settings, “if a younger person makes a mistake, it’s the institution’s response to kick them out. We look at what actually caused the challenge and support the young person to engage in our program. It’s approaching education from a completely different direction.”

EntreNous offers an accredited high school diploma, preapprenticeship training in construction and hospitality, healthy-relationship workshops, violence interruption services, and court advocacy and reentry services for community members coming home from incarceration. Serving around 250 students annually, EntreNous is an affiliate of YouthBuild USA, a nonprofit that offers education, counseling, and job skills to young adults who are unemployed and not in school. In 2022, Silva was named president of the National Directors Council of YouthBuild USA. In this role, she works with YouthBuild USA staff to advocate for the needs of affiliates.

Silva—whose father, Bill Millman, taught in the Smeal College of Business—also facilitates workshops for teachers, social workers, counselors, and other nonprofit leaders. —Brandy Centolanza