From the 23rd floor of the Bank of America Plaza in downtown Little Rock, Antwan Phillips overlooks central Arkansas.
A few hundred feet below the 31-year-old's feet, the River Market District bustles with vehicles and people. Down and across the river into North Little Rock, a morning Arkansas Travelers game finishes up at Dickey-Stephens Park on this spring day.
Phillips, an attorney with Wright, Lindsey & Jennings, admits he doesn't take in the view enough. He's often too busy. Plus, he doesn't need the view to see how far he's come.
"Did I think I'd be here? No, I didn't know any lawyers," Phillips said. "I'm the first lawyer in my family. I was the second person in the family to graduate from college. Even when I started law school, I didn't think I was going to practice law. I was going to law school to get a law degree. For legitimacy. I had no concept of being here."
But here -- Phillips' office is actually one floor up, on the 24th floor -- he is now. Phillips' hard work, intelligence and dedication were all factors in his rise. So was Arkansas Commitment, a nonprofit organization started in 1999 by Dr. Dean Kumpuris and other civic and corporate leaders in Little Rock that identifies academically talented black high school students in central Arkansas.
The program, now headed by executive director Jason Hamilton, guides students through the college-recruitment process, helping with college preparatory and scholarship and financial aid applications, with the goal of nurturing the future community leaders of central Arkansas.
Phillips is one of those leaders. A 2002 graduate of McClellan High School, Phillips lived with an uncle and then an older sister after his mother died of cancer when he was 13. During his senior year at McClellan, he lived on his own.
After McClellan, Phillips attended Bowdoin College in Maine, where he earned a degree in government and legal studies, and then graduated from the W.H. Bowen School of Law at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock in 2009. He's been practicing law, specializing in transportation defense and dental malpractice, ever since.
"I did well in high school so college was definitely in the works, but I really didn't have a plan or a goal," Phillips said. "My aspirations were definitely elevated by the program.
"It's just the exposure to things I wouldn't have had otherwise. Not to say that I couldn't have made the transition without it, but it definitely helped to have that experience and those relationships that I built up and still rely on today."
This year's Arkansas Commitment graduating class includes 31 seniors from 13 high schools in the area. They were accepted to 72 colleges, from Maine to California, earning $840,000 in academic aid per each year of their college careers.
Among this year's class are also two Gates Millennium Scholars, a scholarship program for minorities funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. The Arkansas Commitment scholars, two of only four in Arkansas and 1,000 in the country, are the program's eighth and ninth Gates scholars in the past seven years.
"We not only develop and work with strong students, but we develop them as leaders," said Hamilton, who became executive director of the nonprofit in 2008. "We hopefully prepare them to be successful not only in college but also outside of college, preparing them for life."
Since 2010, 219 students have graduated from the program, securing about $5.7 million in scholarship and financial aid per a year they are in college.
Students who apply for the program are selected based on grade-point average (a 3.0 grade-point average is needed for entering ninth-graders) along with other criteria such as extracurricular activities.
Hamilton said each year Arkansas Commitment looks for a "well-rounded mix of students," some from lower socioeconomic backgrounds with others from a better socioeconomic standing. Students are encouraged to apply in the first semester of their ninth-grade year, although limited slots are available for 10th- and 11th-graders.
Once in the program, students begin a rigorous schedule (mostly on Saturdays) that includes college preparatory classes, standardized test preparation, an extensive college search process, and workshops focused on continuing student's education, leadership and life skills.
"We just help students through the process," Hamilton said. "Wherever they end up, it's their decision and we support them 150 percent."
Where students end up are some of the best colleges in the country.
Born and raised in Little Rock, 18-year-old Mykala Sinclair is a 2015 Parkview Arts/Science Magnet High School graduate who is attending Georgia Tech University later this summer, where she'll major in mechanical engineering.
She started in Arkansas Commitment during her 10th-grade year, thinking it was "just a college prep sort of ordeal."
"Once I got in, I saw that it was more than that," she said. "[Hamilton] actually prepares us for real life. He doesn't want it to be just for college prep. Just how to get into college. He gets us ready for real life. He's very blunt about it all. I like that. In reality, that's the way it's going to be."
Lisa Academy graduate Jeremy Taylor, 19, just finished his freshmen year at Pomona College in Claremont, Calif., where he is majoring in English and music. Taylor had the grades for any college, but Arkansas Commitment introduced him to Pomona College.
"Pomona College was the kind of institution that matched my preferences," he said. "Like a small environment and the opportunity to get to know my professors."
The son of a teacher mom and school administrator dad, Charles Blake practically gushes about Arkansas Commitment. He knew he was going to college but perhaps not Grinnell College in Iowa.
Still, after his graduation from Central High School in 2001, he graduated from Grinnell College in 2005. Now, he's back home in Little Rock, running CenArk Transportation, a nonemergency medical transport company he founded, and representing District 36 as a state representative.
"It was everything I expected and everything I didn't expect," Blake said of Arkansas Commitment. "It was an amazing opportunity. It saves lives; it steers lives; and it gives us all the exposure we need."
James Robinson II, an Arkansas Commitment student who just finished his junior year at North Pulaski High School, is looking for a little bit of that guidance and exposure.
Right now, he has a list of about 10 colleges, with an eye toward majoring in theater arts, history or theology. Arkansas Commitment is getting him prepared for that next step into college, assistance his parents call a godsend.
"Mr. Hamilton has been for us what I like to call the reinforcer," Robinson's mother, Andrea Robinson, said. "We would tell James, 'You got to study. You got to make the grades.' Mr. Hamilton reinforces that because without the grades, the colleges and scholarships and financial aid -- none of that is possible. He's made us aware of everything that is getting ready to happen to us."
While the program prepares local students for collegiate success, the flip side of Arkansas Commitment is finding local opportunities for those program alumni once they graduate from college. Hamilton and board members want to bring the best and brightest back to central Arkansas.
Kandi Hughes is one of those program returnees. A North Little Rock High School and Duke University graduate, Hughes is now the associate general counsel and compliance officer at the University of Central Arkansas.
"Arkansas Commitment really just strives for everyone to go out and learn as much as they can, but to come back home and bring the knowledge home to their community," she said. "That was important to me. I took that to heart. I'm happy to be back."
One way to ensure homegrown talent returns is by increasing the program's internship program and opportunities available after college, Hamilton said, noting "in order to have socioeconomic development, you got to have education, but it also links to opportunity."
"Ideally, what the program would look like to me, is when a student successfully completes our program ... I would love to be able to say that when they do that we guarantee you an internship, within their area of interest, hopefully," he said. "I'd love to have 31 internships. That's my vision for the program.
"It's always been designed to help support, bring up and assist in any way, shape or form possible, African-American students and families, from all different backgrounds. We want to give them that guidance but provide opportunities back home and bring them back here."
Metro on 05/25/2015