Last updated on May 14, 2024
Meet Alex Saadé – a City Year Greater Boston alumni and one of the organization’s first Deloitte Fellows, which took him to the Hennigan School in JP.
As part of the Deloitte Fellows Program, Saadé served 900 hours with City Year before beginning his full-time position with Deloitte. This additional service model – shorter than City Year’s traditional full-year, 1,700-hour service year – was designed to offer City Year members an opportunity to serve as a mentor at a local school and prepare to transition into a professional role after they serve.
Saadé served as a student success coach and teacher’s aide at the Hennigan Elementary School in Jamaica Plain where he mentored students academically, socially, and emotionally in a 6th grade English Learning Arts classroom – helping many of those students learn to read and write in English.
This was a full circle moment for Saadé, who moved to New England from Mali in West Africa when he was 6-years-old, speaking very little English. Growing up in Maine, Alex was one of few students of color. He had a tough time feeling a sense of belonging among his peers, and as a non-native English-speaker, he needed extra help with his studies.
“In the course of my service with City Year at the Hennigan School, I was so impressed by my students’ intelligence, humor, care for each other, and ambition,” said Saadé. “Throughout my life, I have benefited from role models and mentors who showed me the power of setting goals and instilled in me the confidence to believe I could achieve them. Every day I walked through the doors at the Hennigan, I had the opportunity to do the same for my students because of City Year and that meant the world to me.”
He joined City Year in 2023 as part of a pilot Fellows Program in partnership with Deloitte—an opportunity that was offered to just three fellows across the country.
