A Beautiful Mind and a Prime Opportunity: Using a PWE to Bring a Dream to Life

This story was written by Kathryn Paquet and appeared in the Summer 2020 edition of the iMPAct Alumni Newsletter

For Carolina MPA students, the professional work experience (PWE) offers an opportunity to gain hands-on experience in the government or nonprofit sectors. Since enrolling in the program, MPA online student Adrienne Augustus ’20 knew she wanted to intern with a nonprofit—she just didn’t realize it would be her own. 

In the fall of 2019, Augustus fulfilled her PWE requirement by founding A Beautiful Mind Foundation, a 501(c)(3) grantmaking organization based in Hyattsville, Maryland, that aims to fund mental healthcare initiatives in communities of color.

She came up with the idea for the organization early on in her graduate school career, when she interviewed a few individuals who had started their own private foundation.

“I wanted to create my own organization because I didn’t want to be constrained by pre-established operating structures that didn’t wholly align with my beliefs and goals,” Augustus said. Originally, however, she aimed to achieve this goal after obtaining her MPA.

“I thought I would be working full-time for another organization and be able to set up this nonprofit and run it on the side,” she said. But a time crunch to find a PWE led her to a pivotal conversation with Susan Austin, former Carolina MPA associate director of alumni relations and professional work experience.

“Susan talked with me about my career goals,” Augustus said. “She really listened to my personal and professional needs. I told her I planned to start the foundation after I graduated, but she looked at my situation and thought way outside of the box. She said, ‘Well, why don’t you use your PWE to start the foundation?’”

“At first I thought, ‘What is she talking about?’” Augustus continued. “Now I say, thank God for Susan and her thoughtful wisdom. She could have tried to force me into a role that didn’t fit my years of work experience and long-term goals, but instead she created a wonderful opportunity for me.”

The mission of A Beautiful Mind Foundation is twofold: first, to affect positive change in mental health treatment in racially diverse communities; and second, to narrow the prison pipeline by helping people of color identify the early symptoms of mental illness before they lead to a crisis

The organization’s work is close to Augustus. Around age 11, she began dealing with depression, despite not receiving the diagnosis until a decade later.

“I had to get myself help in my early 20s, because my family didn’t understand,” she explained. As she sought treatment for herself, Augustus began to realize how deep the stigma surrounding mental illness ran in her community.

During her young adult years, Augustus lost two close friends, both young African American men, to struggles with mental illness. These losses, coupled with her own experiences, underscored to her that while mental illness affects individuals across demographic lines, it presents unique struggles for people of color. If they successfully navigate past the stigma to receive the help they need, Augustus said, they often face a second challenge: finding practitioners who understand their experiences.

“It was not easy finding a therapist who looked like me,” she explained. “And it’s not because I have to go to a black female, but because my experience with depression includes living as a black female.”

For these reasons, improving cultural competency in mental healthcare is a central tenet of the foundation.

“African Americans are more likely to be diagnosed with a severe mental illness than their white counterparts with similar symptoms, and part of it is because of how we express ourselves,” Augustus said. “There are distinct cultural differences in the ways people talk about how they’re feeling.”

By disbursing grants to qualifying groups and organizations, A Beautiful Mind Foundation hopes to help fund mental health initiatives within communities of color that will both encourage open conversation about mental health and steer individuals in need toward effective treatment options.

The organization launched its inaugural grant-making cycle in late April. By the end of June 2020, A Beautiful Mind awarded 20 organizations across the country grants totaling $22,300. In July 2020, the organization will receive its first corporate grant of $10,000.

The organization is currently offering four grants, two of which are especially meaningful to Augustus: Friends of Jelani and Ruth’s House.

Friends of Jelani is named for Augustus’ childhood friend Jelani, who died at age 24 during a struggle with police in the midst of a manic episode. The grant is designed to fund programming for men of color aged 25 and younger battling mental illness. Ruth’s House was created in honor of Augustus’ late grandmother and will provide funding for religious groups to implement mental health programming for people of color.

Although Augustus believes that no one should deliberately plan to start a nonprofit while completing a master’s degree—“Why would you do that on purpose?,” she exclaimed—she acknowledged that, without founding it to fulfill her PWE requirement, A Beautiful Mind Foundation may not exist today.

Augustus hopes that the organization will be able to help individuals like herself, her friend Jelani, and her grandmother Ruth, who have the power to fight but need support to do it.

“When we have certain segments that are impacted by mental illness and they’re not being adequately treated, we lose a huge part of our population that could be positively engaged in their communities,” Augustus explained. “There could be fewer people in prison, fewer people out on the street. We could have a better and happier society.”