When my professor asked me what I planned to do after finishing my doctoral degree, I was stumped. At the time, I was a high school business and career and technical education teacher and loved my students. But I realized I could be more impactful if I taught in the community versus in a single classroom.
That was the spark for my nonprofit, MEE Hub, Inc. We’re now celebrating our fifth anniversary. We focus on helping entrepreneurs and small businesses from underrepresented and underserved communities get access to resources they might not know about. We also help kids K-12 with their education and guide them through different aspects of their career. My goal is to give people the resources and skills they need to change their lives.
I’ll be honest. I’m not the most tech-savvy person. I first heard about generative AI from my students. I knew I had to educate myself so I could guide them properly. Then, MEE Hub became a recipient of 500 Google Career Certificates to distribute to the community. I decided to take the Google AI Essentials course myself so that I could tell our participants exactly what to expect.
What I didn’t realize was how much it would change my life. Today, I use Gemini for almost every aspect of my work—for research, as a collaborative partner, and helping to fill my own gaps of knowledge when I’m consulting.
Gemini doesn’t just save me time—though it easily saves me more than 20 hours a week—it gives me the confidence to say yes to bigger challenges.
One of the most powerful ways I’ve used Gemini is helping a gentleman develop a nonprofit program that’s aimed at reducing recidivism by providing work skills. The 12-week program brings together three very different groups: formerly incarcerated people, troubled youth, and senior citizens. They go fishing together, get mentored, and they end with a community fish fry.
Neither one of us would have been able to build out something this big and elaborate so quickly without the help of Gemini. Brainstorming with Gemini, we formulated the mission, came up with specific group activities, and landed on the name. Something like this could have required a massive team and taken significantly more time to come up with something so detailed and concrete.
Whether I’m using Gemini to help identify potential partners, secure STEM grants, or design themes for our Children’s Business Fair, the results are immediate. I can see a change in people’s confidence. I see it in the adult who finished a cybersecurity certification in four months because he finally had the support he needed. I see it in the students who used AI to develop incredible educational game ideas.
Using Gemini has shifted my sense of what’s possible. Sharing these stories of positive impact is just as crucial as the work itself. If people don’t hear the stories, how will they know what they’re capable of?