Jackson Grown

Apply to Become a Mentor

POTENTIAL | PASSION | POSITIVITY | COOPERATION | CURIOSITY | COMMUNICATION | RESILIENCE | ADAPTABILITY

Emerging in 2018 from a series of articles in Our Jackson Home, which profiled the stories behind unique alumni of the Jackson-Madison County School System and deep-rooted community leaders, Jackson Grown, supported by Leaders Education Foundation, aims to cultivate leadership skills in the next generation. JMCSS alumni (high school students called Fellows) are connected with local leaders and influencers who teach them about civic engagement, economic development, and innovative problem-solving. 

For the Jackson community within and outside the city limits, it centers on two core ideas: the need to invest forward and the opportunity to reinvest back. 

The program includes in-depth discussions each week with local and global leaders who represent many passionate, rebellious and humble individuals from Jackson leading in a variety of ways in a variety of places.

These are discussions, not lectures. Leaders and students speak as equals and as members of the same community. They offer perspectives inaccessible to the other, both for the student and the established professional.

Those insights are brought together at the end of the spring semester with a speech by each student at the Annual Challenge to the City. This is a TEDx-style presentation in which Fellows identify a local challenge in Jackson-Madison County and imagine what solutions could look like. Seniors also publish articles in the Our Jackson Home magazine on the challenge which he or she has addressed.

Finally, the program has begun building a broad network of Jackson community members and is based on the willingness of respected individuals across a wide range of areas to serve as professional mentors to each of the Jackson Grown Fellows depending on their academic or professional interests. 

To learn more about the Jackson Grown Leader Fellowship Program, click here.