Alief Imagine Fund

Alief ISD (AISD) is a school district in Houston, TX. During the 2020-2021 school year, it had 41,715 students. From this student population, 81.9% of students were considered at risk of dropping out of school and 87% are economically disadvantaged. Despite the obstacles that many students face within Alief ISD, the four-year graduation rate is 90.1%, which is on par with the statewide average. Emanuel and Anuj were both raised in Alief and shared a common view that students graduating from Alief lacked guidance in declaring a major and navigating the beginning of their careers. As Alief alumni, they have witnessed the perseverance and grit that many students demonstrate as they encounter hardships in their pursuit for higher education. In addition, it is evident there is a large discrepancy of high school experiences of those that graduated from AISD and other Texas districts. This has motivated them to collaborate towards their initial common goal of giving back to the Alief community by establishing a scholarship award for graduating seniors from AISD. Who We Are Emanuel Jimenez is a MBA Candidate at Rice University and a proud Alief ISD graduate from Kerr High School. He has attended Alief ISD schools from elementary to high school. He graduated from the University of Houston with a BBA in Management Information Systems. After graduating from UH, Emanuel worked in consulting at Capgemini and Accenture focusing on Finance Transformation with clients in the US and Europe. Anuj Saheba is a current MBA Candidate at Rice University and attended elementary through middle school in AISD before changing school districts. He graduated from The University of Texas at Austin with a BBA in Finance. After graduating from UT Austin, Anuj has worked at American Airlines in Corporate Finance and Change Management before pivoting into a career in software engineering at a startup called Medical Informatics Corp.

The purpose of this fund is to create scholarships for high school graduating students from Alief Independent School District (AISD). Our goal this year is to raise $20,000 for our scholarship fund. The fund will be used to create eight $2,500 scholarships, which will be used for tuition and/or books.