Unleash the Brilliance is a nonprofit working in King County public schools with students of chronic to acute absenteeism to provide them positive role models, ways of thinking about their futures, and incentives for academic success.

Isah Ouldtaki got involved with Unleash the Brilliance in its first few years of existence. She is a 2013 Lindbergh High School graduate.

At Lindbergh, Ouldtaki was facing court for truancy when she went to a workshop where Unleash the Brilliance founder Terrell Dorsey was speaking. Dorsey soon became Ouldtaki’s mentor through the program and pushed her to go to all the activities Unleash the Brilliance offered.

“He didn’t take no for an answer. I had no excuses [to not go to activities], and I felt like that just changed my life,” Ouldtaki said. “He would always be very reassuring, and I feel like I never knew what that was when I was younger.”

Ouldtaki, decades later, now lives in King County and works for Amazon.

“A mindset I learned was being brave about what you do,” Ouldtaki said. “In college, I’m in a whole different state. I don’t know anyone, I have no family. And I feel like that was the bravest thing I ever did. And I feel like if it wasn’t for him [Dorsey], I would never have done something like that.”

Since 2010, Unleash the Brilliance has worked with 670 students in the Renton School District and 7,500 students across King County school districts, according to Dorsey.

The inspiration for the organization came from Dorsey, who had a journey of his own into and after dropping out of high school.

“I was bullied as a freshman, and it changed my entire relationship with school,” Dorsey said. He then started using and selling drugs, the only way he could get an income, he said, which he later got caught and sent to prison for.

“Embarrassment, humiliation, and fear,” Dorsey said about what he felt in prison.

When he eventually got out, he worked a minimum wage job for five years while supporting his wife and four kids.

“I was going to quit because I was too ashamed,” Dorsey said. “People that got college degrees were making three times, four times more than I was and they were in their twenties. I was in my forties.”

In 2008, on his way to work on Highway 167, Dorsey said he was thinking of quitting and selling drugs again when he had a revelation.

“Unleash the brilliance. I don’t know where those words came from, but I decided, in my tears, to go to work, sit behind my desk and write down the slogan,” Dorsey said. “They sat there at my computer for three months, and then I realized what my calling was. That is to support middle school and high school kids by creating a presentation about my own story.”

Unleash the Brilliance as an organization formed in 2010, and Ouldtaki was one of the first students to benefit from it.

“Any student who acquires a Becca Bill petition for accumulating seven unexcused absences in a month or 15 in a year, before they go to court to see a judge or a prosecutor,” Dorsey said, “they will see Unleash the Brilliance first through [a two hour] workshop.”

Today, Unleash the Brilliance focuses on a concept coined “Think, Plan, Fly,” which teaches students to stop for a few seconds and assess a decision’s impact on their life before making that choice.

“[Students] need to be mentored in middle school before high school,” Dorsey said. “High school is too late.”

Unleash the Brilliance currently works in some middle schools, and focuses on teaching students to understand the importance of showing up to class and graduating high school.

“Missing assignments, tardies, truancy, unexcused absences, intimidation, fighting, disruption in class, reduces itself because these kids want to graduate,” Dorsey said. “So that’s what we do. Unleash the Brilliance is basically a pipeline in reverse.”

Dorsey sees the organization and mentorship showing students they can have a positive view of their future.

“We provide them with love, compassion, optimism, cooperation, encouragement and hope,” Dorsey said. “If they know that there’s hope, they’re going to strive for their greatness. [And] they find it amongst their peer group of all colors, across cultural organizations.”

Mentors and more

Estrella Garcia, who lives in Renton, has worked with Unleash the Brilliance for two years leading activities and mentoring students.

She got involved with the organization first for her son, who was going through a year with many challenges compounding on one another.

“We got connected with [Unleash the Brilliance], which was a blessing,” Garcia said. “It was very helpful for him, I think, to know that he wasn’t alone going through these things, and that he had a safe community of other kids.”

In schools, Garcia supports students through meeting with them about their assignments, attendance, and how they are doing on a personal level.

Unleash the Brilliance uses gift cards as rewards for kids for meeting goals like having less than two missing assignments, for example, or showing up to class a certain number of times.

The work continues through the summer, where activities turn to the outdoors. This regularity of the mentor relationships through the summer builds trust, Garcia said, and the activities keep students busy and out of trouble.

“Sometimes [students] don’t have a caring mom,” Garcia said. “So for me, to give that motherly, nurturing feeling to them, that support to them — that bond has been amazing both ways.”

For summer events, which incorporate more community work, students can get paid by Unleash the Brilliance per hour, Garcia said.

“These are kids that don’t really have much and so even a $25 gift card to them is huge,” Garcia said. As for earning cash, she said, some use it to buy themselves back-to-school clothes or hygiene products that they might not otherwise have.

“Being able to experience them slowly flourish, and growing and becoming comfortable within themselves — it’s such a beautiful thing,” Garcia said.

Money for the incentives come from grants like the No Child Left Inside (NCLI) grant, a Washington State Parks fund for getting kids outside, that Unleash the Brilliance won last year for $150,000.

The money also goes to Unleash the Brilliance’s environmental justice re-engagement program, which gets about 100 students outside each summer, journaling, kayaking, rafting, camping, and hiking, as well as working on water quality monitoring, river restoration, invasive plant removal, and pollution prevention monitoring, according to an NCLI report. Of this program, according to the same report, 90% of youth in summers of 2021 and 2022 were students of color on free or reduced lunch.

Unleash the Brilliance recently received its second year in a row of funding from the No Child Left Inside grant, for another $150,000, according to Dorsey.

Estrella Garcia with King County students at Unleash the Brilliance activities. Courtesy of Terrell Dorsey