‘I Have Such a Deeper Appreciation for the Teachers I Had’

Monica Gray Logothetis
Co-Founder & Chairwoman, DreamWakers
1069 Thomas Jefferson St NW

‘Kids can’t be what they can’t see,’ says Monica Gray Logothetis, the co-founder and chairwoman of DreamWakers — a national nonprofit that harnesses technology to close the career opportunity gap by introducing both rural and urban low-income communities to professionals in a breadth of careers.

‘By the age of six, low-income students spend 1,300 fewer hours outside of their home than their affluent peers, and this means they spend much less time in learning environments like museums, parks, and other cultural touchstones. It’s really hard to know about different professionals if you’re not exposed to them.’

DreamWakers serves fourth- to twelfth-grade students in Title I schools, pairing each participating classroom with a subject matter expert who spends 40 minutes over video chat sharing what they do for a living, answering questions, and offering advice.

‘We have the technology at our fingertips to bring the world into classrooms. Professionals are really eager to give back, and even in this very partisan moment, folks on both sides of the aisle have been excited to embrace this simple but impactful public service model.’

Teachers apply directly at dreamwakers.org, sharing information on their classroom make-up and curriculum. Monica’s team matches them with professionals who can speak to what the students are learning, bringing their lessons to life.

‘We prioritize matching classrooms with role models with whom the students can relate – including racial and socio-economic background. It’s incredibly important for students to see someone who looks like them succeeding in different career paths. A lot of times DreamWakers is the first time kids see someone who looks like them in a STEM field or in politics. We’re connecting them not only with role models, but with real models.’

After every video ‘flash chat’, DreamWakers collects impact data from speakers and classrooms. Over 90% of classrooms continue to talk about and research the speaker and their profession in the days and weeks that follow. In many cases, students receive direct exposure to a new opportunity.

‘One student had never heard of ROTC, and signed up for it after she talked to a State Department speaker who’d done it. Those are the tangible examples, but we’re also preparing students to start thinking about college at a younger age through this exposure. We serve a lot of first-generation college students.’

Five years ago, DreamWakers’ impact was but a dream. Monica had just graduated from the University of Virginia’s Batten School of Leadership and Public Policy and was working for a think tank in DC. Over a slice of pizza in Dupont Circle, Monica and her friend Annie shared how much they missed volunteering in schools — their demanding full-time jobs preventing them from regularly giving back.

They had an idea for a virtual volunteering concept and quickly wrote a business plan. Annie was a student at University of Virginia’s Darden School of Business, and together they applied for the program’s i.Lab incubator. A few months later, Monica put her apartment on Craigslist, rented a car, and moved to Charlottesville for the summer to test the concept with local Boys and Girls Clubs.

‘From the beginning we knew we were onto something, because the kids were totally engaged with the interaction with the professionals. The students lit up, and the folks running the Boys and Girls Clubs saw the benefit for their students right away. We had professionals from Nike, the Smithsonian, and The White House. It was really easy to get our friends to volunteer, too, and they loved it.’

Monica waited tables at a local burger joint at night, and spent her days creating DreamWakers’ website and social media accounts, while her co-founder tapped Darden’s resources. There were dramatic ups and downs during the start-up’s early days, but Monica says their belief in the product market fit never wavered.

‘Even when fundraising was tough, or it was just me and a friend in the beginning without any other staff, we could always fall back on these really positive reviews we were getting from teachers, students, and parents. They’d say things like, ‘There isn’t a single computer science professional in our entire region; you literally opened my students’ eyes to a whole world they didn’t know about.’ You read these things and you’re like we can’t stop, we have to keep going.’

Once DreamWakers was off the ground, Monica moved the company to mid-town Manhattan. In August 2019, they relocated to Georgetown – the start of ‘DreamWakers 2.0.’

‘When we were making decisions about our future with the board and as a community, we thought there was no better place to be than our nation’s capital, which is kind of the non-profit mecca of the country, if not globally.’

Now settled into their new Georgetown digs, Monica and her staff say they’re more optimistic than ever about DreamWakers’ reach, and are focused on becoming a truly national organization. In 2020, they aim to serve classrooms in all 50 states and scale up their corporate partnership program.

On a local level, Monica says DreamWakers only serves a tiny fraction of schools in the DMV. She’s eager to connect more DC and Baltimore classrooms to the program’s hundreds of career professionals across the country. Likewise, the DreamWakers team hopes to connect their 600+ classrooms outside the beltway to professionals at their partner organizations here in Washington – including the White House Historical Association, the State Department Office of Public Affairs, and the United States Institute of Peace. Through those partnerships, students in civics and social studies classrooms are exposed to careers in diplomacy and proactive peacemaking.

‘We don’t currently work with any businesses in Georgetown, and I’d love to change that. DreamWakers provides an efficient way for companies to give back and empower employees to work with students without leaving the office.’

Giving back comes naturally to Monica. Growing up in Staunton, Va., she was exposed to public service at an early age — participating in Girl Scouts and Meals on Wheels, and later running a tutoring program in Charlottesville. She was always empathetic toward children in need, but DreamWakers has opened her eyes to the sacrifices so many adults make in supporting those youth.

‘We’re like a virtual fly on the wall in classrooms across the country, and you see teachers bending over backwards for their students. We see how these public school teachers are spread so thin, and they’re unsung heroes. I have such a deeper appreciation for the teachers I had growing up, and those we serve now. At DreamWakers, we want to be the gold standard resource for teachers across the country. We want them to know we’re there to serve them and their students.’

In classrooms across 39 states and counting, more than 16,000 students have already benefited from DreamWakers’ vision for a more equitable future. Monica insists she’s gotten just as much out of the program.

‘Every single chat, even if it’s with fourth graders, I learn something. It’s incredibly inspiring to hear folks share first-hand their day-to-day. Everyone’s story is so unique. You’re hearing people’s human stories.’