Student Leadership Network’s CEO Selected for Town & Country’s Philanthropy Issue

Town and Country magazine featured Yolonda Marshall, CEO of Student Leadership Network, in its philanthropy issue alongside other visionary CEOs and leaders driving meaningful change through their organizations.

By Andrew Zucker
Originally published in Town & Country on October 29, 2024

Excerpt from “The MacKenzie Effect: How Billionaire MacKenzie Scott Is Changing the Giving Game”

Yolonda Marshall thought she had received a prank call.

Money dangled by an anonymous donor felt like a possible scam. And the fact that the call came to Marshall’s personal cell phone, not her work phone, made the CEO of Student Leadership Network, an organization helping underserved students reach college, further question the caller’s authenticity. “I’m like, ‘How weird is that?’ ” Marshall recalls. “But the next day I called back. I said to myself, ‘What if it’s real?’”

It turned out to be a multimillion-dollar decision. After weeks of due diligence and back-and-forth with the benefactress’s representatives, one of the world’s richest people made a $7 million gift to Student Leadership Network. And unlike many gifts from big-ticket donors, it was unrestricted, meaning Marshall and her team could use the money as they saw fit.

“We were able to think innovatively and creatively about how we could actually leverage the gift,” Marshall says. “That means we could drive systemwide change by teaching entire school districts how to do this work,” she says. “And it was MacKenzie Scott’s dollars that allowed us to do that.”