As a youth, Alexis Mercado, EDU ’17, benefited from the dedicated teachers she encountered and is grateful for their effort. Today, as a college career advisor, she is paying it forward by helping students from the Community College of Philadelphia develop their own recipes for success both in the workplace and in their own lives.
Photo by Photo credit: Ryan S. Brandenberg, CLA ’14
Going to Temple was the best decision I’ve ever made. Period. The network that I gained at Temple has been phenomenal, and Temple also taught me how to be a professional.”
Mercado first heard of Temple University through her alma mater, Benjamin Banneker Academy, a public high school in Brooklyn, New York. During a visit to Temple for a campus tour, she was able to connect with fellow Banneker alumni, and specifically her former volleyball team captain, which made it easy for Mercado to envision herself as a first-year Owl.
Once at Temple, she honed her leadership skills through extracurricular activities, serving as president of both the Temple NAACP chapter and the Student Organization for Caribbean Awareness, where she learned to oversee budgets, plan events and manage different personalities.
When Mercado became pregnant as an undergraduate, her Temple professors not only encouraged her to continue her studies, but offered her extra support and made her feel comfortable during a challenging time.
Mercado initially had her sights set on what many might consider a more typical path for an education major—that of a high school science teacher. But at Temple, she was exposed to a range of education careers through her classes and internships and found that she particularly enjoyed working in the nonprofit sector for the Philadelphia School Partnership. There, she conducted outreach with families, coordinated a major high school fair and helped develop materials to guide parents’ decision-making.
“Temple’s College of Education provides so many opportunities to connect to local schools and students in the city,” she said. “That level of exposure and those pipelines to the community are what made me feel really invested about wanting to stay and work in Philly and help others make connections.”
Now, Mercado is doing exactly that. She works at the Community College of Philadelphia with the Octavius Catto Scholarship, an anti-poverty initiative created by Philadelphia Mayor Jim Kenney.
College: College of Education and Human Development
Degree: BA, adult and organizational development, 2017
Industry: Education
Hometown: Brooklyn, New York
While at Temple, Alexis participated in a Caribbean American student pageant.
Her next goal is to cultivate more diversity among teachers in Philadelphia.
She eventually would like to work on a systemic level, helping build a better pipeline for underresourced communities to connect with workforce development resources. For now, Mercado finds that her daily work with individuals has been more than fulfilling.
“There are so many students, and particularly Black and Latino students, that do not feel like they deserve to be at college. So, my work is not just about connecting students to opportunities but helping them understand why they deserve to be here and why they need to persist—because an education can change the trajectory of not only their own lives, but the lives of their families and communities,” she said. “I love working with these students and I also love when I get that phone call or the message that they got the offer.”
Mercado’s proudest accomplishment to date is helping to launch a Saxby’s Coffee on the CCP campus that is completely student-run, providing the participating students with valuable experiences for their resumes and their lives. So far, two of her Catto Scholarship students have filled the CEO role.
“The students’ level of excitement is just amazing, and it’s made me so proud to be part of their journey,” she said.
