Tom Kohn first began to think about launching a nonprofit when he walked the halls of his kids’ Northwest DC school and noticed students from different backgrounds weren’t mingling as much as he thought they would.

“I realized it really wasn’t much different than me growing up in the ’70s,” said Kohn, a senior professorial lecturer in the Kogod School of Business.

Kohn thought back to his upbringing in geographically segregated St. Louis, Missouri, and how he spent seven years as the only White player on an otherwise Black youth baseball team. He recalled how, even as a young third baseman, he knew that we have much to learn from one another.

“It’s important that we make an effort to connect, especially with people whom we don’t think we have a lot in common with,” Kohn said. “Once you do connect—like me in Little League—you realize you actually have way more in common than you thought.”

So, Kohn started asking questions of students, parents, and school officials, including whether there was an access or opportunity gap for students and families of color at elite independent schools. Overwhelmingly, the response was: “How much time do you have?”

Kohn saw an opportunity to help. In 2016, he and long-time children’s advocate Patricia Potts founded CONNECTdmv to bridge that gap. The nonprofit aims to bring together the diverse community across the DC area to help create opportunity and forge connections.

In conjunction with community partners, CONNECTdmv works with 11 member schools to offer mentorship programs, career networking events,  an empowerment summit, a civically engaged scholars program, and other resources for DC area families.

“The schools understand that we supplement or complement what they can do,” said Kohn, who serves as executive director of CONNECTdmv. “They’re doing a great job, but there’s always room for other people to come in and help.”

Involvement from American University has also been key to CONNECTdmv’s work since its inception. Representatives from the AU Career Center have led resume workshops; CONNECTdmv has used campus spaces for meetings; and multiple alumni, Iike Genever Oppong, Kogod/BS ’18, now at BlackRock in New York, have mentored students.

“Mentorship during college was truly transformational for me,” said Oppong. “Those relationships weren’t just helpful—they were life-changing. That’s why I felt deeply aligned with CONNECTdmv’s mission. Their work sits at the intersection of equity, innovation, and economic opportunity—exactly where I believe mentorship can be most impactful.”

Amanda Taylor, former assistant vice president for diversity, equity, and inclusion at AU, joined CONNECTdmv’s advisory council early on because she saw the organization was driven by community input.

“What CONNECTdmv did was really pay attention to where the real needs are as identified by the community— and how can they work in partnership with the community,” Taylor said. “That makes all the difference in terms of sustainability of the work.”

When asked about the needs she saw, Wendy Wilkerson, then the director of enrollment at the National Cathedral School, told the CONNECTdmv team about a student at her school who met her boyfriend, a student at Sidwell Friends School, on the two-hour commute home to Prince George’s Country via public transportation.

CONNECTdmv’s first initiative became addressing transportation issues for families commuting from Bowie, Maryland, each day.

“We discussed how wonderful it would be if we could find more ways for our students at the variety of schools that shared similar experiences—long commutes among them—to not only connect but also work to solve some of the historical challenges that our schools and society have created for these students,” Wilkinson said.

Kohn secured $40,000 from the Toyota Social Mobility Fund to begin offering shuttle bus transportation to and from school for those students. Supported by subsidies from the schools to keep costs low, that program continues today, now supported by the participating schools

Theo Eggimann, SIS/BA ’27, started volunteering with CONNECTdmv during his first year at AU, when he took a business course with Kohn and asked to help. Each day, he sees the impact of the work.

“There’s a lot of things wrong with our education system,” Eggimann said, “but being able to fix one small facet of it and being able to see the change right in front of our eyes is [exciting].”

This year, he’s been involved in the organization’s Projects for Change program—which launched during its inaugural Student Engagement Summit at Kogod’s Veloric Center for Entrepreneurship in January. Under Kohn’s direction, the project convenes local high schoolers interested in enacting change in their schools and communities and gives them the entrepreneurial skills to develop and pitch their ideas. Kohn picked nine of his students to mentor the high schoolers for four months, culminating in the students’ pitch to their school administrators for approval and funding.

“I really like seeing how motivated they are,” said Eggimann, who has met regularly with high schoolers on Zoom and on campus. “It’s really rewarding to guide them through that.”

Kohn, too, has found deep satisfaction in the work.

“We’ve been doing this for eight years now, and we’re not planning on going anywhere,” he said. “I’ll be doing this the rest of my life, hopefully with friends here at AU.”