From being a teenage mother to becoming a leader at the Jeremiah Program last year, Tiana Stowers Pearson, 48, has remained determined to fight against the many barriers, including poverty and lack of access for student mothers and families. She is intent on “breaking the systems” that prohibit these vulnerable communities from receiving the assistance they require.
The Jeremiah Program is a national organization that provides resources and support for single mothers who want to pursue education. Pearson took on the role of executive director for the Brooklyn campus last August.
An attorney by trade, Pearson has a long career of advocacy and is passionate about making sure other mothers have access to the same resources, programs, support systems, and scaffolding that she relied on and was able to benefit from.
“I wouldn’t have got here without the community support,” Pearson told the AmNews “I think that’s why I see myself as like a strategic disrupter, because I’m going to call out the systemic issues all the time.”
Born and raised in Seattle, Pearson says she always prioritized academics. Even after becoming pregnant at 17, she was on track for a career in law, becoming a paralegal thanks to a dual enrollment program in high school. Through the support of local law firms, she would later receive her bachelor’s degree from Washington State University and her juris doctor from Idaho Law School. It was while working at these firms in family law that she saw firsthand the issues with domestic violence. After a fellowship with the Harvard Legal Aid Bureau, Pearson pivoted fully to non-profit and government space in working to change policy for victims and the most impacted communities.
At age 32, Pearson moved to New York with her kids and became the senior director of the Manhattan Child Advocacy Center. It was here Pearson saw how poverty and the mothers having not been able to afford traditional childcare resulted in harmful citations for the child.
She began working with New York Communities for Change and the Black Institute to closely aid Black immigrant families who dealt with their own unique hurdles. One report from the Institute showed how the New York Department of Education had recruited top teachers from Caribbean countries to come to New York, but failed to secure the correct visas for up to 700 families that moved here, and as a result, were left undocumented. Through her work collaborating with the Congressional Black Caucus, namely Rep. Hakeem Jeffries and Rep. Yvette Clark, they were successful in altering legislation to allow those families to receive Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA).
She was later connected with the Richmond County District Attorney’s Office, where she worked to provide resources for families who came in contact with the criminal justice system, including the offender, offering trauma support. She helped establish the Heroin Overdose Prevention and Education (HOPE) program, a pre-arraignment and diversion program alternative to incarceration, which has been expanded throughout the city and the country.
Pearson reflected internally on why she felt compelled to leave her role, following the murder of George Floyd and working in the Staten Island DA’s office in particular. “You’re in the leadership of the DA office, and you have two Black boys, and the fact that your position doesn’t make you feel any safer for your two Black sons. That was so hard for me,” Pearson said. “If I feel like this, and I literally can pick up the phone and call the DA if anything happens to my kids, how do other black mothers feel?” Nonetheless, she says she is grateful for her experience there, as it helped mold her to where she is now.
Pearson says her work at the Jeremiah Program is a culmination of her experience both professionally and personally, having dealt with domestic violence in her own household, involving her estranged husband.
“A lot of the systems that I was actually working in, my family became in contact with. For instance, I was running the child advocacy center, and my family had an ACS case because of my husband’s substance use,” Pearson said. Her story is one of the things she wants to be transparent about with the victims she works with to make sure that there is no barrier between them.
With Trump administration policies, Pearson says student mothers will be even more at risk, highlighting issues like food and housing insecurity, and student loans, which were already disproportionately impacting this demographic. One case she dealt with since being at Jeremiah Program was a young woman who could not accept full-time employment because she would lose her housing subsidy, and the position still would not have covered her rent.
“Oftentimes, we’re told that with your own grit and grind, it’s based on merit and meritocracy, the American dream. And what we don’t highlight enough is that there are over four million moms who are student parents, and these moms are doing all the things that they’re told they’re supposed to do,” Pearson said. “They’re juggling motherhood, they’re juggling their school responsibilities, and yet there are these institutional and policy barriers that are getting in their way of them really achieving their dreams.”
Pearson says the Jeremiah Program is collaborating with other community partner organizations to make sure mothers get the full suite of services while also supporting the work of those groups. Special interests have to be shifted, highlighting the economic benefits of single mothers receiving their degree. She says reports from organizations like the Urban Institute and Brooklyn.org should also be referred back to.
Pearson is now pursuing her doctorate and feels at home with her work in the Jeremiah Program, dealing with families and working to affect policy. She is hopeful more can join in the fight.
“There’s a generational impact. You may be working directly with them, but the work that you’re doing, the support that you’re doing, is going to impact their family life for years to come.”