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Volunteering to create opportunities and change lives

Jason Koehn, a senior consultant at Booz Allen, first learned about SOUL—or Student-Athletes Organized to Understand Leadership—during his senior year in college. It is a sports-based youth development organization that supports low-income DC youth with academic, character, and athletic development.

“I was looking for volunteer opportunities,” he explains, “and SOUL stood out to me. The nonprofit connects youth to diverse opportunities that build the life skills needed to succeed in academics and careers. I love sports and grew up with them, so it was a good opportunity for me to relate to these students while also giving back to my community.”

In celebration of Global Volunteer Month, Jason shares his experience working with SOUL and how a Booz Allen Foundation Equity Grant is helping the nonprofit develop an analytics program to foster awareness of sports-related tech and STEM career paths.

Supporting SOUL

Following graduation and after joining Booz Allen, Jason continued to volunteer with SOUL, tutoring students and helping them prepare for college. “I have seen firsthand the impact that SOUL is making here in the Washington, DC, metropolitan area,” he says.

While SOUL’s programs excel at helping students gain math and reading skills and providing support for standardized tests and college applications, Jason saw a chance to do even more.

“In this day and age, it's really important to have tech and data skills to find a good job,” he says. “That was something the students at SOUL weren't getting exposed to. Whether in their schools or extracurriculars, those opportunities weren’t available.”

“I discussed this with SOUL's leadership,” Jason continues. “We came up with an idea for a program that would engage students, but it didn’t come to fruition.”

Then along came the Equity Grant program from the Booz Allen Foundation. “It seemed like a great fit,” Jason says.

Getting the Grant

The Foundation’s Equity Grant program supports nonprofits that develop inclusive pathways to STEM education for underrepresented populations. The firm’s employees nominate organizations for consideration and remain engaged with them, forming an ongoing partnership.

"That’s one of the grant program’s unique aspects,” says the Foundation’s Executive Director, Christine Hoisington. “Not only can the employee nominate the organization, but they also identify other ways to integrate the organization into Booz Allen.”

Learning about the grant, "gave us motivation to put pen to paper,” Jason says. “We already had the idea; it was just a matter of putting it down, which worked out really well with the Equity Grant program.”

Jason and his team are now in the early stages of the program. “We started working with the Booz Allen Foundation on the Sports and Tech Analytics program in late 2023,” Jason explains. So far, they have held a few sessions with students, covering exciting topics such as data analysis, probability, and statistics.

Building Out Sports and Tech

In the Sports and Tech Analytics program, students learn the fundamentals of data and tech, such as data science, analytics, and visualization, while also learning about different careers in the field.

“Since we’re working with student-athletes, we’re using sports as the application for a lot of the data and tech concepts. It’s really cool to see them get excited about technology as it relates to sports. That’s what they’re passionate about,” Jason says.

The program will continue into the fall, with the subject matter complexity building up gradually.

Jason expects to get students accustomed to the fundamentals and terminology before eventually “getting them into Excel and letting them run different regressions,” he says. By the end of the program, he’s hoping to introduce them to the software program R to create a simple predictive model, such as one that explores how different plays can affect a game’s outcome.

Leveraging the Booz Allen Team

One key component of the Equity Grant program is engagement with the firm’s employees.

“Booz Allen volunteers work with us in a few ways,” Jason says. “They can be program facilitators, helping with activities during a weekly session. They work one-on-one with students and bring insights from their own experiences to the conversation.”

Employees can also volunteer as guest speakers. “Some of our volunteers are passionate about a certain skill or a topic related to either tech, data, or sports,” Jason explains. “We find what session they fit in, and they come in and lead a short conversation or activity with the students.”

Finally, employees can serve on a SOUL career panel. “We’re planning a panel with Booz Allen volunteers, where students will be able to ask them questions about their journeys,” Jason says. "Since most, if not all, of the volunteers are or have been athletes, the panel will give students a chance to learn how they still engage with sports.”

Providing different ways for Booz Allen employees to get involved will “maximize the impact of our volunteers,” Jason believes. “We have such an amazing and diverse group of skills and people at the firm. We want to find out where and how we can use them most effectively.”