Tori Battieste
I am Tori Battieste. I am a forty-five year old native Texan. I’m married and have a sixteen year old daughter. I completed undergraduate studies at Howard University, now working as the South Central Regional Account Manager for Union Supply Group in Irving, Texas. I proudly serve as Board Secretary of the Excellence and Advancement Foundation.
The goals of the Excellence and Advancement Foundation strike a very personal chord with me. I was born to young parents in a middle class family, educated, and full of promise. Yet, within a year of my birth, my father was incarcerated, and I grew up not understanding why daddy wasn’t there. As an adult I have come to recognize how easy it is to fall victim to the school to prison pipeline as a result of ineffective legislative and educational policies that criminalize children. Justice has never been equal for the marginalized and underprivileged, but the Excellence and Advancement Foundation is diligent in the endeavor to change that narrative. Our programs for prevention are designed to water the seeds of potential in all children by enriching how they see themselves thereby empowering them to impact how they are viewed by the world. Intervention services provide support and valuable resources for those who have been directly impacted by the criminal justice system. Assisting those in transition is beneficial not only to the impacted individuals and their families, but also to the communities that serve them. Advocacy and accountability efforts focus public attention on these criminalization processes, working to turn the tide of inactivity that allow the practices that create exclusion, inequity, and injustice to persist. To do nothing is to impart further injury to our children, their families and society as a whole. The Excellence and Advancement Foundation is committed to healing communities by breaking the pipeline