- BS Business Administration 1998
Kristina (Sobczynski) Marshall ’98 began her education at Michigan Tech with an interest in environmental engineering and landed a student co-op job at General Motors. One evening while driving home from the GM plant in Ypsilanti, Marshall realized that she needed to turn her life in a completely different direction.
“It hit me that my purpose was to make my life about helping kids,” said Marshall, who lives in Shelby Township with her husband, Duane Marshall, also a School of Business and Economics graduate.
While attending Warren Mott High School outside Detroit, Marshall learned firsthand how mentoring can make a big difference in a young person’s life. She was one of the first high school students to take part in a new program called Winning Futures. That guidance helped Marshall to graduate in the top one percent of her class, and she earned Winning Futures’ first grand prize and received its first scholarship.
When Marshall returned to Michigan Tech after her co-op ended, she switched to the School of Business and Economics. After graduating, she knew exactly where she wanted to work.
“I went right to the founder of Winning Futures and told him I wanted a position,” Marshall said. Sam Cupp, the entrepreneur who launched Winning Futures in 1994, hired Marshall in 1998 to serve as the organization’s managing director. She has since been named president and CEO.
When Marshall signed on with the organization, Winning Futures was operating in one Michigan school district. She has led the program’s expansion to six districts in southeast Michigan.
Marshall also has worked to expand the organization’s reach by making the successful mentoring curriculum available to students everywhere. Currently, twenty-two organizations in Michigan use the Winning Futures model, and the program has been adopted by agencies in nine other states as well.
“We want to reach as many children as possible,” Marshall said. “Through the workbooks and training manuals we’ve developed, we’ve created a social entrepreneurship arm of our organization. We take our product and sell it to other nonprofits, schools, and parents. We then use those profits for our local fundraising missions.”
Marshall said her long-term goal is to make Winning Futures a national program.
“I want us to become the go-to agency for youth development curriculum,” she said.
Thus far, Winning Futures has touched the lives of more than 16,000 students and given out more than $1.5 million in scholarships. In 2008, Crain’s Detroit Business acknowledged Marshall’s efforts by naming her one of its “Forty Under Forty.” The list recognizes the top-forty influential business professionals, community activists, and leaders who are younger than age forty.
Drawing upon her business school education, Marshall takes an entrepreneurial approach to running Winning Futures.
“We have innovative processes and systems in place, and we don’t allow rigid guidelines to affect the way we serve our kids,” she said. “We’re always looking at creative new ways to serve our mission.”
Marshall said that, at Winning Futures, she’s found the perfect opportunity to fulfill her life’s mission of helping others.
“What I enjoy most is seeing our organization make an impact on young people’s lives,” she said.
For more information about Winning Futures, visit winningfutures.org.
Reprinted from the Summer 2010 issue of Impact, the School of Business and Economics semi-annual publication.