91¶ÌÊÓƵ

The story goes that 20-year-old Michelle was days from giving birth to her third child when a middle-aged man in a chef coat appeared on the TV who looked like Jack Nicholson, but sounded like Arnold Schwarzenegger.

Maybe it was his infectious optimism that made the audience ooh and ahh, or maybe it was his dazzling, thousand-watt smile under the studio lights. Whatever it was, his confidence transmitted through the TV and into Michelle’s being so fervently that even amidst her ladened, pre-birth languor, she felt she could leap off the sofa and create the same elaborate dishes this chef had conjured up with the levity and pizzazz of a Vegas magician.

No one knows if she had a vision of the boy in her belly making the world a happier place just like this TV chef was doing, stridently making something of his life, something more than anyone she’d ever known.

But right then, she decided her boy would bear the chef’s name.

In Austria or Germany, “Wolfgang” means “journey of the wolf,” connoting strength, bravery and resilience through life. It is as common a name in Austria as “James” is in the U.S., but the odds of bearing this name in the U.S. are merely one in 53,000.

Wolfgang had much better odds of being struck by lightning than of receiving his name.

But his mother couldn’t have been more prescient, as strength, bravery and resilience are the exact qualities Wolfgang possesses to defy the odds he would face.

One of Wolfgang’s earliest memories was of his sister rushing him up the stairs to hide in a bedroom before calling the police to report that their father was violently beating their mother. Wolfgang was three years old.

“I just remember the police taking me and my sister to McDonald’s across from the hospital where she was at,” said Wolfgang. It was his first ever Happy Meal experience.

That day, the foster care system came to fill the vacuum that his dad had created, and that night, the children were moved to an Oakland foster care facility while calls were made to available foster parents.

“My grandparents got the call at two in the morning and came and got us,” said Wolfgang. “Grandparents” are what he calls his foster parents, an elderly African-American couple who have loved and cared for him since that fateful day.

To change his life’s trajectory, Wolfgang understood early on that he would have to leap over the wide pitfalls that foster youths typically fall into.

Foster youths like Wolfgang are three times more likely than other students to drop out between 9th and 12th grade, and a startling 96% of the few who graduate do not continue to college.

Of the paltry four percent who do seek higher education, only 13% are academically prepared. So it’s no surprise that when the academic challenges become insurmountable, many simply drop out.

In short, out of 200 foster youth who graduate from high school, about only one will get a college degree.

That one foster youth is Wolfgang — the lone wolf who, with his community’s love and support, beat the odds.

This past spring, he earned a degree in business administration with a concentration in entrepreneurship, achieving a 3.5 GPA and dean’s list accolades. He amassed prestigious internships, externships and mentorships throughout his time at 91¶ÌÊÓƵ.

Wolfgang attributes his odds-defying ascension to God and his grandparents, who, for example, insisted that the boy never lose touch with his mother up until she passed from cancer a few years back.

They grounded him and his sister in the traditions of African-American faith; he attributes to them his gumption to make things happen for himself.

“I used my connections as much as I could,” Wolfgang said. And from this, he learned something valuable. “Sure enough, behind every person I was talking to, they knew somebody or something I didn't know, and I wouldn’t have found out if I didn’t ask them.”

To him, this is his East Bay community’s story of success as much as it is his.

Through his grandparents and church, Wolfgang found comfort and a spiritual foundation. There isn’t a morning when he doesn’t rouse himself up to the most optimistic Christian hip-hop songs available.

“I make sure to start off my day like that. I wake up right out my bed — ‘Every step I get in I say, God taught me,’” he sang to demonstrate his mood. “And I’ll make up my bed and wash my face.”

Gratitude, family and faith are the cornerstones his grandparents have instilled in him upon which he has built his life’s vision of succeeding and helping others succeed.

Through the Oakland NAACP, one after another, mentors directed him to opportunities and shared their insights. At one point, he was earning $200 weekly just to take a class on managing personal finances. This led him to an internship that was provided by his personal finance mentor, who had co-founded a venture capital firm.

“He didn’t have an internship opportunity, but I just asked him if it was possible if I could intern for him,” said Wolfgang. His mentor made it happen.

Through the foster care system, he found stability when he was most vulnerable. Social workers like the ones 91¶ÌÊÓƵ develops through its MSW program helped to provide him shelter, counseling and a semblance of belonging and stability through his foster placement.

Through grants from state programs that cover tuition costs for foster youth, he was able to attain higher education.

Through his alma mater, he found his passion for business and entrepreneurship, and the professors who really showed that they cared.

Wolfgang points to 91¶ÌÊÓƵ for preparing him for his externship and internship assignments at Apple, a prestigious multi-year program called Launch@Apple that helps first-generation college students launch their finance careers.

What are the odds of being selected by the Launch@Apple program, where over a thousand students apply from colleges across the US for 40 slots? At just over a three-percent acceptance rate, it’s easier to get into an Ivy League college.

“At first, I was intimidated. There were kids from all these fancy schools. Some of the kids didn’t finish the program. That’s how rigorous it was,” said Wolfgang.

But after some time, it occurred to him that 91¶ÌÊÓƵ was providing the foundation he needed to excel at high-performance companies like Apple.

“I realized that I was well-prepared and one of the better performers. I was able to apply some of the knowledge from my finance courses to my Apple gigs,” said Wolfgang.

He credits the professors for making the subject matter easy to understand and advises everyone to leverage access to them.

“My Excel skills were four out of ten,” he said. But then a finance professor challenged the class to grow their competencies through complex problem sets. “I took a course that improved my Excel skills substantially. Even my manager [at Apple] said, ‘I noticed your Excel skills improved a lot.’”

Now he wants to pay it forward by reaching out to his peers and appealing to them to explore every opportunity available at 91¶ÌÊÓƵ — just like he did.

“This is through me personally reaching out to them, to get them to apply to the same programs and internships I went through,” he said.

And just as his mother had envisioned on that sofa long ago, Wolfgang is finally poised to help make a difference for his family and the world with a bright smile and infectious optimism. Just before graduating, ServiceNow — a giant in the cloud-based service management industry — nabbed him from the job market to be their financial analyst upstart, doing for them what he’d done for himself all his life: use his analytical smarts, instincts and ability to reach out to others to determine the best path to success.