Dr. Pamela Ellis

Introduction and Becoming the Education Doctor

Taryell Simmons: All right, welcome, ladies and gentlemen, to another episode of Rise Urban Nation. I have a special guest in the building, straight off a great concert experience, feeling fresh, revived and ready to go. Dr. Pamela Ellis is in the building. How are you doing this fine Monday?

Dr. Pamela Ellis: I am doing excellent, Taryell. Thank you so much for asking.

Taryell Simmons: We were just talking about the concert you went to, and I'm really jealous that you got to see Janet Jackson.

Dr. Pamela Ellis: It was great, and it happens every year, so I don't have to be the only one who knows about it. It's the Cincinnati Music Festival, with legendary artists every year, back in person after a couple of years. Well worth the ticket.

Taryell Simmons: I'm setting my sights on Cincinnati next year. For those who haven't had the privilege of getting to know you, who is Dr. Pamela?

Dr. Pamela Ellis: I am Dr. Pamela Ellis, and my trademark is The Education Doctor. Education is my calling. In short, I partner with parents to help their teen find a college that feels like home without overpaying. I'm based in Columbus, Ohio, with offices in Chicago, and I'm opening in DC, Atlanta and Houston. I'm also a mom of three, and my kids were really the ones who got me started in this work.

Taryell Simmons: You have to tell that story. How did they get you started?

Dr. Pamela Ellis: When I became a mom, I became obsessed with schooling and how best to support my kids, especially having Black sons, and being afraid of how often they can be beaten down in the K-12 system. That drove me back to Stanford for my doctorate in education. I researched how best to support Black males' success, especially through college completion, because they were dropping out in ninth grade, not going on after twelfth grade, and not completing at the same rate in college. My work focused on what supports students through those transitions. Later, parents saw what I was doing with my own children, with summer programs and homeschooling, and asked me to help their kids. I was happy doing research, but they nudged me in this direction, and that launched Compass College Advisory.

Taryell Simmons: And it sounds like there's a fourth kid there who wants some attention.

Dr. Pamela Ellis: He wishes! He's actually a year old. We've all grown used to those distractions with COVID. Once I was doing a live on LinkedIn, all professional, talking about parenting, and my oldest son, home from college, walked by with no shirt on, looking in the refrigerator. I must have lost it.

Taryell Simmons: I embrace those moments. They make you relatable and human, and moms especially can identify with that. Everything doesn't have to be pitch perfect. We just learn how to adapt.

Mindfulness for Students Under Stress

Taryell Simmons: I resonate with your title, The Education Doctor, because our education system hasn't been healthy for a long time. What remedies have you seen that help nurse it back to wellness, especially for our Black and brown communities?

Dr. Pamela Ellis: Over the last couple of years we saw heightened stress and anxiety, with kids yanked out of school and away from their friends. I deepened my mindfulness practice so I could share it with students, and I met with them more often to give them a sense of routine, reduce their stress and build resilience. This fall I'm doing a practicum in a school, teaching mindfulness to groups of students. These tools are portable. They can use them anywhere, at any time, to stay strong through adversity.

Taryell Simmons: The pandemic heightened that at work too. Adults need these practices. Hopefully the kids teach it to their parents. How do we make mindfulness a normal practice in school systems?

Dr. Pamela Ellis: School systems vary so much, but start with your data: how have stress levels increased, and how can you help students manage them? Mindfulness is scientifically based, and it usually starts with training teachers. The program I went through, Mindful Schools, trains teachers to deliver mindfulness in a school setting, with information online and a cost-effective way to bring it in. Many schools have professional development funding that can be used for it.

Taryell Simmons: What drew you to mindfulness in the first place?

Dr. Pamela Ellis: I started practicing it years ago to deal with my own stress. My son told me about an app he was using, and that was my introduction. Being an entrepreneur can be stressful.

Taryell Simmons: That surprises me. You seem like such a zen person. I thought it just came naturally to you.

Dr. Pamela Ellis: I do believe calm is my superpower, and it's what attracts clients to our firm. My proprietary framework is called Keep CALM. CALM stands for College and Accelerated Leadership Methodology, and I talk about parenting with grace and ease. It's part of who I am, but I've also nurtured it, because growing a business adds so much stress. As I practiced for myself, I kept thinking of my students, anxious about getting in, and their parents, anxious about the cost of college. So I took classes through Mindful Schools, and when COVID hit, I brought it to all of my students.

The Gratitude Practice and Morning Rituals

Taryell Simmons: What's the biggest myth you hear about mindfulness? I can picture a first-generation family saying, Dr. Pamela, mindfulness? Is that going to pay for this hundred-thousand-dollar college?

Dr. Pamela Ellis: One myth is that it's religious. That's a big one. The second is the time it takes. I'm not sitting around humming for hours. One simple, powerful practice is gratitude. At the start of a meeting, I ask students for three things they're grateful for from the last 24 hours. I get to know them, and it calms the meeting immediately. It shows I care, I'm listening, and there's no judgment here.

Taryell Simmons: That changes the psychology of how you enter the space. How should someone implement it?

Dr. Pamela Ellis: Do it daily. It can be a journal: each morning, write down a few things you're grateful for from the last day. The 24-hour frame matters, because otherwise it's just "my family" or "the weather," and that gets old. With a time frame you notice the little things. I hear things like, "My dad made the best lemon blueberry pound cake yesterday," and I'm like, I can't wait to come to your house.

Taryell Simmons: You're making me hungry. My grandma, rest in peace, used to make an amazing 7 Up pound cake.

Dr. Pamela Ellis: It's that specificity, thinking about things we take for granted. The first few times, students don't know what to say. After that, some of what they're grateful for really warms my heart. And do it however is easiest for you: two or three things one day, tons another. If it's easy to do, you'll do it.

Taryell Simmons: I start my mornings with gratitude too. It sets the tone so I'm not in a reactive state, checking emails first thing.

Dr. Pamela Ellis: I'm up for hours before I check email, because it changes your whole day. Someone recently explained that a ritual gives you energy, while a routine is just done anyway. My morning ritual is iced tea from Panera Bread. I'm from the South, though mine isn't sweetened. It jump-starts my day, and if I skip it, my day is off. I'm a high-energy person from early morning into early evening, so I do what I absolutely must get done first thing. I'm a runner, and if it's late afternoon, I'm not going to run. Same with writing. I'm working on a book, and I write first thing, because once I get online, my day can be turned upside down.

Taryell Simmons: And this is not a paid endorsement, but Panera Bread, if you're listening, Dr. Pamela will happily accept the sponsorship.

Dr. Pamela Ellis: I'm planning to be a brand ambassador for them, so yes, if they're listening.

Books for Parents and Teens

Taryell Simmons: Tell me about this book.

Dr. Pamela Ellis: My first book is What to Know Before They Go: College Edition, for parents and mentors helping teens through the college process. I'm revising it because so much has changed with COVID. A key idea is fit. People use "the right fit" loosely, and I define it explicitly, and the second edition adds another key factor of fit. I'm also writing a book for teenagers going through the process on their own, because after the first book came out, I learned students were reading it even though it wasn't written for them.

Taryell Simmons: This generation has so much access to information, and some are first-generation students who know they have to help their parents through the process.

Dr. Pamela Ellis: That's the way I did it. My mom finished eighth grade and my dad finished tenth, so they wouldn't have known how to help me apply. Now, sometimes it's the kid who finds me and tells their parents to call. At a virtual boot camp during COVID, a mom told me her daughter had been reading my emails and said, "Mommy, I have to sign up for this." So now my form asks whether you're a student or a parent.

Taryell Simmons: You're not only the doctor of education, you're the doctor of the relationships in the household navigating education. Is FIT an acronym too?

Dr. Pamela Ellis: No, FIT is just fit. CALM is the acronym, and Keep CALM is trademarked.

Career Journey, Corporate Lessons and Faith Over Fear

Taryell Simmons: I wish we could clone you and put you in every state.

Dr. Pamela Ellis: There are a lot of people who do this work, and everyone has their own signature on it. But there's only one me, for sure.

Taryell Simmons: I love seeing somebody who looks like us doing this work. Let's walk through your journey. What was your first job?

Dr. Pamela Ellis: My first job was as a janitor. It was a summer job, and I had lied about my age to get hired. I didn't want to be cleaning, so I would do a little something and then go lie down in the break room. I got caught and got fired. I went back and pleaded for my job, and they realized I could do something else, so they let me do administrative work in the office. The lesson was honesty and integrity: be honest from the start, and if that's the job, do it without cutting corners.

Taryell Simmons: Those are great qualities for building a brand and good client relationships. What were the key steps that got you where you are today?

Dr. Pamela Ellis: Working for a company first. Corporate experience showed me systems, financial structure and how departments fit together, and as an entrepreneur you're head of every department. It helps me understand operations and my numbers, and I take risks I wouldn't have taken otherwise, hiring people and making investments without knowing the return. Some days I think, whew. But I know what corporate is like and I don't want to go back. A corporation can be my client, but I'm not going to be their employee.

Taryell Simmons: What's one good lesson life has taught you?

Dr. Pamela Ellis: Having faith and not being afraid. I don't say be fearless, because some fear is good so you don't do anything too crazy. But not being afraid is a lesson I want to impart to everyone thinking about entrepreneurship. Fear is what holds us back from getting started. We spend too much time working someone else's job and building their wealth without taking that leap of faith to say, I'm just going to do this.

Taryell Simmons: There's a saying that the graveyard holds the most ideas, because people never took the leap. What advice would you give a college student, or a parent in the second wave of their career, who wants to start in your industry?

Dr. Pamela Ellis: Build on what you have and don't worry so much about what you don't have. In education there are so many problems to solve. If you went to college, build on that experience: how you applied, who you met, what you majored in. If you went to trade school, build on that. Leverage your skills instead of building a business around something you'd have to pay to learn. And take advantage of every free opportunity: incubators, grants, and bank programs for entrepreneurs. When I started about 15 years ago, I used the free resources of the SBDC, the Small Business Development Center, and the SBA. That was how I bootstrapped it, because I had basically been fired from my job.

Taryell Simmons: A big shout-out to the SBA and SBDC. They're nationwide, with consultants, coaches and funding, and they don't get used enough.

The Future of Education and Where to Find Dr. Ellis

Taryell Simmons: What does the future hold for your industry?

Dr. Pamela Ellis: In education there will be a lot more personalization of learning and a lot more attention to mental wellness, with, I hope, less stigma about getting help when it's needed. We've seen that learning can take place in many other places, so we shouldn't expect everyone to learn a certain way. The last couple of years accelerated those changes, because schools had to change.

Taryell Simmons: Look what we can do when we have to. Thank you for the strides you're making in our education system. What projects are you working on, and where can people find you?

Dr. Pamela Ellis: The biggest project is an on-demand online system for high school seniors to get through everything they need for their applications, virtually. My son and I are building it, and it launches next week, with recorded video modules, interactive downloads and coaching on how to write their essays, on their own schedule. So many families come to me at the last minute, and this can help their student get through the process and get it done.

Taryell Simmons: We work better under pressure, Dr. Pamela. If you haven't read the book, get the first edition while the second is being revised. I'll put all the links in the show notes. Any last words of wisdom?

Dr. Pamela Ellis: To parents: stay encouraged with your teens. They're going to be amazing. If college is in their future, it can be affordable, and they can find a place to thrive. To high school students: you have so many options, whether it's college or starting your own business. Stay the course, follow your passions and your heart, and you will win every time.

Taryell Simmons: Thank you for those words of wisdom. Hopefully this lands just in time for applications opening August 1st. I look forward to having you back once the program launches. We'll catch you next time, Rise Urban Nation.