DT_T-Season1-Episode 10 - Dr. Tiffany Green - Founder, Uprooted Academy

DT_T (Do The — Thing) Season 1 - Episode 10 Spotlights Dr. Tiffany Green - Founder , Uprooted Academy.
Dr. Tiffany Green’s journey is one of relentless curiosity, empathy, and a lifelong commitment to ensuring everyone has the "guidebook" to success. From her early days as an inquisitive child in New Haven to her decade-long career as a therapist, Tiffany has always been a "translator" for those navigating the world's roadblocks.  

After years of seeing the "whole picture" in others through clinical practice, Tiffany moved into her next chapter: founding Uprooted Academy. This organization is a direct response to her own childhood experience of waiting for an "invitation" to college that never arrived, a lesson in the vital importance of social capital.  

In this episode of DT_T (Do The _ Thing), Dr. Tiffany Green reflects on:

• The Power of Curiosity: How leaning into a "nerdy," inquisitive spirit can lead to a career of impact.  

• A Lineage of Giving: The profound influence of her 99-year-old grandmother and the "bloodline" of service that drives her work today.  

• The Social Capital Playbook: Why access to information and relationships is the "cheat code" that communities need to thrive.  

• Uprooting to Grow: A powerful metaphor for how proper care and nutrients allow us to transition into larger spaces and unleash our true potential.  

Today, through Uprooted Academy, Tiffany focuses on "unleashing" the potential that is already inside every student, rather than trying to fix what isn't broken. Her work ensures that once a student is "uprooted" from their home to go to college, they don't just survive—they flourish with agency and dignity.  

Learn more about Uprooted Academy:

🔗 uprootedacademy.org  

Sometimes the purpose we’re called to do begins long before we know how to name it.

Transcript

Sheela 0:00

Thank you, Tiffany. Welcome to DT Dash T Do the Dash Thing Podcast. This podcast is about spotlighting your journey and how your gifts found their way into service. So listeners who send something more, feel encouraged to take their next intentional step. I want to start with this a little bit about yourself and the work of Uprooted Academy.

Dr. Tiffany 0:29

Yeah, thank you so much and excited to be here. And thank you for inviting me. I think about Uprooted Academy a lot in the context of thinking about Little Tiffany and what Little Tiffany deserved, what she thought the world would be able to offer, and the roadblocks that she really had to navigate and hurdle over, and really with this like conviction that nobody should have to do that again. And so I want to invite you to the world of Little Tiffany. Um, she is a little girl who is super curious and inquisitive, and thankfully had really great parents who never shut it down. I mean, I could imagine what it was like to be my parents because I had questions about everything, right? Like you answer one question, I have another, and then you answer another and I just had another. I just would love the idea of like rabbit holes and like, and they just sometimes they had the answer. And honestly, as I'm an adult, I realized a lot of times they made a lot of stuff up just to like engage and embellish and like this curiosity of mine. And so, because little Tiffany was super curious, um, I also lived in a curious place. So I lived and grew up in New Haven, Connecticut, which is the home of Yale University. And so there's just a lot of people who are there who are curious. And I think it was in the air and I got to breathe it in. And so I was able to kind of lean in to that, even as early as I could remember. I learned how to read at a really young age. Um, both of my parents were really committed to education. And even though my dad finished seventh grade and my mom finished high school, I think they saw in me a lot and they wanted me to be all that they may have hope for themselves, maybe not, but all that they knew I wanted to be. And I was a nerd. Like I love people and I love hobbies, but I also love to read and I love school and I love summer, like going to school in the summer. And it wasn't for like anything punitive. I would just sign up for these like academic camps. And so navigating life as like a really curious, outgoing um kid meant that um anything that the world had to offer, I thought I can get. And my parents helped me to figure out how. And so when it was time for me to apply to college, I had the grades, I had the test scores, I had done everything you can think of, including like studying abroad in high school. I did a program at Georgetown, like through this thing called the Presidential Center or something like that. Like all of the things you could imagine. And yet we had zero insight on what it meant to get to college. And so I'll share a really interesting story. So at the time, there was no laptops. You were just kind of like dial up internet. And so, for all of those programs that I had done, everything from like white water rafting to skiing to this program at Georgetown to even the study abroad, I'd always got these little flyers in the mail. It was like a flyer that would come in and it would say, you've been selected, you've been invited. Now, that was my experience of what it meant to have access to opportunity. Um, and when you look at TV shows, they always talk about getting the special mailer in the mail. And so for me, I thought you had to be invited to apply to college. And I never got any mailers. Um, and it was heartbreaking. And I couldn't figure out why. I had a high GPA, I took A-B classes, even though my school didn't have the funding for the exams. I had taken the classes, had like a near-perfect score of my SAT. And yet I didn't know how to navigate this process. And so myself, my family, we were devastated. We had thought, like, what have I done wrong to not be invited to apply to schools? So, anyways, my high school had like two schools that came in. It was like the flagship state university and the community college, and that was it. And so ended up applying to the flag state, uh, the flagship state university, which was where I ended up going. But the process of getting there, I had so much anxiety because I just kept thinking I'm not enough. And I knew that there were rules or something I had missed. There was a playbook I hadn't seen to quite not quite understand why I didn't get these mailers in. Now, it took me about 10 years to realize I didn't need a mailer, I could have just applied. Um, but that was just how I was socialized. And when you don't have a lot of social capital in your community, um, because even the church my family went to, all of my aunts and uncles, like no one had navigated this process. So we only knew what we what we knew. And so through that process, a lot of little Tiffany's fire kind of to like diminish because I wasn't quite sure if I was good enough for the world. Um, and I had never felt that way. I had never felt like I wasn't good enough. Like when I went on those field trips or when I went to dirt, I knew I belonged because someone sent me that mailer. That mailer will haunt me to this day. And so now you'll notice like, well, y'all can't see this the podcast, but I keep all my mailers that come in the mail. And so, because I'm like, oh my gosh, they wanted to send me something. I got something in the mail the other day for um these plays that will happen at the Geffen in LA. And like, I'm like, oh my God, they want me to be there. It's still something psychological. And so, anyways, that was really hard. And the other thing that was really hard for little Tiffany was that um I went to this amazing college that was um where I ended up going. And a lot of my friends just did not. And so then it started to, I started to ask myself these questions, like, man, I am going forward, but all these other people feel like they're being left behind. There has to be another way. And so every day I think about that process, the lack of social capital. I think about the lack of like understanding how to access these spaces. And I think about people who, like little Tiffany, really wanted to go. And what are the detrimental impacts of people who don't have a pathway and don't have the guidebook or the cheat code, so to speak, in order to get there. So that is the nexus of who I am, how I show up in this space. Um, because there was a lot of disappointment, sadness, anxiety. So that's why I'll talk a lot about um kind of like this holistic process that we've gone through. But there's also a lot of like urgency to ensure that communities that are often left out of getting social capital information that they are at the center of where I decide to like deep dive all of our resources into.

Sheela 7:04

Oh wow. I love to listen to people's journey stories. There is a spark that they feel, but I also you translate that through your conversation and reflection so that whoever are listening get that spark, and that spark something in their wisdom and insight too. What a journey, definitely. Thank you for sharing that. You're welcome. Um yeah, could you just share a gift, a passion, a calling that you recognize that drew you into this work? There was a need, but at the same time, there must be something within you that must have brought this need and the connection. Yeah, I can see it within you already.

Dr. Tiffany 7:54

I think something about when I was younger, to like my teens, to like being in college and being an adult that is maybe a blessing, and then sometimes it's just not, is that I see the potential in every single person, thing, and opportunity. And I'll just talk a little bit more about why I think that's a blessing, is because I never see what meets the eye. Right. Like I can meet someone and understand deeply, like have a high level of empathy and insight into the whole picture versus like what other people might just see. And I think that's so important because in my story, when people saw my community, my parents, my high school, they didn't think it was valuable enough to come to visit as a college or to set up a program that could help kids get into school. We were kind of discarded in that way, despite being literally around the corner from Yale, right? Like I think that is the interesting thing about my whole like upbringing, is like I was literally around the corner from the epicenter of knowledge and what people think. And I think that that like it didn't happen like until I was older to understand um what that meant. But I think Little Tiffany always saw the beauty in everyone from friends or not even just friends, but like even when new people would come to schools. You remember like new people are always like used to get bullied? And I'm like, God, but like I think they're really nice, and I think this is what they're talking about. And like I was a translator for people to be able to find a space, right? I was always the girl that like never had their own click because I was just like constantly like scanning the room and making sure everyone was okay, and that everyone had a sense of belonging because I deeply felt that like people who were not a part of a crew just were just misunderstood, or they just didn't know how to articulate what they actually were and who what they wanted and needed. And so I always felt like I can see someone and like know that and like bring them in. And I think that like whenever I think about the work at Uprooted, I think about the work, even before I did Uprooted, I was a therapist, right, for over a decade. And I think the thing that felt natural to me was to see people at the end of their journey, not where I saw them at the beginning. And to like really imagine how we can unleash their potential. So, fun fact Uprooted Academy is not my first nonprofit that I founded. Randomly, this is so random because sometimes I forget these moments in my life. When I was at Howard University for my master's, I met a woman who had a heart's desire for like wanting to help other women find their passion. And her journey was really interesting because she had like graduated from high school, didn't like finish college, but then went back and like really started to make a name for herself in this like, I'm doing it the non-traditional way. And then I was a person who like kind of like followed all of the like what people would assume would happen after high school or college, and then grad school. And together we formed an organization called like unleashing potential. So it also like started, it was so interesting. And all we did was we would get invited to these conferences with other young girls and children and women to do vision boards. And we would do the vision boards in a way with activities around how can I know who I am, not today, but like who I want to be and how can I like think about putting that down, having accountability and like making the goals to set it. And we had a logo, we had a web study, we had like people were like flying us out to do this thing. But I have always enjoyed and lived in joy of watching people become everything that like when I see them, I already know, but I get to watch them actualize it. And so I forget about that all the time because it was such a random thing that we did. It was like two years, we had a board, we did all the things, and I always forget about this, but we had so much joy just watching these women think about this idea of unleashing their potential. And this is way before vision boards became a thing. Vision boards are now hot, but this was in 2008. People were hoarding magazines, but they didn't know what to do with them. We helped them, and we would have these incredible things, we would have guest speakers and food. I don't know where we had the money to do any of this. I imagine it was from my refund check or something. I have no idea. But that is what the gift that I feel like I've been blessed with is I am not deterred by what I see in my own life, in other people's lives of what they want to do. I can always have this almost contagious belief that you can do this thing. I know you can do it. Now, whether you choose, you want to do it, whether it brings you joy is a whole nother thing. That's a different conversation. But the idea that you can, I can be your cheerleader in order to do that. And I feel like that's what I hopefully get to gift people on my team, my friends, my family. And I think to go with that, I think one of the things that people will identify about me is I am an exemplar of taking a risk and doing things afraid and being the first and being a trailblazer and showing people it is possible. And it doesn't feel like work, right? It feels like to your point, this is a gift that I have been blessed with. And that gift allows me to do it. But it's not for me to say that I'm doing this for me. It's for others to be inspired, and not by like me getting even on a stage to say it, but just like I just want you to see like it's okay. Like, and when I stumble, if it doesn't go as well, that's also okay. Like we can do this thing called life, and it can have like lots of waves, and we can do it. But I think that's it. I think maybe that's how I was like created. Like I didn't need to get trained on it. It just was, it was always in me from like very, very young, like teaching other little kids in daycare how to read. I was like doing hooked on phonics with them.

Sheela 14:17

I was like, we can do this, it's okay, we got it. That is the distinction. I think you articulated it very well. It is who you are, and of course, you identifying it as a gift also helps to move it forward that one particular nuance personality of yours. Actually, this question, the question about the gift is the heart of the podcast, but the soul of the podcast is what made you go forward to in service of others using this gift and passion. But you have to do non-travits already. So maybe if you could share a little bit about uprooter economy and then how you are inspired to share this particular gift of seeing the potential and the access to that potential, basically. That's how I see it in the uprooted economy, but not my words. I would like you to please share about the uprooted economy.

Dr. Tiffany 15:26

Yeah, you know, I I will touch a little bit on the first part of your question because my grandmother, who's also part of the name of Uprooted, she just passed away last year, but she was 99, and she was an incredible woman who really I think that I am 100%, and I will say it's not just me, it's like anyone in that family tree. We are known to be like full of love, full of joy, and full of like giving. She had 12 children, but some of the folks that were her children, I didn't even know were actually not her children because she just held them, like felt like they were like part of her womb. And it's interesting because hearing stories, they would go and sew clothes for all the kids in the neighborhood. And my grandmother, she had so many kids, right? So she was just making tons of food anyway. So then my mom and her siblings, they had to go and like hand it out. Oh, such and such is sick, go bring this over, or such and such is in the hospital. All the kids they could like sing, they would go and sing for like these families. And if you if you go into New Haven and you say, Do you know anyone that's a miller? That's my grandmother's married name, and everyone will say the same thing. Oh, they're just so amazing. They always show up for you. They're just really, really good. So I think that part of it just came from that bloodline of just feeling even when you don't have everything that you want, if you have more than you need, it is designed to be given to others. And it's interesting because I think sometimes there's like a lot of conversation around, don't let people give beyond or like take advantage of you, right? And I think that this is a gift. And I'll say this because I never saw my grandmother felt like she was taken advantage of. And it never even like dawned on her, which let me know that it didn't come from her own will to do, it came from like literally who she was made to be. Because when you're trying hard to do something, it feels like work and that you can feel like there's this continuum of I'm not being taken advantage of and I'm being taken advantage. That would have never crossed my grandmother's mind because that's just who she was. And then it became who all of her kids were, and then I am the grandchild. And then you look at any of the offspring of my cousins. This literally we can't get away from it. It's who we are, right? And we're all givers. Like my mom has a Girl Scout group, she just took them to South Africa, right? She's doing all these things because that is just we literally can't not be that. I'll tell you this story, and I love that you told me a little bit about grief and loss. And um it has been really hard because I mean, obviously, you don't know your life with someone, but to be 99, my grandmother literally, I almost felt like I was gonna be old and she was still gonna be there, right? Like I thought we would be old together because you just forgot at that point, you're like, you're never leaving, grandma, you know. Um, but I'll tell you about her last day. So she wakes up and for the last 40 years, she's had this caretaker because, like, when you're over a certain age, the state's like, we need to give you a caretaker. So my grandmother would wake up, make her own bed, cook her own food, clean the kitchen. And everybody, especially my generation of the cousins, were like, grandma, let this woman do all these things. And it wasn't for a while we can understand why my grandmother would do it. We're like, okay, is she just like independent? What is it? And really, it was like, well, Tiffany, if she needs to make my bed and cook and clean, then we can't hang out. And I was like, oh my gosh, that is so true. I didn't even think about that. So she's had this woman who's literally part of our family. You know, she comes to all the holidays because she we just know her. And um on her last day, she had the same thing. She woke up, made her bed, cooked herself breakfast, washed her dishes, and then it was time for dinner, and she had to get her blood drawn to check her sugar level and stuff. And it was like, we need to call the ambulance because sugar's low. And so my grandma was like, Okay, well, I don't want you to lose your job. Call the ambulance. So they called, and the EMTs came. They know her. I mean, they they're all the tire. And so they said, Mother Miller, we're gonna have to take you in because it's actually below what we're able to clear. And she's like, Okay, like you know, no worries, take me in. And they take her in. And at that time, the doctors are running tests and they realize my grandmother body is going septic, which means that is it. And thankfully, my aunt, who is also a giver, it was her birthday, and she had been caretaking for my uh grandmother, even though they had a like someone come in. She was a retired nurse, so this was like a perfect setup. And it was her birthday, and she called all of us and we got to say goodbye. And for me, I'm like, Are you sure? Like, I don't think she's really gonna leave. She's you guys told us that three months ago, and then nothing happened. Grandma's Brazilian. She's like, She said, Tiffany, the body has gone septic. And I said, Okay. So I hear the rest of the story, and she talks to everyone. And then my grandmother says, and she knows this hospital so well. She said, Donna, that's her daughter's my aunt. She said, Donna, could you put me in a wheelchair and wheel me around? And so she got wheeled around, and um, she said thank you to every single person in the hospital that she's ever known. She knew this was it, and she just wanted to say thank you and goodbye. And when she did that, she got in her bed, she asked my aunt to play her favorite song, and she didn't, and she smiled, and that was her last day, and she went peacefully, and it was the most beautiful journey. And I thought, in a day when you know it's your last, of course, she had been around for a long time. Instead of just like saying, I want my favorite meal, you know, if she can eat, I don't know what it means to be sad day. She said, I want to say thank you to everyone who's ever done anything for me. And that is the heart of like I come from, right? That's the lineage. And so when I think about uprooted and starting this, and why I decided to give my gifts towards this, is because I want people to have the ability to live a choice filled life. Because when they get to live a choice filled life, they get to live in joy and they get to live in love and they get to live in agency. And I think for dignity purposes, that is so important for me to actualize for every single person out there. Because we know what it's like when someone cannot live with an agency. It is really frustrating and oftentimes their needs are met, and that is at the detriment of love and joy. And I just saw that, again, for me, it is about accessing these higher education systems and credential programs. But really, for me, it's about allowing people to see who they could become and giving them the tools to do that. Whether they do that within our program in 12th grade or they have that reminder in their brain five years later, because they went through uprooted and they know how to get the things that they need and they learned how to be resourceful and to ask for clarity and guidance and help and support, those are the real things I care about. I a hundred percent care about kids graduating and getting a credential of value. But what I really care about is that they can repeat that at will at any point in their life. Because if I get a kid into college and they graduate and they still don't know how to replicate that, social capital was not embedded in them. So now they go back to their community, even if it's a new community, and then they have a child or they have a niece, they have a nephew, they have a godchild, whatever. If they can't replicate what they did themselves, we're still not better off. Because remember how I said I lived in a community where no one knew how to help me. They had a lot of encouragement, right? We're not talking about love and encouragement and all of these things. They had all of those things. But for some reason, there was a drain of social capital. And that could be one or two reasons. One, people aren't teaching for understanding. So when they come into your community, they say, we'll do it, we'll just sit on the side, we'll hold all the knowledge, we'll take it from here. Or they are just never invited to places where they can get it. And so for us, my North Star is knowing that we leave social capital behind. If for some reason Uprooted Academy goes away today, every community we have hit has been better off and they know the playbook of how to get someone into their next steps. And the beautiful thing about our work that was an unintended consequence that I think usually those are bad, but this was beautiful, is that we were helping these families get their kids into college. And in return, they started using our resources to put themselves back into college. Because again, it's never been about will. It's just been about who is being invited for opportunity. My mom, like I mentioned, is taking little girls to South Africa. My mother had never had a passport, been on a plane before me. But once she saw what I did, now she's doing it. Her and my dad are doing it. You know, like all of these things are because people are not given the dignity of knowledge and are either told you don't deserve it, or you're not capable to hold on to it. So let us do it for you. And I built uprooted to give people the gift of having dignity because I think that is really what the underlying thing people want to feel. And when they have dignity, they'll also be able to have agency and courage and everything else you need because we actually don't need more grit, right? We actually have everything inside of us. So again, that's why the first nonprofit was called unleashing potential. I'm not giving you potential. I said this to my therapy clients. I'm not healing you. You are healing yourself. I am the facilitator of healing, but everything that you need, you've already made it this far. You are not in a deficit. I just need to unleash it from you. And that is what I think my grandmother showcased. My parents showcased, I'm able to showcase maybe my little dog, that's the only offspring I got. So little Franklin, he's so compassionate. You know? And so the name uprooted. So my grandmother, who I talked about, she grew up on a farm and was able to tend the fields. And so when she moved to Connecticut with my grandfather, who I never met, he died in the military, but they moved to Connecticut and she would have her garden. And as a little kid, of course, I was in everything. So I wondered, Grandma, I want to help you move the pots and everything. So as a little girl, I was really concerned because I was like, Grandma, we can't move the pots. We can't move the plant from these pods. This is their home. We shouldn't do this. Like justice, right? This like silliness. And my grandmother taught me a really powerful lesson. She said, Tiffany, she didn't think about it. She said, Have we given them a lot of sunlight? I said, Yes. She said, Did we give them water? Yes. Did we give them nutrients? Yes. She said, so we care for them well, right? And she said, yes. She said, if we care for these plants well, when we uproot them and move them to a larger pot, they actually will not miss a beat and they will continue to thrive. But it's about the care. And so for me at Uprooted, we think about all of these things, even uprooted has like a negative connotation usually. But for us, I say, do we care for our students well? Did we nurture them for everything that they need? Did they feel like they got all of the love and the support and the encouragement? Then when they get uprooted from their home to go to this other place and we plant them there, they will thrive. And so literally all of the idea of uprooted is really about this idea of just developing people to be exactly who they're going to be, and we help to facilitate that potential being unleashed.

Sheela 27:40

Beautiful. Listening to your grandma's last day, it cared me up. And so thank you for sharing that story with us, Picnic. As I said, it's in your bloodline. And I see the connection of your grandma, her saying thank yous to all the people that she had met in her life, and how you see the potential in everybody else, and it showed in your first nonprofit organization and even in uprooter is a kind of giving access and pathways, but also bringing in the awareness that something exists, you know, and so beautiful. Usually I asked what moved you to offer that give the in service to others. That's natural to you in your family. I also wanted to talk about the ripple effect, but you already mentioned it and how it goes into different families and never they approach it to you. That's even beautiful, very powerful. Thank you for highlighting that. Any way you would like listeners to engage with or support of today economy?

Dr. Tiffany 28:58

Yeah, we have our website, you can sign up for supporter emails. That's where I share uh some of our wins, some of our things that we want to grow in. And maybe if you are an advisor or you're an expert of something, we love to just grow together. And like we're really facing a mountain for what we are trying to solve for our students. And so we know that we don't have all the expertise. So we love just like people doing micro mentoring sessions with me, anyone on my team. So any of that, so our website is just uprootedacademy.org. We're also on LinkedIn and I share a lot about that as well. And then I think just in like other ways, I think that we're always looking for really good board members. If that's something that's on your heart, you love the work that we're doing. If you have a huge way of vision and pushing me as a leader to think about that vision, I'm always open for board members. And then if you're connected to high schools in California or organizations outside of California, we're always happy to do that. And even funders, we are nonprofits. So we will always allow if people are looking for good places to give and want to see like really amazing returns. We have a great program where you literally just sponsor scholarships for kids. So all of your funds will go towards that. So that is kind of like ways that we get connected. I love speaking on this work, whether it's what does it mean to have a coordinated care approach to the college advising? What does it mean to use AI and technology responsibly? How do we leverage both human expertise and tools for capacity? Those are the things that I often take stages and panels. So if you have opportunities, I love to be able to not just take our information and keep it for ourselves, but if it helps other people, even other technology tools. We are not going to solve this on our own. So I just want to be able to give what we've learned to others, new founders. If you want to chat, I'm always happy to do that too.

Sheela 31:00

That brings us to the close of the podcast. But before that, what you might want to leave with someone sensing an unnamed something more are what I call the dash in themselves.

Dr. Tiffany 31:16

My suggestion for people is to think about the first time you could remember being hurt or harmed. And if you can't do that alone, there's really good therapeutic practices. Like I said, I was a former therapist. I did EMDR and Beyond 12 for over a decade, and I think they're super powerful. But I say that because at that point, that inflection is when we shift who we were to now adapting to survival. And let's say something were to happen at nine, right? Even if something like you got your first bad grade in class and you remember how ashamed you were, get that feel that then try to connect with the eight-year-old self. That is the purest version of you that has the gift that's untarnished and not afraid to be unleashed. And I think that it's the part of you that wants to guide you in this next stage. So go back to the moment you feel like that caused me so much shame, embarrassment, fear, uncertainty, um, fatigue, any of that stuff that like kind of disrupts her nervous system. Go there and then go back one year before and then ask yourself, who was I then? That is probably the purest version of yourself that actually wants to exist in the space.

Sheela 32:40

Oh, beautiful, very unique insight. Once again, thank you, Tiffany, for coming to this DT Dash T podcast and also sharing incredible stories that are inspiring and motivational to me personally. And also sitting here and looking at you and see that beautiful smile you and your passion when you speak of your grandma and that nonprofit organization opportunity academy. Appreciate your work. Thank you. Thank you so much.