Otis Hackney ’06G is a believer in the transformative power of education ­– he’s lived it as a student and seen it in action as a teacher, principal, and chief education officer for the Mayor’s Office of Education in Philadelphia. Now he’ll be helping to transform even more lives through the “I Have a Dream” Foundation (IHDF).

Hackney became president and CEO of IHDF in November 2022. The organization empowers young people to achieve their dreams through education and mentoring, providing students, their families, and communities with financial and emotional support to overcome social inequity.

IHDF was born in 1981 when businessman Eugene M. Lang returned to P.S. 121 in East Harlem, which he had attended 50 years earlier, to speak to a class of graduating sixth graders. “Work hard, and you’ll succeed” was the planned theme of his message. But upon learning from the principal on his way to the podium that an astounding three-quarters of the school’s students would most likely never finish high school, Lang decided instead to make a bold promise to those 61 sixth graders – to pay full college tuition for each one of them who stayed in high school and graduated. Of the 54 who remain in contact with the organization, more than 90% have earned their high school diplomas or GED certificates and 60% have pursued higher education. 

“Eugene Lang was greatly impacted by having witnessed Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s ‘I Have a Dream’ speech,” Hackney said. “He established the foundation to help even more students, who we call ‘Dreamers,’ and for more than 40 years, thousands of them have been impacted since that original group. IHDF definitely embodies Martin Luther King’s dream of what he hoped to see for the United States.”

“'I Have a Dream' Foundation definitely embodies Martin Luther King’s dream of what he hoped to see for the United States”

The organization, which has grown to operate “I Have a Dream” programs in nine cities and served more than 20,000 Dreamers, focuses not just on the cohort of sponsored students, but also on their families and communities. “We start with students who are in first or second grade and provide the resources needed to help get them to graduation, through academic and social-emotional resources, after-school and summer programming, and college scholarships,” Hackney says.

The road to educational leadership was not a straight one for Hackney. Raised in West Philadelphia, he didn’t immediately see the value in a college education. After working for a few years after high school in his father’s HVAC business, he eventually decided earning a degree was the way to have more control over his life. He enrolled at Temple University as a secondary math major. 

He began his career in education as a math teacher in Germantown, Pennsylvania. After earning a master’s in educational leadership at Lehigh, he became an assistant principal in South Philadelphia High School. But it was his next role, as the first Black principal at upscale suburban Springfield Township High School in Pennsylvania’s Montgomery County, that allowed Hackney to see firsthand the impact made by better resources and a sense of community surrounding the school.

He took that model to his next position, this time as principal at South Philadelphia High School. There he helped unite a school that was struggling with violence caused by racial and cultural division, transforming it into a “community school” by offering programming and support services to students and the community. 

Hackney was able to apply that successful model city-wide when appointed by Philadelphia Mayor Jim Kenney to serve as chief education officer in the Mayor’s Office of Education. There Hackney oversaw several major initiatives for the city of Philadelphia: PHLpreK, Community Schools, returning the School District of Philadelphia to local control with a mayoral-appointed school board, free internet access for school-age children with PHLConnectED, and the Octavius Catto Scholarship with Community College of Philadelphia.

Does he believe education is the “great equalizer?”

“I think education is a huge part of that equation,” Hackney says. “Does it overcome every aspect of systemic racism, classism, sexism? No, it doesn’t overcome that, but it positions you to better manage those challenges, to break and dismantle some of those systems. Education is an important part of that – that’s why I care so much about it.”