Korbey White and IYT Wisconsin are Helping Young Black Men Reach Their Academic Potential: Helping Young Black Men Become Scholars
In addition to his duties as the director of Improve Your Tomorrow Wisconsin, Korbey White is also a member of the Verona Area School Board and the Madison College Board of Trustees
by Jonathan Gramling
When Korbey White, executive director of Improve Your Tomorrow Wisconsin, was growing up In Watts, CA, the scars of the 1965 Watts riot were still evident on buildings in the community. It could be a very desperate place, especially for young Black men. He lost many friends and families to gang violence. And White had an experience similar to the one that sparked the Watts riots, a police stop.
“I can remember the day after I graduated from high school being pulled over by the LAPD for not having a front license plate on my car,” White said. “I had the front license plate in the car. I still have it. It’s a classic 64 Chevy Impala. I told the police officer, ‘I don’t have it on because I don’t like how the bracket looks on the car. But here’s the front license plate. It’s here with me.’ That led to my friend and I laying on the ground with guns pulled on us. We were arrested and thrown in the back of the car. We were beaten up on the way to the police station. When we got to court, the judge let the police officers have it. He said, ‘These two young men are trying to better themselves going on to college. And you are harassing them for not having a plate, which he did have with him.’ The case was dismissed. That’s just a small example of some of the stuff I faced. If I knew then what I know now, 17-year-old Korbey would have definitely sued. My mom was just happy I was alive.”
White was lucky having the right kind of guidance and structure in his life. White succeeded and it is his success that delivered him from the desperation of Watts.
“I ended up at UW-Madison,” White recalled. “That’s what got me to Madison, a full ride to UW-Madison. I majored in international business relations and French. I absolutely loved the university. I wish we had more diversity at the university. When I was there, it was .9 percent Black. Now I hear that it is over two percent. That’s not a big jump from 30 years ago.”
When he graduated in 1999, White went to work for the state for the first part of his professional career. By 2020 when he joined 100 Black Men of Madison during COVID, he was the health program manager for the state of Wisconsin. Dr. Floyd Rose and the 100 put his talents and experience to work.
“Dr. Rose put me in charge of the wellness program with 100 Black Men,” White said. “From there, I got heavily involved in the community making sure people everywhere had access to COVID testing and vaccines. Right across from here at Penn Park, I set up a vaccination site. Fitchburg Pharmacy and Walmart helped with testing and vaccines.”
White was smitten with the spirit of community service. He was appointed to the Verona Area School Board in 2022 and elected to the board in 2023. He was appointed to the Madison College Board of Trustees in 2024 and was also voted in as a Wisconsin delegate to the 2024 Democratic National Convention.
And it was around this time that White started hearing about Improve Your Tomorrow.
“Two guys out of Sacramento, CA, Michael Lynch and Michael Casper, started this non-profit Improve Your Tomorrow back in April 2013,” White said. “They did it because they were losing friends. Several friends had been murdered. They themselves had hardships, homelessness, gangs, drugs, you name it. They went on to college. They wanted to show friends in their neighborhoods that college is very possible. So they formed this nonprofit with $2,500. It’s been around for 13 years. We operate in California, Nevada, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Maryland and Mississippi.”
They contacted Dr. Ruben Anthony Jr. when they had interest in starting an initiative in Wisconsin. And Anthony passed the baton to White.
“The great Ruben Anthony called me up in 2024,” White recalled. “He said, ‘Korbey, there’s this company out of Sacramento, CA that is looking to expand. To Wisconsin. They want a landscape analysis of what education looks like for Black and Brown kids in the state of Wisconsin. That’s not my wheelhouse, but it’s yours. Can you put something together for them?’ I said, ‘Absolutely.’ And Ruben said, ‘I’ll hook you up with the CEO, set up a meeting between you two.’ He did and I met with Michael Lynch. It took me about a month to gather all the information and put it together. And their jaws were on the floor. They knew it was bad in Wisconsin, but they didn’t know it was that bad.”
Especially with his background in education, White was the perfect conduit in Madison.
“When I presented the information to them, they said, ‘Korbey, can you set up a meeting with any one of the school districts in Wisconsin just so that we can present what Improve Your Tomorrow is,” White recalled. “So I called my friends, Dr. Joe Gothard and Dr. Tremayne Clardy and set up meetings with the Madison Metropolitan and Verona Area School Districts. The CEO flew in and we presented Improve Your Tomorrow to them. Dr. Gothard right away said, ‘Yeah, let’s give this a shot and see what it does.’ That led to our launch October 13, 2025 in the Madison Metropolitan School District. Verona saw the impact we had in those few months, just that semester in Madison, and Dr. Clardy said, ‘Let’s give it a shot in Verona.’ We launched in Verona February 18, 2026.”
In total, three sites were launched during the 2025-2026 school year. Improve Your Tomorrow Wisconsin was set to launch.
“We had 75 students,” White said. “We have 25 at Capitol High, 25 at LaFollette and 25 at Verona Area High School.”
In essence, IYT is a college prep program for high school students who have the talent and intellect to achieve on the collegiate level, but lack the belief in themselves.
“It is a college access and career path program that targets Black and Brown males from grade six through college,” White said. “And we are specifically targeting those brothers who have a 2.0 GPA or below. And that is our secret sauce. It seems like in this area, the kids who are doing well are in these magnificent programs, which they should be. But we tend to forget about those kids who aren’t doing so well. We write them off and just forget about them. ‘They’ll find a way.’ Or ‘We’ll just pass them through. They’re not going anywhere anyhow, so we’re not going to deal with them.’ And those are the kids whom we targeted.”
IYT isn’t a Saturday or after school program. It’s happening during the school day.
“The second part of our secret sauce is we are a program that is actually there during the school day,” White said. “We’re one of the core classes that they can select. We mentor. And when I say mentor, we’re not only looking at their academics. If they need help in a certain class, we’re working with them. We’re working with their teacher to make sure they are on track to pass whatever course they are taking. We also make sure they are fed, that they have clothing. And we are in contact with their families at a minimum once per week.”
IYT also has a structured curriculum.
“The class is the length of the other classes at the school,” White said. “We have a very structured curriculum that our national headquarters has put together for us that we follow. 2-3 times per week. We have a workshop that’s based on various topics concerning our brothers. You can imagine what some of the topics are right now given the situation here in Madison. We’ve created safe spaces to discuss the Corey Ruiz murder. We covered the gubernatorial election. We just talk about various topics.”
They are also working with the students to prep them for college and guiding them in how to get there.
We walk them through a helpful process about various opportunity gaps that they face daily,” White said. “We also cover academically FASFA, where the money is to apply to college because a lot of brothers don’t even know where to start,” White said. “Their families don’t even know where to start. We cover that in great detail. How do you apply to college? Where do you want to go to college? We take them on college tours. We took them to Madison College and Edgewood University because a lot of our brothers never stepped foot on a university campus. Their minds were just blown.”
And one thing that universities look at during the application process is community service.
“Going into this next year, there will be lots of community involvement based on our partnerships that we have with various organizations,” White said. “Our brothers will be involved in a lot of the back to school activities around town like the JP Back to School event. They will be involved in a lot of activities. This year, just to launch, we were basically trying to set everything up and it’s been happening so fast.”
For many students, summertime results in the students to lose some of the skills that they had learned during thee previous school year. Not IYT students.
“All we’ve done is wrapped our arms around them and showed them that we care and we believe in them,” White said. “And that has caused them to believe in themselves and believe in each other. They hold each other accountable. That’s the most beautiful thing to watch.”
Initial indicators show that the program is working.
During a visit to the Verona Site, Governor Tony Evers, a lifelong educator, was impressed by what he saw.
“The brothers were so excited to meet the governor,” White said. “He asked them the why. And hearing directly from the brothers why they joined the program and what they are getting out of it in the first year. One of the brothers said, ‘The belief in self-empowerment.’ When he said that, we were like, ‘WOW!’ I want people to know that this program is catching on like wildfire. And it’s because of the transformation that our educators are seeing in the brothers who used to be less engaged.”
Governor Evers endorsed the project.
The program has had an immediate impact at Capitol High.
“Principal Victor at Capitol told us before we launched at their school, they averaged one high school graduate per year who went on to college,” White said. “They had seven this year. All seven are members of Improve Your Tomorrow.”
IYT Wisconsin is generating some interest due to its initial success.
“Some other school districts are interested in us being in their schools, we’re preparing for expansion,” White said. “I mentioned that we are in Capitol, LaFollette and Verona . We just signed an MOU. We’ll be at Madison East this fall. They approved a three-year expansion plan, so we’ll be in various sites over the next three years in Madison. We met with Milwaukee Public Schools. Milwaukee wants us there. We’ll be presenting the program to Milwaukee in two weeks and they’ll decide which sites they want us in.”
On September 30th, IYT will be showcasing the program in Verona from 10:45 to noon.
“That is an opportunity for anyone interested in seeing the program in real time: donors, families, elected officials,” White said. “We’re going to have the brothers there from Verona. We’re going to do a workshop and show everyone the secret sauce and how we operate. And then we’re going to have a roundtable where we are going to have principals of the sites we currently operate in to tell everyone what they’ve seen at their sites, the transformation. It’s been incredible.”
The students from Improve Your Tomorrow are now excited about their prospects.
“Now you can’t get them to be quiet,” White said about students who used to sit quiet in the back of the class. “They are so excited about school. They are excited about the potential and the possibilities of going on to college or a career path that may not include college. We’re helping to guide them either way.”
There are 75 students whose future looks bright thanks to IYT Wisconsin. And there will be many who follow in their footsteps. On to bigger and better things.
