Six Colleges, 16 Years and One Promise Kept

Amber's path to a degree was never a straight line. Sixteen years in the making, it's a story about what happens when you refuse to quit.

It began with promise.

While wrapping up high school in Georgia, Amber enrolled in a dual enrollment program, getting a head start on college before most of her peers. But what followed was a years-long navigation through six different institutions, each with its own requirements, bureaucracy, and set of hurdles.

 Some experiences moved her forward; others set her back to square one — losing her Hope scholarship, owing tuition she couldn't pay, and watching transcripts get lost in the mail. Through it all, Amber was doing far more than studying — she was raising her kids, caring for her elders, and working to bring in income her family depended on. Every time one institution fell short, she picked up and tried the next. The credits accumulated, slowly. The degree stayed just out of reach.

In 2015, she found a different kind of on-ramp: Year Up United. The promise of professional training with a salary drew her in, and the program delivered. Amber moved into project management, completed an internship, and landed a role as a Scrum Master at Cox Automotive. Then the pandemic hit. A layoff sent her back to school online — two more institutions — and she ultimately earned her Associate's degree. She was determined to keep going, but unresponsive departments and transcripts lost in translation made the path to a Bachelor's feel impossible.

Six institutions. Years of effort. An Associate's degree finally in hand — but the Bachelor's still felt out of reach.

That's when a friend from Year Up United mentioned Duet. Amber was surprised she hadn't heard of it sooner. Then she got on a call and heard something that stopped her in her tracks: someone would actually sit with her and walk her through the entire process. "I've been doing this by myself for over a decade," she thought. One call later, everything shifted. Because of the credits she had worked so hard to accumulate across those six schools, she was able to transfer directly into a Bachelor's program at Southern New Hampshire University.

With her husband's encouragement, a flexible work schedule, and the steady guidance of her coach LA, Amber dove in. LA's reliable, adaptable support helped her balance coursework with the demands of a full family life and a busy career as Sales Operations Manager at the National Association of Black Accountants.

The final stretch tested her. A major convention and a bout of COVID collided with her last weeks of coursework. She tracked her progress closely, leaned into professor feedback, and pushed through. The "Well done" email for her final project arrived while she was at Animal Kingdom with her kids — a fitting, joyful close to a 16-year journey.

"This degree represents more than education," Amber said. "It represents resilience, discipline, faith — and a promise I made to myself to finish what I started."

"This degree represents more than education, it represents resilience, discipline, faith — and a promise I made to myself to finish what I started."

In November 2025, Amber traveled from Georgia to walk across the stage at Southern New Hampshire University. Her teenage daughter was watching. With her degree in hand and new free time ahead, she's looking forward to pouring into her volunteer work — and everything else she put on hold to get here.

Year Up United is one of Duet’s national partners.