Alumnus gives back
“The Daveeds, the Chinakas … we’re super excited for them,” says James Kass. But when it comes to success stories, “I think of people like Brandon Santiago.”
“In the world I was living in before Youth Speaks, there wasn’t a context for the different intelligence, or different talents, that I had,” says Santiago, who grew up in Lakeview with his mother and one of his four sisters.
After dropping out of high school in his sophomore year, Santiago re-enrolled, only to drop out again as a senior. Bored and frustrated, without a diploma or a job, Santiago tagged along with a friend who was doing a slam.
“It was a room full of people from all over the Bay Area, listening to this young black man,” says Santiago, who is of Puerto Rican descent. “That inspired me. Like, wow, there’s a platform where folks listen to people like us.”
Too uncertain of himself to try a slam — “In high school, I didn’t even want to raise my hand when I had the right answer,” he says — Santiago volunteered for Spokes, a Youth Speaks mentoring program.
“I started picking up chairs and sweeping floors,” he says. He eventually facilitated groups, coordinated outreach and joined the staff. “If you’re a young boy who’s made a lot of mistakes and you’re also charming, usually you’re seen as a con man,” Santiago
says. “At Youth Speaks it was like, ‘We see something else in you. We see the ability to connect as an educator and a mentor.’ ”
By trusting Santiago, Youth Speaks empowered him to trust — and believe in — himself. He went on to earn a bachelor’s in cultural anthropology from San Francisco State and an academic scholarship to the University of San Francisco, where he is completing a master’s in international and multicultural education. He uses his leadership skills daily at the Future Proj- ect, directing programming for teens.
“We tend to idealize the moments that are glamorous, like the first moment that you got onstage,” Santiago says. “But Dennis Kim showed me how to write email. Lauren Whitehead taught me the art of listening to young people. Youth Speaks showed me how to communicate effectively. Those are the things that I’m the most grateful for.”
Santiago, now 28, is also a gifted poet. He captured his early experience, and that of so many other people of color, in the epic poem “Brown vs. the Board of Education”:
“Sometimes I feel like brown skin is the cardinal sin
and sometimes I feel like Moses wandering
an ocean of dust searching for my promised land.”
The teen who never raised his hand in class will emcee the Grand Slam at Davies Symphony Hall, and he can’t wait to share the experience with the next generation.
“For a young boy from the hood,” he says, “a thousand people listening to what I have to say, and me owning that space for those 2½ minutes — it made me feel like I belong.”
— Claudia Bauer