About Us

Our History

OppNet was founded as a direct response to the inequitable structures of access, college opportunity, and professional mobility that disproportionately affect students of color and students from low-income communities. When co-founders Jessica Pliska and Brian Weinstein realized as undergraduates at Yale the stark reality of the opportunity gap – the perpetual stifling of resources, access, and free choice from particular groups and communities over others – the vision for The Opportunity Network was clarified. Since its founding in 2003, OppNet has grown its programming and its institutional footprint to ensure its core goal is realized: reimagining networks as sources of power to catalyze opportunity and access for students from historically underrepresented communities, so they can drive their visions of college and career success forward.

Our Mission

The Opportunity Network ignites the drive, curiosity, and agency of underrepresented students on their paths to and through college and into thriving careers, powered by our commitment to access and community.

Our Vision

The Opportunity Network envisions a nation connected through vibrant communities and networks actively in pursuit of social justice and educational equity – a nation where all young people can freely create their own path to enduring success that honors their passions, ambitions, and full identities.

Our Active Core Values

The OppNet community is connected by the following set of Active Core Values that we channel daily to power our work to realize a nation where each and every student can freely access college and career opportunity.

Galvanize Community While Celebrating The Individual

We recognize the critical importance of creating spaces throughout our work where all feel that they belong and the fullness of their identity is affirmed. In doing so, we are able to build a culture of community united by inclusion in service of the personal and professional growth of all.

Maximize The Power of Storytelling

We work with the understanding that storytelling can amplify student and community voices to break through echo chambers and shift field discourse towards real change – informing, inspiring, and moving people to actively create a more equitable world.

Center Social and Racial Equity Relentlessly

We commit to designing all pedagogical practices, engagement activities, and programming in line with our vision for realizing social and racial equity in this nation, recognizing our country’s long history of structural oppression at the intersection of race and class across primary, secondary, and higher education and the professional sector – while also challenging both our role and the nonprofit ecosystem’s in perpetuating it.

Activate Solutions Through Assets, Not Deficits

We guide our work with a commitment to bolstering the strengths, talents, ambitions, and already existing assets of students, partners, and communities – over and above perceived needs – to generate solutions that drive their individual and unique visions of success forward.

Pursue Impact That Lasts

We approach all our work alongside students and communities with the fundamental goal of building success that sustains, understanding the organizational imperative we have to innovate, iterate, and collaborate with all stakeholders – from donors to families to college admissions counselors – in order to do so.