Chicago Defender
When Conrad Timbers-Ausar was a student in Chicago Public Schools, “the trajectory [he] was on was not where he wanted to end up.” He attended three different high schools within four years and was getting into trouble. Like most families in his neighborhood, Timber-Ausar, his mom, and his five younger siblings struggled with poverty. At 16, he added the responsibility of fatherhood.
To turn his life around, he says, he “had to start focusing on the future, instead of the present.” He listened to his educator-mother, who taught him that “when you don’t see immediate results, you have to have faith and believe in yourself.”