Giving Back: Public Education Advocate Erika Wilkins Returns Home to Support DPS
Editor’s Note: This story was originally published on DPS’s website as a DPS Notable spotlight. Light edits have been made for style and organizational purposes.
Born and raised in Durham, Erika Wilkins left home to pursue a career in education. In 2022 she returned to serve at the DPS Foundation, an organization created in 2018 as a community-led effort to support and raise funds and awareness of Durham’s public schools. Erika has led as the organization’s executive director since 2023.
Through her role at the foundation and in the community, Wilkins is now giving back to the Durham Public Schools district and profession that she says gave her so much during her formative years as a student.
“We’re here to bring the community’s resources alongside schools and families wherever it’s needed,” said Wilkins, who understands the constraints of having high hopes for students all the while knowing that critical resources are out of reach.
Multi-Faceted Support
The DPS Foundation is a community-led nonprofit committed to fostering a more innovative, equitable public school system where every student can flourish. The foundation fulfills its mission by raising funds, partnering with schools to reinforce best practices throughout the district, advancing equity, and strengthening connections throughout the community.
During the 2023-24 school year, the foundation awarded nearly $250,000 to 39 schools through its Innovation Grants and the WHOLE Schools Fund. The foundation also raised awareness about its college scholarship applications, doubling the number of applications and resulting in $62,500 in college scholarships to 27 DPS seniors from 13 schools; DPSF is currently accepting scholarship applications.
In 2024, An Evening to Shine—an annual arts and performance event the Foundation co-presents with DPS—drew 1,500 guests to the Durham Performing Arts Center and raised money for college scholarships; the event will return on Feb. 11. The Foundation also supported more than 40 educators through mentorship and professional development opportunities and supported 130 DPS families through its family engagement work.
DPS Foundation Executive Director Erika Wilkins interacts with a local elementary school student.
A Background in Education
After attending UNC-Chapel Hill on a full scholarship, Wilkins taught elementary school in Baltimore City Public Schools for four years. As a teacher, she created personalized materials and experiences for her students that resulted in a 93 percent success rate in annual student progress in their core subjects. She later served as a senior effectiveness coach and client team director with The New Teacher Project (TNTP).
As a teacher, Wilkins said she was filled with the same exuberance that she felt from the teachers and administrators she had as a student in Durham.
She said her experiences at Southwest Elementary and Jordan High Schools helped mold her dreams and feed her fascination with the art of teaching and being an educator. Attending school in Durham was “everything I expected,” she said.
Wilkins went on to serve as vice president of equity and learning at the New Teacher Center, then became an educational consultant with Valburn Consulting. While there, she conducted audits and assessments designed to help nonprofit and educational leaders tackle disparities and put impactful equity-focused initiatives in place.
Along the way, she earned a master’s degree from Johns Hopkins University, and with the world at her fingertips, she chose to bring her gifts and newly acquired knowledge back to Durham.
Coming Home
Author H.L. Balcomb said, “Regardless the destination, all roads lead home.” That was true for Wilkins, who was hired as deputy executive director at the Foundation in May 2022, then took the reins as executive director in July 2023.
“I had the pleasure of serving in senior leadership roles in education organizations for eight years before returning to Durham to be closer to my parents and put down my kids’ roots. I love this city,” she said.
The homecoming has been fast-paced and fruitful. With Wilkins’s leadership, expertise, and passion, the organization has provided steady support to school communities, even as DPS has wrangled with pay disputes, staff morale, and the need for stronger legislative support while keeping its focus on student achievement.
“It is important for us to ensure we’re not putting our thoughts on the issues but to do our due diligence. I know DPS. It’s amazing, but it has its challenges,” Wilkins said. “Naming that is so important. And I know the solutions to the challenges already exist in Durham.”
Giving back was central to how Wilkins was raised, so returning to Durham is a significant move. Acknowledging the space she occupies is just as important, she said.
“I’m a Black woman leading an organization, coming in to support a fantastic founder. The [Foundation] board saw something in me. I felt honored and also proud.”
“It is important for us to ensure we’re not putting our thoughts on the issues but to do our due diligence. I know DPS. It’s amazing, but it has its challenges. Naming that is so important. And I know the solutions to the challenges already exist in Durham.”
A Foundation for the Future
Erika Wilkins still remembers the influence of principals like Charles Guess at Southwest Elementary School and Susan Stewart Taylor at Jordan High School, where she graduated in 2005.
“Southwest was such a welcoming space. Mr. Guess did magic, and I couldn’t wait to go to school,” said Wilkins, who also fondly remembers retired Southwest principal-turned-volunteer Dr. Dolores Paylor, who was “so warm.”
“I loved going to school because of the people. It was very much a community,” she said. Wilkins remains close with friends she made in elementary school and participates in alumni activities.
She also remembers Dr. Donald Jones, now principal at Lakewood Montessori, as her U.S. history teacher. “He taught it accurately, and he made me like history,” Wilkins said.
As a student in the academically gifted program, Wilkins remembers hitting a snag on one particular test and there being a school-level discussion about the possibility of pulling her from the program. Her parents were contacted, and her teacher spoke on her behalf.
“‘We know this is just a bad day for Erika,’” Wilkins recounted her teacher saying. She was retested and remained in the program, thanks to that teacher. She carried that experience and others like it with her when she became a teacher in the Baltimore City Schools.
“It really shaped my first year of teaching,” she said of that fourth-grade experience. She said she later told her mother about a student for whom she advocated, reminding herself of her own teacher’s decision to give voice to her struggles. Wilkins kept her student back at recess to practice her flashcards.
“I learned a different way to share information and fought hard for that student to have a second chance very much because of that elementary experience,” she said. “I saw my teachers as having a partnership with my parents. I wanted to partner with parents as a teacher, not a savior complex, and get past the fancy language. To say, ‘This is what’s happening, but this is what I know your child can do, and this is how we can show up.’ It’s a choice you have to make.”
Wilkins said she believes in having high expectations for kids, along with identifying resources, “to make sure they meet the bar. I knew that was a successful tactic because that’s what I experienced in school.”
Her senior year high school math teacher helped shift Wilkins’s perspective. Her interest in going to college was “zero” at the time, with her sights set on becoming a cosmetologist. After her math teacher asked her how she planned to carry out the business of doing hair, she transferred into a business specialization at Jordan High School to learn how to be an entrepreneur. Wilkins eventually joined the Distributive Education Clubs of America (DECA), which prepares students for careers in business, and won a state award through her participation.
Her teacher encouraged her to apply to colleges, partnered her with her counselor to work on the applications during lunch, and even paid for her applications. She applied to UNC-Chapel Hill and N.C. State University but eventually accepted a full scholarship at UNC. She also received a scholarship from the DPS Scholarship Foundation (which merged with the DPS Foundation in 2021). She now leads the organization that is continuing the scholarship foundation’s legacy of acknowledging academic skill in DPS students and easing the financial burden of college—something she benefitted from herself.