Alumni
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Alexa Levitt
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Alexa was first empowered to serve her local community growing up when she got involved as a one-to-one aid in a tutoring program for children with intellectual disabilities during high school. She fell in love with the kids and was fascinated by the assistive technology used in the classrooms to work to level the playing field for nonverbal individuals. This ignited her pursuit towards a career in accessible technology and using it as a tool to open a world of possibilities for people with substantial untapped potential.
Alexa has spent her first three years at Vanderbilt focusing her efforts on innovative solutions to better the lives of people with disabilities. As a student ambassador at the Wond’ry Center for Innovation and Entrepreneurship, Alexa works in collaboration with the Initiative for Autism in the Workforce to bridge the gap between high-tech companies in Nashville that are experiencing unmet demand and a population of unemployed, yet highly-skilled and capable individuals with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD). Alexa’s personal investment in this approach is rooted in her familial connection, as she has two younger brothers on the Autism Spectrum who recently graduated from high school and are seeking out the next opportunities in their personal life trajectories. She wholeheartedly understands this challenge from a sibling perspective as well as from someone who will enter the workforce within the next year. Additionally, Alexa acts as a peer mentor in the Next Steps AmbassaDore program.
During her Junior year, Alexa had the opportunity to get involved with UNLOCKED, a Nashville-based social enterprise which was founded by Ingram alum, Alexis Cook. Alexa immediately connected with the mission, which is to create opportunities for people transitioning out of homelessness through employment and a sense of community. It was especially exciting for her to join a team that provides autonomous, sustainable work and housing such that the employees gain the independence and dignity they had been lacking before presented with this job opportunity. She feels grateful to have connected with a fellow Ingram Scholar in this context, for she has become a mentor and inspiration to Alexa.
Alexa has continued to explore her passions for disability advocacy and grassroots entrepreneurism for underserved populations in international communities. In high school, she spent time in an orphanage for with children with disabilities who had been abandoned by their families, located in a village outside Phnom Penh, Cambodia. There, she worked with occupational therapists to plant a sensory garden and teach the children sustainable agricultural skills. During the summer of 2018, she spent six weeks in Tanzania, working with young women suffering from HIV and AIDS to build and grow their small businesses by leveraging tangible skills, raising capital for and implementing programs to cut costs of raw materials, and teaching budgeting and saving strategies to help the women support themselves and their families. She feels as though her experiences abroad have clarified the discrepancy between business and educational practices in underdeveloped areas and those in the United States. In addition to having gained a sense of cultural competence around these issues, she appreciates having learned the value of taking a step back from the traditional western approach of prioritizing efficiency and instead examining issues through a more holistic lens.
Alexa looks forward to leveraging her position as an Ingram Scholar in her Senior year, during which she will be an intern for a mission-driven technology start-up, utilize her current community involvement to lay a path for her career curating education and employment opportunities for individuals with disabilities, and continue her commitment to serving her local community and the community at large.