Power of PEF: Your Zip Code Is Not Your Destiny
PhillyGoes2College is Powered by the Philadelphia Education Fund, which is celebrating 40 years of supporting students this year. In the weeks leading up to PEF’s June 4 Anniversary Gala, we’ll be sharing stories highlighting its power and impact in empowering Philadelphia students to pursue postsecondary success!
We caught up with LaToya Hackney, a proud North Philadelphia native from Tioga. She is a lawyer of 27 years, a Philadelphia Education Fund board member of about ten, and a co-chair of PEF’s 40th Anniversary Gala. Before any of that, she was a kid in a Philadelphia public school whose mother had a plan.
“A lot of the negative statistics that impact so many of our young people in the city were present in my life,” she told us. Raised by a single teenage mother. Lost her father to violence as a young child. “But those things don’t determine what a person can become.”
Her mother’s plan was education, and Philadelphia public schools were where it started. Those schools took her to the top of her class at Central High School. From there, Stanford University, with honors. From there, Harvard Law School. Twenty-seven years a practicing lawyer.
“Your life isn’t dictated by the zip code that you start out in, and it shouldn’t be.”
That sentence is the reason she gives PEF her time. Hackney came to PEF first through the Scholars Committee, the group that decides those last dollars that get a student off to college. Then a decade on the board. She also married an alum of the program, so she has known PEF a long time from a lot of angles.
What keeps her here is who PEF chooses to serve. “PEF works with students who may not necessarily be high flyers through high school.” The student with a few missteps. A few stumbles. Not straight A’s. PEF wraps its arms around that student anyway, as long as the student wants to move forward. Emotional support. Confidence. Applications. Steering them onto the right track so they have the grades to apply. “PEF sees what a student can become. PEF sees the future and then lays it out and lends a hand and helps guide that student there.”
She has a story she calls quintessential PEF. A student was doing well, on his way to college, when he hit a snag. He was preparing for an internship and needed professional attire. He did not have a suit. For a lot of people, a suit is not a hurdle. For this student, it was the thing standing between him and the next step. PEF put out a call to its board members. They rallied. They made sure he had everything he needed. “Every detail of what a student needs to move forward, PEF is right there.”
Hackney is clear that her own road was not about being exceptional. “The difference between me and other students who maybe haven’t traveled that road is not because I’m so great or wonderful. It’s because I’ve had opportunities in my life.” Her work on the board is an effort to build that same set of opportunities for somebody else. For her and her husband Otis, an educator and an alum, it is a joint effort and a shared belief.
Ask her about the next 40 years and she goes somewhere unexpected. She hopes that one day, if things were as they should be, a PEF would not be necessary at all. Until that day, she wants PEF to stay pivotal, evolving with the workforce, helping students marry new technical skills like AI with the durable ones like communication.
A North Philadelphia kid became a lawyer, and then spent ten years making sure the door stayed open behind her. That is the power of PEF.
PEF’s 40th Anniversary Gala is on June 4, 2026, and LaToya Hackney is one of its co-chairs. Join us in celebrating 40 years of college access in Philadelphia: CLICK HERE
