Education can profoundly shape our lives. Drew Martin, a 2002 McIntire grad who became the CEO of Thrive Scholars in the summer of 2024, is living proof of that. He’s seen just how impactful education can be—both in his own life and in the lives of countless others.
Raised in Boston, MA, and drawn to UVA for its academic excellence and affordability, Martin reflects on his decision to attend the McIntire School with both pragmatism and ambition. Yet his time at UVA laid the foundation for a career path that would ultimately shift from a focus on personal success stoked by the dot-com boom to a mission of creating opportunities for those who were less fortunate and without the proper support for lasting, meaningful change.
Martin graduated from McIntire during the economic downturn of 2002, and the instability of the job market prompted him to consider alternative paths. Having grown up with a mother who taught in the Boston Public Schools system, he was raised with a strong service orientation in his family. And so, what began as a practical decision—joining Teach For America (TFA), with an eye toward Harvard Business School—quickly turned into a lifelong commitment to education.
Discovering a Passion for Education
After joining TFA, Martin’s initial intent was straightforward: teach for a couple of years, maybe write an education exposé, and move on. However, stepping into a fifth-grade classroom in the South Bronx fundamentally altered his trajectory. “I got into the classroom and fell in love,” he says—despite the fact the school was seriously under resourced and made his entry into the profession a challenge of the highest order. “I had 32 kids in my classroom, but I had 29 desks and 28 chairs. We had 17 books in our library, and there was no curriculum,” he recalls.
That initial passion for the work was instantly tested, but it never waned. “Teaching is a very full-time job,” Martin notes, acknowledging how his plans to write the next teacher’s version of the 1980s Wall Street book Liar’s Poker were promptly abandoned as he became immersed in the challenges and rewards of education.
It was during this period that he learned about KIPP, a national network of charter schools emphasizing high expectations and a no-excuses approach to education. The contrast between his resource-strapped classroom and the structured, supportive environment at KIPP captivated him. “They let me start a school when I was 25, which is wild,” Martin reflects. Despite his youth, Martin embraced the challenge and moved to Newark, NJ, where he founded a KIPP school and dedicated nearly a decade of his life to building an institution focused on student success.
Creating Lasting Change in New Jersey
Martin’s time with KIPP was marked by a deep commitment to improving educational outcomes in underserved communities. In both Newark and Camden, NJ, he not only focused on academics but also took on the monumental task of renovating dilapidated school buildings and creating environments where students could thrive. “We bought old buildings and gut-renovated them,” he recalls. “I probably did $200 million worth of construction during my time at KIPP.”
Beyond infrastructure, Martin understood that education required more than just quality teaching. In Camden, for example, he built partnerships with local organizations to address the broader needs of his students. “We built a health clinic within our school,” Martin says, highlighting the challenges students faced, from inadequate healthcare to food insecurity in a city that was considered a food desert at the time.
While Martin was proud of the progress made at KIPP, he began to notice a troubling pattern among the high-achieving students who returned to the schools to teach after graduation. Despite attending prestigious universities, many of them struggled to translate their academic success into successful careers. “They knew an awful lot, but they didn’t know who to talk to or how to navigate towards a career,” Martin says.
This realization planted the seed for his eventual shift to Thrive Scholars, an organization that provides comprehensive support for high-performing, low-income, and first-generation students. “What I loved about Thrive was that it was solving the problem that was frustrating me toward the end of my career,” he says.
Solving the Career Pipeline Problem
At Thrive Scholars, Martin has found a mission that aligns closely with his experiences at KIPP. Thrive supports academically gifted low-income students throughout their educational journey and into their professional lives. By addressing the systemic barriers that prevent even the brightest students from navigating college admissions, internships, and careers, the organization fills a critical gap. “Thrive focuses on the very high-performing students who tend to under-select for colleges. Over half of them don’t even apply to top schools, and when they do, they often don’t attend,” Martin explains.
The statistics for Thrive Scholars are impressive: dozens of students at elite institutions like Stanford, Harvard, and MIT, with equally impressive outcomes in terms of career placements. For Martin, this is not just about getting students into top schools; it’s about ensuring they have the support they need to succeed once they get there. “They’re first-generation students, so they don’t have a parent to talk to who has been through the process,” he says.
Leadership and the Future of Thrive
As CEO of Thrive Scholars, Martin’s vision is clear: continue expanding the program’s reach and impact. “We have an access problem in our country when it comes to meritocracy. Some people are able to navigate that system more easily than others,” Martin says. His job now is to ensure that Thrive can scale its work to serve more students across the country. “My charge is to significantly increase the size and scope of our organization to have a greater impact.”
Throughout his career, Martin has relied on both his education and his ability to adapt and learn. His Commerce background has proven invaluable, especially when it came to managing the financial complexities of running large organizations. But perhaps more importantly, his deep understanding of the challenges faced by first-generation and low-income students has shaped his approach to leadership. “I often say that we don’t get paid as much in education, but we get paid better,” he says, referring to the personal fulfillment that comes from helping students advance.
His work at Thrive is the culmination of decades spent grappling with the complexities of education. From his time in under-resourced classrooms to running a multimillion-dollar school network, he has learned that solving education’s challenges requires a multifaceted approach. “Education in our country is a complex and complicated system,” he says. “A complicated problem can be solved with resources, but a complex problem, like education, has so many variables that it requires a much broader set of solutions.”
Martin’s career as an educational leader is defined by a deep commitment to equity and access. At Thrive Scholars, he continues to build on that legacy, ensuring that the most talented students from underserved communities not only get a seat at the table, but are also fully prepared to succeed once they’re there.
