Robin helped to co-found the Leading with Debate Fellowship to train a new generation of advocates.

If you’re looking for BAUDL alum Robin Bonner these days, you are likely to find her in the corridors of San Francisco City Hall, crusading for a dropout prevention initiative she helped design from the ground up. Yet this impressive college freshman, who has become one of the most respected voices on the San Francisco Youth Commission, was once herself on the edge of dropping out.

Robin entered Washington High School during an incredibly hard time in her life. With her father absent, she was in the care of a single mom who worked long hours to support her children. At school she felt alienated, finding her strong voice always silenced in large traditional classrooms. “I always had this critical eye, and strong opinions – and at Washington, they weren’t trying to hear that. I got kicked out of my share of classrooms, and when I came back to class I felt blacklisted, like they didn’t want me participating.”

Though her big voice got Robin into trouble at Washington, in the BAUDL it became her greatest strength. When she transferred to Downtown High School, the school’s debate team was a place for her to flourish and to find a home. In her words, “it was what got me to come out of my shell; it was everything I needed at that time in my life. Debate showed me that my natural aggression was something I could channel to make a difference.” Finding a place for her brilliance to take root, she rapidly rose to BAUDL’s highest levels of competition.

Debating at these high levels was a challenge at first even for the brilliant Ms. Bonner, but with the support of her coaches, she built skills there that were far beyond reach in traditional classrooms. “Debate has been great for me because there is no limit on what you can learn,” she says. “My writing improved, my reading sped up, and all of a sudden I was able to skim through multiple documents quickly to support my arguments. It was what I needed to get myself ready for college.”

Now she uses the skills of rhetoric, research, and critical thinking she learned in debate to help young people like she once was. She is a co-founder of the Leading with Debate Fellowship, BAUDL’s new program that helps young people connect the skills they learn in debate to real-world issues. As a leader of this program, Robin spends hours helping BAUDL youth channel their frustration into positive public leadership.

As with all of our debaters, her words are the best: “The LDF is growing in my heart because I see a lot of myself in the kids I work with. I see curiosity, I see struggle, and eventually enlightenment. I see a lot of them being super-smart and not knowing what to do with it, and I know how to guide them out of that place of frustration and help them become the leaders they are waiting to be.” It is deeply inspiring that Robin and so many other alumni have not only benefited individually from this program, but are now working with us to give back to the communities from which they came.