ABOUT
With more than 20 years’ experience working with struggling and underserved teens, Dr. Tolliver has been widely praised and recognized for her unwavering commitment to community service within Indianapolis and surrounding communities.
Dr. Tolliver began her career as a Family Case Manager for the Indiana Department of Child Services, where she worked directly with adolescents who were a danger to themselves or others. She spent countless hours helping them with life skills, academic achievement, and teaching them to manage and control their emotional outbursts. Dr. Tolliver wanted to share these strategies and experiences with her colleagues and other academic leaders throughout the state of Indiana. Her success and "big-picture" ambitions earned her a promotion to the Program Director position, where she traveled throughout the state of Indiana training newly hired case managers. It was in this capacity that Dr. Tolliver discovered her true gift and passion for training other case managers in adolescent development, as well as providing guidance and resources for parents of teens with behavioral challenges.
Dr. Tolliver discovered that most of her students who were involved with the Department of Child Services really had a difficult time concentrating on their schoolwork while dealing with personal struggles. This led Dr. Tolliver to make a career shift into the field of education, teaching 7th-12th grade business education, as well as 5th-9th grade math and English remediation. She also partnered with Caring Place Reach, where she implemented a youth outreach program for underserved teens aged 13-17 on the near East-side of Indianapolis.
With a hunger to have greater access to academically struggling students, Dr. Tolliver earned her administrative and superintendent’s license and became the principal of an alternative school filled with students who had experienced severe trauma and needed another opportunity to make better life decisions. She was able to coach and develop a team of teachers and academic leaders to develop positive relationships with students while simultaneously encouraging their academic success. In just two years, her team doubled the school's graduation rate and in three years, 99% of the seniors graduated from high school.
Realizing her natural gift for academic leadership and student-success planning, combined with a unique passion for championing the academic success of students who have experienced trauma, Dr. Tolliver received her calling to pursue a mission on a larger scale. She strongly believed that in order to transform the lives and futures of our youth, all influencers--parents, guardians, educators, community outreach workers, youth pastors, and their peers would need the necessary resources to help underserved youth make positive life decisions toward their academic, career or life goals. Thus, the nonprofit organization, Impact Life Decisions, Inc. was born with the mission of providing hope, healing and healthy choices to hurting adolescents by providing resources those who influence them. She believes that all underserved and/or underprivileged adolescents need influencers in their lives to guide them in making impactful, positive life decisions that lead to a promising future.