Building Bridges Across Campuses, Communities, and Opportunity
BLAC founder Jonathan Lee varies a deep belief that every student deserves to be heard, respected, and valued. He believes that there is nothing more critical than access to an education that provides the ability to obtain knowledge and power. Jonathan further believes that independent schools are an amazing conduit that provides teenagers a means to become great young adults as they prepare for college and life.
Jonathan earned his BA in Government and MBA from the College of William and Mary. Jonathan has served as a mentor, coach, advisor, dorm parent, grade dean, admission officer, and much more during his time working in independent schools.
Our Founder
About Jonathan Lee
I was born in Vallejo, California, but my family moved to Alexandria, Virginia when I was five years old. I thought I knew what it meant to belong to a place until I realized how different my experience was from the kids around me.
That awareness never left. It shaped how I saw schools, how I listened to people, and what I believed institutions could do differently.
I enrolled at Episcopal in the fall of 1997, and that school became my real education. Not just in the classroom, but in watching how institutions either invited people in or kept them at a distance. Later, at the College of William & Mary, I earned my degree in Government and returned years afterward for my MBA. But the questions stayed with me: Who gets heard? Who gets left behind? What determines whether someone thrives?
I started answering those questions through coaching basketball and cross country. You learn who people are when they're competing, when they're struggling, when they're pushing toward something. Then I moved into admissions, and suddenly I was trying to predict potential from a folder of paper. I advising students, and I heard what they really needed wasn't advice about their next step. It was someone who believed they had something to offer. I led residential life and mentored in educational leadership roles, and every position taught me the same thing: institutions work better when they actually listen to the people inside them.
But for years, I was still the one doing most of the talking. It wasn't until I started asking Black alumni from Episcopal to share their stories, with no agenda except to understand, that everything shifted. I listened to what their experience had been, what it cost them, what they would tell the next kid. And I realized: I had spent my entire career trying to fix people or move them forward, when what they actually needed was to be heard first.
That's when BLAC was born. From a simple belief: people thrive when they feel connected, supported, understood, and equipped to navigate opportunity with confidence. And it all starts with listening.
How We Listen: Institutional Voice
Every school has an official story. The real one lives in the people who went there and the people who work there. What they carry. What it cost them. What they would tell the next kid. That is the institutional voice.
Nobody possesses the entire institutional story alone. The complete truth lives in the pieces held by different people across different roles and different moments in time. A student's experience looks nothing like a parent's. An alumnus remembers things the administration never heard. A teacher carries insights no one asked them about.
This is why we listen. Not to assume. Not to prescribe. Not to speak before we understand. We listen to the people who hold the pieces, because their voices together tell the story no single perspective can reveal.
At BLAC, listening to institutional voice is how we begin. It is the foundation of everything that follows.
