ON THE JOB: Young Albany education consultant teaches students ‘yes, you can’

ALBANY — Sitting across a table from Jayda Robinson, it doesn’t take very long to figure out this young, vivacious 20-something is cut from a different cloth than most of her peers.

And she has the resume to back it up.

“At 15 I was the first in Dougherty County to graduate from Georgia Virtual School. Then I heard from a friend about the Move On When Ready Program at Georgia Middle College where you can take extra classes and earn college credit,” Robinson said. “My parents went to the campus and there were lots of boys that had to be at least 21 because they were drinking. I was still just 15, and my parents were like, ‘No, that’s not happening.’

“In 2012, I started in my junior year at Albany High while dually enrolled at Darton State College and I did everything online. in 2014, I was the first to graduate from fully online classes with my associate’s degree in psychology and my high school diploma.”

She also obtained a second associate’s, this one in sociology, over the summer.

Robinson then went to Florida State University, where she graduated a year later with a bachelor’s degree in Interdisciplinary Social Science. She followed that by earning a master’s degree in Executive Leadership and Business from Liberty University in 2016.

She graduated from high school, obtained two associate’s degrees, a bachelor’s degree and a masters degree — all before she turned 17.

“It’s a long list, isn’t it?” she said, laughing.

Robinson, 21, is now working on her second master’s at Liberty, this one in Interdisciplinary Social Science. She expects to graduate in March.

“My goal was to beat my grandmother (Janie Rambeau),” Robinson said. “She has two doctorates, three masters and three bachelor’s degrees. I am the only granddaughter, so she always pushed me hard. She said, ‘You have to do better than me.”

In 2011, Robinson’s mother, long-time Dougherty County Educator Lillian Rambeau, formed Jayda Lives. The company serves the community through its ExPand program.

“We support the early-enrolled online college students and help them handle peer pressure, build relationships, manage stress, time, and to make good choices,” Robinson said.

The company has also expanded into the area of dually enrolled students. Last month, it was awarded a consultant’s contract with the Dougherty County School System to recruit dually enrolled students and help keep the approximately 600 students who are currently dually enrolled on track for high school and college graduation.

“Not all of our dually enrolled students will attend the college and career academy,” DCSS Superintendent Ken Dyer said. “We watch and monitor those students carefully, because if not handled correctly, it could affect their high school graduation. We don’t want those kids to fall through the cracks.”

That’s where Jayda Lives comes in.

“We are going to provide support. I am just a non-traditional student and I’ve been online for more than six years, so I already have that experience,” Robinson said. “I know how it is to succeed as an online student, I know how it feels to be nervous. I went through all of it. We’ve graduated 26 of our students. In fact you did a story on one of our graduates, Kirsten Williams, last year. She went on and got her bachelor’s degree; same thing with my brother.

“They followed in my path because it works. But we’ve had students cry, saying, ‘I can’t do this.’ But we kept pushing them. We say, yes, you can.”