Dr. OJ Oleka, President of the Association of Independent Kentucky Colleges and Universities, wants to end generational poverty across the country and has begun taking steps to help educate children in the Commonwealth.
In his time as Chief of Staff and Deputy Treasurer for the State, Oleka found that if children were able to learn about financial literacy at some point in their formative years, they would end up making more informed decisions.
So, he began working with members of the Kentucky General Assembly to help rally people behind the cause.
“This is the kind of thing that could really change lives for kids all across Kentucky, which can be a generational change,” Oleka told Kentucky House leaders at the time.
The Assembly ended up voting to pass House Bill 138, which mandated the education of financial literacy in schools. The first class that will graduate with this in effect will be the Class of 2024 — this allowed schools and teachers to find curriculum and other needs to ensure it was taught effectively.
Oleka’s passion derived from his childhood, saying he learned the importance of financial literacy to make decisions and being able to defy a system that wasn’t exactly set up for everyone to succeed.
In addition to his time as Chief of Staff and Deputy Treasurer, Oleka and a colleague ultimately led to the founding of the coalition of AntiRacism Kentucky in June 2020 following the deaths of Breonna Taylor and other Black people nationwide.
The coalition brought together Kentuckians of different racial, political, economic, and regional backgrounds to discuss ways to work towards being a non-racist state.
“We want to come together to figure out how we can end any vessel of institutional racism because we might understand it through state policy in Kentucky. [Thinking that] maybe it exists, maybe it doesn’t, but what we want to figure out is first, does it? And if it does, how do we get rid of it,” Oleka said.
He said the idea came back to his Republican beliefs of ensuring opportunities for everyone.
“If you believe that opportunity is important for everybody, then you must do your part to rid our state of any message of anything that would keep that opportunity for many Kentuckians. This is just who we are as a political party,” he said.
Ultimately he said that everyone has four stories: stories of power, pain, promise and purpose. And leaders are able to see the stories in their lives to help fuel their purpose, similar to how he is able to do so for the Commonwealth.
