Jessie Williams doesn’t want education to be an unattainable financial luxury. The 35-year-old actor has joined forces with 24-year-old Scholly App creator Christopher Gray, to help students access millions in scholarship money.
“We’ve all been told that education is the key to success, which is great if you have access to it, but the reality is millions of us don’t,” Williams, who has joined Scholly as board of director and brand ambassador, said in a Facebook video Wednesday (Sept. 7). “The road to equality education that’s littered in real and systematic obstacles in desperate need of repair, not the least of which is the expense.”
As a former teacher, Williams noted his first-hand experience with students who were “unable to even swift their true potential to even sniff their true potential because they were’t born into this web of resource that were necessary to really thrive in this
rigged system.”
“The constantly increasing cost of college doesn’t help kicking the American dream further and further out of reach,” The Grey’s Anatomy star adds. “And then came Scholly.”
Gray created Scholly after earning receiving $1.3 million in scholarship money, of his own. In 2014 he appeared on ABC’s Shark Tank and received a $40,000 investment in his company.
The $2.99 app has so far helped students find more than $50 million in scholarship money.