The Skillman Foundation has named Anisa Sahoubah, Director of Youth and Education at ACCESS, a 2025 Skillman Visionary Awardee, recognizing her trailblazing leadership in youth development and educational reform across metro Detroit and beyond.
The Skillman Visionary Awards celebrate changemakers working to reshape education systems and empower young people to navigate and shape the future. For Sahoubah, who immigrated from Yemen as a child and rose through the ranks of ACCESS starting as a teenage volunteer, the recognition underscores two decades of unwavering dedication to uplifting underserved communities through education.
Sahoubah’s passion for equitable, culturally responsive education stems from personal experience. A formative moment came in first grade, when she misunderstood the concept of a canned food drive due to cultural differences and limited English. That memory, she says, still drives her belief in the importance of kindness, clarity, and cultural competence in classrooms.
Over the years, Sahoubah transformed that early struggle into a mission. From founding literacy programs as a 17-year-old ACCESS volunteer to developing multi-million-dollar educational initiatives reaching thousands of students daily across 30 ZIP codes, she has built a legacy of innovation and impact. Her work with the 21st Century Community Learning Centers program alone has brought tens of millions in funding to support holistic education in Southeast Michigan.
Sahoubah has connected children and families to high-impact educational opportunities for over 20 years. Her work in creating frameworks, professional development, and educational tools to develop and implement quality education has been shared locally and nationally, but it started where many inspiring leaders start—at the community level.
Her journey; however, began well before she became a teenage volunteer for ACCESS, that is, when she first immigrated to the US. And it’s only by looking through an immigrant child’s lens that we will understand how far Sahoubah has come and why she is so passionate and committed to this work.
Sahoubah immigrated when she was only five years old from a small village in Yemen to Dearborn’s “south end.” She and her mother and brother joined her father, who found work at an automotive factory.
She recalls arriving at the airport and hearing English for the first time and not knowing when “one sentence ended and another began.” This was a lot to take in for someone who has not yet attended school. “I remember thinking, ‘How am I going to learn this language?’ I was overwhelmed…” Sahoubah said.
Sahoubah describes her first event at Salina Elementary School, where she attended first grade, and the challenge around understanding what a canned food drive was.
“I came from village life. We harvested our own food. Our fruits and vegetables were fresh and truly organic. Canned food was not consumed much,” Sahoubah said. With her very limited English, and using her frame of reference, she assumed that the teacher needed cans to display/organize school supplies since each table in the classroom had an empty coffee can in the middle that contained markers/crayons, etc. Paint brushes were held in smaller empty cans.
As the story goes, when she told her family that her teacher needed empty cans, her parents purchased canned goods from Arabian Village, the local grocery store, and emptied them at home. Sahoubah brought them to school. Much to her surprise, her teacher wanted to know why the cans were empty.
“I remember feeling awful and did not understand at all what I did wrong,” she said. A teacher assistant later explained to Sahoubah what a canned food drive was. Young Sahoubah knew, even at that age, that she comes from a culture that values and prioritizes helping those in need, but it came in a different form–not canned goods. She wished that the teacher would have explained the event better.
When Sahoubah’s teacher asked her if she can throw the cans away, Sahoubah insisted on taking them home. She had worked hard with her parents on emptying these cans, and she wasn’t about to let their efforts go to waste. Looking back, Sahoubah emphasizes the importance of educators taking into account a child’s cultural background and being kind during teachable moments.
“I often remind my teams that kids absorb what’s going on around them. They understand a lot more than we think they do. There are learning opportunities we should capitalize on and being kind to children is a standard and non-negotiable.”
She also reminds her team that everyone has different ways of contributing, pulling from her core memory of the canned food school drive. “The idea of giving wasn’t lost on me and my family. We just did it in a different way and it did not involve canned goods,” she said.
As Director of Youth and Education at ACCESS, Sahoubah develops programs that help students from different backgrounds get to know one another, collaborate, and understand each other better.
Dearborn, Sahoubah explains, has changed vastly over the years and is often defined by three separate neighborhoods—East Dearborn, South Dearborn, and West Dearborn.
Sahoubah’s goal has been to unite neighborhoods and bridge differences between groups so that they all feel like they belong to one city. Specifically, she wants to solve how kids “learn to be together before they are forced to be together” in school and the workforce.
Sahoubah’s work in education began when she immersed herself in volunteer roles at ACCESS through AmeriCorps, a program that helped her obtain a stipend for her education at Wayne State University. During her first year of college, Sahoubah was hired to tutor high school students and the number one request from them was assistance in writing papers or essays.
She noticed that the high school students she worked with often had trouble organizing their thoughts and getting them down on paper. She ran into a frustrating pattern: many students wanted her to help them quickly turn around papers that were due the next day.
“I remember thinking, ‘building vocabulary and learning how to articulate thoughts cannot be done in one day…’” Sahoubah said. “So I thought, why don’t I just create a class?”
Sahoubah reached out to ACCESS’ then education director about the class, and the director informed her that she would need to secure funding for it. Undeterred, 17-year old Sahoubah applied for a grant through Hudson’s Department Store (now Macy’s) and marched over to the Fairlane Mall with her proposition. The store associate told her that “corporate” handles grants.
“I didn’t even know what corporate was,” she laughed.
Eventually, Sahoubah figured out the proper channels in the grant process and budgeted her program, taking into account that teens will only come to a program if it included food, field trips and other fun activities. She won the grant.
“I can’t tell you what that did to my confidence and view of how to identify a problem, figure out a solution, and then actually implement,” she said. “Adults trusted me to do that. That was incredible. And that’s what made me stay at ACCESS and continue to scale these programs to serve numerous districts outside of Dearborn. Her efforts and keen ability to foster partnerships led to tens of millions in funding to support the education of children in over 5 cities across metro Detroit.
Sometimes all it takes is one win to change a person’s life trajectory. In Sahoubah’s case, it convinced her to change majors from medicine to education. She received her bachelor’s degree in English literature with a minor in communications, and polished it off with a teaching certificate. She continued building programs at ACCESS and had a blast doing it.
Shortly after graduation, Sahoubah went on to the University of Michigan-Dearborn for her master’s degree to build a management focus into her career in education. Around the same time, she applied to the Michigan Department of Education for a program called the 21st Century Community Learning Centers. By incorporating technology, family engagement, life/marketable skills, and recreation, Sahoubah shaped a program that fostered holistic development.
The program model Sahoubah built through the 21st Century Community Learning Centers expanded beyond Dearborn and into 30 different ZIP codes, serving roughly 2000 students a day across 24 sites, bringing in tens of millions in funding to these communities for quality supplemental education.
Ask anyone who works in a school or attends one, and they’ll tell you just how fast education is evolving. While acting as Interim Director of Workforce Development at ACCESS, Sahoubah developed a unique view of how young adults and adults transition into the workforce. On the other side of the coin, she hears directly from employers and listens to their challenges in filling vacancies with qualified individuals.
With her leadership now extending into workforce development, Sahoubah is working on bridging the gap between students’ evolving skill sets and employers’ changing needs. She is a firm believer in measuring student success beyond test scores—emphasizing digital literacy, problem-solving, and adaptability.
“I get to see what would happen in a very real way if we don’t find solutions to these challenges that students and families are having right now,” she said.
Measuring growth differently is one way educators like Sahoubah address challenges that both young adults and employers currently face. While they still strive to help students meet proficiencies in all subject areas, their emphasis has moved to capitalizing on young people’s interests, strengthening their problem-solving and critical thinking skills, as well as helping them build resilience.
Educators are also racing to aid in students’ growth in digital literacy. They must equip students with the tools they need to thrive in a workforce that continues to migrate online, operate in digital communities, and demand system efficiency. While many in education bemoan the unsettling effects of technology, Sahoubah reminds them of the doors it’s opened for learners, pointing to examples like tools for children with special needs and immersive classroom learning experiences.
Whether we like it or not, Sahoubah explains, technology is a big part of our lives. “We need to stay current with technology and hire staff who are embracing it so that students are figuring out a way to use it effectively while understanding its downfalls and limitations,” Sahoubah said.
Sahoubah and others have been working with students to develop the skills necessary for the future of work while also helping them build in authenticity, honesty, and curiosity.
ACCESS and the Skillman Foundation have a history of collaborating on youth engagement and community building. Over 15 years ago, they partnered on Detroit community organizing efforts and inspiring youth to advocate for what is important to them, their families, and their communities.
“I remember when someone reached out to us and said: ‘In Detroit, we have the voices of African Americans, Caucasians, and Spanish-speaking communities, but we don’t have the voices of Arab Americans,” Sahoubah said. “That was my first interaction with the Skillman Foundation.”
Sahoubah was honored to partner with the Skillman Foundation to develop programs around community organizing and training for youth and adults on how to identify programs in Detroit neighborhoods and seek out solutions tailored to their communities.
“One thing that residents told me was, ‘You organizations come in all the time, get a grant, and just meddle in our lives for a little bit and then leave…’” Sahoubah recalled. “At the time, I assured them: we aren’t coming in to do that. We’re rooted in helping communities thrive, and we’re not leaving.”
Cohorts of adults and youth worked with leaders to identify problems in their community, such as not feeling safe, abandoned buildings, aging infrastructure, dangerous intersections, and a lack of after-school programs. Sahoubah emphasized the importance of cohorts to problem solve around these areas versus having ACCESS team members come in as “saviors” and fix what they thought needed to be fixed.
“We want a community that feels empowered to continue the work and build on it independently,” Sahoubah said.
Before the groups could even work on problems, they had to gather the data to support proposed solutions. “You need to have the buy-in of your neighbors,” Sahoubah explained.
Once groups secured buy-in, leaders then organized a town hall meeting during which cohorts presented their solutions and next steps.
“This was a pivotal moment for the community, me personally, and ACCESS as an institution doing this community work,” Sahoubah said. “We took it seriously when we asked “what now; where do we go from here?” Action steps were developed, champions were identified, and a tentative timeline was developed.
Once the groups felt good about their action plan, the very first grant that was secured with the help of this community cohort was called Safe Route to Schools, which brought in a million dollars in infrastructure funding to help create safer routes to schools in Southwest Detroit. While this was a major win, groups had to make some tough decisions in narrowing down the routes that needed the most attention.
“A million dollars in infrastructure can only get you so far,” Sahoubah said. “You have to make some hard decisions, and I can’t tell you how many iterations we had to go through to determine which neighborhoods, crossroads, and side streets needed fixing the most.”
Once the groups decided on a plan, they roped in MDOT, and their plan unfolded into change that happened before their eyes.
“They were able to see some real, tangible change in their community through their own efforts,” Sahoubah said. They built partnerships that were previously nonexistent, learned how funds are allocated, how to build out a budget, and stay within that budget.
Sahoubah collaborated with cohorts on other projects across Detroit, such as establishing adult education programs, US citizenship test preparation, parenting education, afterschool and summer youth programs, and business plan development. These initiatives not only impacted program participants, but gave hundreds of young people the opportunity to work in these programs, giving them their first “real job.”
“We also bridged gaps with communities and entities that would otherwise never have come together on their own” Sahoubah said. “So much good came out of those partnerships and they are still going strong almost two decades later.
ACCESS’ collaboration with the Skillman Foundation shows how it’s possible for communities to create lasting change when you attain neighborhood buy-in, create a strategic plan that meets specific community needs, build proper funding relationships, and help residents gain the knowledge and resources to continue seeking out solutions to community challenges.
“We were going in as one unified voice expressing concern and offering solutions to citywide, statewide, regional, and national challenges,” Sahoubah said.
It’s not hard to see why Sahoubah was recognized as being a visionary leader inspiring change within metro Detroit communities. She aims to continue to support today’s youth through real-world education.
“Oftentimes people say the goal of education is college,” Sahoubah said. “For us, it’s that these students have the opportunity, knowledge, and resiliency to be successful in whatever they pursue.
