Why One HBCU Graduate Left Wall Street To Teach

Claudia Walker loved working on Wall Street. However, her entire life changed on September 11, 2001. On that morning, Walker and her coworkers were structuring a deal for American Airlines when two of their planes crashed into the World Trade Center. She watched the events unfold and lost coworkers in the attacks. When this tragedy happened, Walker was in her early twenties and wasn’t thinking too far in the future. However, after 9/11, she began to contemplate her legacy and decided to leave Wall Street and pursue her dreams of teaching.

Walker began her teaching career at the American Indian Public High School in Oakland, California, eventually becoming the school’s principal. Today she is the Director of Internships and Early College Programs for the Oakland Unified School District. As a teacher and in her work with early college students, Walker engages in conversation around college attendance and the importance of higher education more generally. Over the years, she has realized how little her students — mainly Black and Latinx — know about Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs). As Walker, a graduate of historically Black Spelman College in Atlanta, Georgia, explained, teaching “has made me painfully aware that many educators aren’t familiar with HBCUs [nor do they] believe that HBCUs are competitive schools. As a result, they aren’t sharing information about these institutions with students.”

Walker is committed to an HBCU education and describes her alma mater as “a magical place.” She shared, “I first visited the [Spelman] campus as part of a [Black College] tour during my senior year of high school. As soon as I stepped onto the campus, I felt at home. The four years (1995-1999) that I spent at Spelman helped me navigate my place in the world.” As she recalls, before enrolling at Spelman, Walker had only attended predominantly White schools, where her accomplishments were often viewed as the exception. At Spelman, “it was crystal clear that my being Black, female, and intelligent wasn’t exceptional — it was the norm.”

Walker enjoyed the traditions at Spelman College, feeling a sense of belonging on campus as a result of the institution’s efforts to embrace her and welcome her to the family. As she explained, “Dr. Johnetta B. Cole, Spelman’s president [at the time], gave the most riveting speech about the impact that Spelman women have made on the world. She talked about legacy, sacrifice, and service. She reminded us that we were walking on sacred ground and that we had a responsibility to change the world in ways that our ancestors could only dream of. Then, she welcomed us into Spelman’s sisterhood.”

Although Walker was an English major at Spelman, the dean of the English department encouraged her to apply for a summer internship with Goldman Sachs. At the time, she knew nothing about finance or investing, but the dean saw something in Walker that she didn’t see in herself. The summer internship changed her life in ways she never imagined. As Walker explains, “Spelman gave me the confidence to venture outside of my comfort zone and bet on myself.”

In 2020, Walker, who is committed to spreading information about HBCUs, decided to write a children’s book about HBCUs. According to Walker, “Most of what I know about history, I learned at Spelman. I started writing books so that children don’t have to wait until they’re 18 and at an HBCU to be exposed to Black history that’s not centered around trauma, slavery, and oppression. I write books that celebrate the Black experience.” The first book in her series is titled The ABCs of HBCUs and it takes readers on a tour of HBCUs. From FAMU and Howard, to HBCU traditions such as the Divine Nine and the Battle of the Bands, the book teaches readers about the “love, lifestyles, and legacies that make HBCUs so special.”

Walker’s second book series, The ABCs of Black Wall Street takes readers on a journey through the “heart of Tulsa’s iconic Greenwood neighborhood where they meet the visionaries who built one of America’s wealthiest Black communities.” Each of Walker’s book series includes a board book, coloring book, flashcards, and activity books.

As Walker shared, “My prayer is that my books inspire the next generation of Oprah Winfreys, Thurgood Marshalls, Patricia Baths, and Ronald McNairs — all of whom are HBCU graduates.”