At age 13, she swept up hair and worked the register at the Dudley’s Beauty College Salon because she aspired to be a cosmetologist. Kelly Fair was inspired to get this job so she could be like her role models, the career women from her favorite magazine, “Essence.” Now Fair is no longer a cosmetologist–she’s the founder and executive director of the 2017 Berkowitz Award-winning organization, Polished Pebbles Girls Mentoring Program. Fair accepted the Award and $10,000 grant at the Berkowitz MX on May 3.

The Berkowitz Award, fully titled the “Susan F. Berkowitz Award For Outstanding Service to Children,” is presented annually to an organization selected by the Berkowitz Committee, comprised of around 20 Upper School students and advised by Assistant Principal Ruth Jurgensen. According to its mission, the award is intended to “foster a deeper appreciation of those practitioners who design and implement outstanding initiatives that provide children with the strength, self-confidence and resources to sustain their learning and future success.”

This year, the Committee chose to focus on the theme of “girls’ and young women’s health and wellbeing,” according to Jurgensen. When the Committee first met to choose a theme in the fall, many of its discussions were centered around health, wellness, and self-care, as well as concern about the derogatory language used about women throughout the presidential election season.

“I voted for this year’s theme,” committee member and sophomore Desiree Shafaie said, “because I felt that girls’ and young women’s health was a topic that is often overshadowed, despite being an important subject that deserves time and resources.”

Past themes have included “refugee assimilation and education” in 2016 and “young people affected by the juvenile justice system and/or impacted by gun violence” in 2015. GirlForward received the Berkowitz Award last year, and the Dovetail Project received it two years ago.

According to its mission statement, Polished Pebbles educates girls aged 7 to 17 to “face the challenges of daily life by substituting aggressive forms of communicating and problem solving with new strategies that allow them to gain a solid reputation and respect without retaliating.” To teach these communication skills, Polished Pebbles instills the principles of “SHINE” in the girls, which means to “Smile, say Hello, Introduce yourself, Nod your head, and End the conversation.”

Polished Pebbles facilitates a number of programs, one being daily after-school mentoring at over 30 Chicago sites in conjunction with Chicago Public Schools, Chicago Housing Authority, University of Chicago Charter Schools, and Citizens Schools. In addition, the organization offers Second Saturdays, which are monthly, professionally-led mentoring sessions for African American girls. Polished Pebbles also provides girls with career exploration opportunities, allowing them to “shadow” adults in different occupations.

During the MX, Fair illustrated the significance mentoring. “My first boss was Betty Clawson at Dudley’s Beauty College, and I was blessed to have a mentor like Ms. Clawson,” Fair said. “She taught me things–how to speak up, how to stand, what kind of clothes to wear, and how to think about things beyond cosmetology school like continuing on to college. In high school and college, I had women just like Ms. Clawson that were mentors for me too. I stopped being scared, I stopped being nervous.  My confidence grew, and I started seeing myself as a leader.”

The idea of Polished Pebbles came to Fair soon after one of her most influential mentors, Linda Shepherd, passed. Shepherd had led a women’s group that Fair was involved in, but after Shepherd’s death in 2006, the group drifted apart until Fair held a gathering to reunite the women. While leading the women’s group, Fair decided she wanted to establish a similarly supportive environment for girls.

“There aren’t a lot of images in the media that are positive about women and definitely not about women of color,” Fair said. “I said to myself, ‘What can I create to give that same experience that I had to girls in my community?’”

Fair left her job at the McGraw Hill publishing company to pursue nonprofit work, though at the time, she wasn’t exactly sure how she would do it or what lay ahead. Fair said, “My intuition and spirit just told me, ‘It’s time to go.’”

When Fair first started Polished Pebbles in 2009, it had no funding. The first meetings were held in a free space at the Avalon Branch Library, and only two girls attended. Once Fair began to utilize social media to publicize her organization, she received more support.

“People would say, ‘I can make you some fliers for free at my job,’ or, ‘I have school supplies,’” Fair said. “Anybody can do anything in a really small way, and I think more often than not, even with all of the things that are said negatively about Chicago, there are a lot of people here who want to help.”

That Fair founded Polished Pebbles as a passion project set her apart from other contenders for the award, according to Jurgensen. “As educators, we encourage students to follow their passions and use them for good,” Jurgensen said. “We had terrific proposals, but many of them were backed by larger organizations, and the personal touch wasn’t there.”

Polished Pebbles has come a long way since its launch. According to Fair, the organization has now mentored over 2000 girls. In addition, Polished Pebbles has expanded to establish programs in Dallas, Texas and Gary, Indiana, as well as at Duke University.  

Fair smiled as she recounted a success story from 2011, when Polished Pebbles mentee Deneen Borner introduced First Lady Michelle Obama at the National Mentoring Summit. Polished Pebbles was offered the opportunity to send a girl to D.C. for the Summit after gaining national recognition from Bloomingdale’s for its mentoring programs taking place in the Chicago store, giving girls the chance to learn about working at Bloomingdale’s. Following Borner’s speech, Obama said, “Well, there you go. And that’s what the Southside of Chicago produces. Well done.”

Fair hopes to use the Berkowitz grant to help keep Polished Pebbles in public schools and bring it back to schools that have faced budget cuts and lost necessary funding. The grant will also help the organization’s initiative to assist at least 40 girls in earning internships and jobs this summer, double last year’s total and ten times 2015’s. Fair said, “The award we’re getting from Berkowitz will do a lot to support us in getting there.”