Rhea Elcock

Rhea Elcock is a committed educator and nonprofit leader with a passion for community engagement and social justice. Before her selection with the National Urban Fellowship, Rhea worked as the Director of Dudley Promise Corps at Boston Plan for Excellence, developing and empowering new K-12 educators to support students in the Boston area. In this role, she provided programmatic oversight and coaching while cultivating partnerships with nonprofits, community organizations, and schools. Before her role at Boston Plan for Excellence, Rhea began her career as a 7th-grade math teacher at Helen Y. Davis Leadership Academy, collaborating with school leaders and families to provide personalized instruction for students with diverse learning needs.

In 2022, Rhea founded Sport Xposure, an organization whose mission is to expose students from underserved communities to careers in the sports industry through paid internships and mentorships. Since its founding, Sport Xposure has partnered with universities, Boston sports teams, and media networks to offer students real-world opportunities to build professional skills. Most recently, Sport Xposure teamed up with Concrete LYFE to launch Xposure is LYFE, a program providing over 200 students with internships and networking opportunities across sports, media, skilled trades, and public health.

Rhea earned her bachelor’s degree in mathematics from Xavier University in 2019, where she was a Brueggeman Fellow and a proud member of Delta Sigma Theta Sorority, Inc., reflecting her lifelong commitment to service and scholarship. Through the fellowship, she studied the impact culture has on mathematical literacy in Singapore. This experience inspired her 2019 TEDx Talk, An Equation for Merging Minds to Become One, which explored how math can be a tool for addressing systemic challenges such as racism and poverty.

In 2021, she received her Master’s Degree in Education from High Meadows Graduate School with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, focusing on embedding student culture and background in mathematics. Most recently, she received a certification in Collaborative Problem Solving from Think: Kids at Mass General Hospital’s Department of Psychology. With this certification, she co-founded an LLC, Conversations with Rhea and Joy, fostering collaboration and compassion for students through an evidence-based and trauma-informed approach.

As a National Urban Fellow, she is most interested in learning about social impact and philanthropy while honing her skills in program management, community engagement, and leadership development.