Pivoting Toward Youth

When Kazembe Abif, Ed.M.’25, was approaching his senior year of high school in Newark, New Jersey, he faced a dilemma. Abif who is 6 feet, 7 inches tall, muscular, and broad-shouldered, had enjoyed and long excelled in team sports. Now college recruiters were calling and offering him Division I offers to play two different sports that he loved — football and basketball. 

Abif remembers what influenced his decision. “I thought just for longevity for my body, the physical punishment that your body goes through for football, that basketball would be better,” he says.

The student-athlete, who had worked hard to help his high school basketball team win two state championships, happily accepted a scholarship from Drexel University in Pennsylvania where he would be close enough to home for his family to be able to come and see him play.  After receiving a bachelor’s degree in sports management and a master’s degree in hospitality management, Abif signed a contract to play for a team a little further afield, in a top-tier professional league in Germany. For about the next seven years, he played in several professional European basketball teams and in Canada.

When the time came to pivot away from professional basketball, Abif decided to turn to something else that he was passionate about — working with youth. “I always felt it was important to give back,” he says. “We have to lift as we climb.”

Abif was ready to start developing a different set of skills. He moved to Massachusetts and accepted a job with the YMCA of Greater Boston. The organization partners with Boston Public Schools on a program that uses a community school model. Abif’s role involves working with community stakeholders and partners to “make sure that students aren't getting left behind [academically],” he says, and “that food insecurity, clothing insecurity, homelessness, are not a barrier for them to become successful.”

With his career change, there was so much more that Abif felt he needed to understand. “I’ve always had a thirst for knowledge, always wanted to continue to learn,” he says, so last summer Abif returned to school to pursue a full-time master’s degree in the Education Leadership, Organizations, and Entrepreneurship Program at HGSE while also continuing his job with the YMCA. 

“You don't get a lot of sleep,” he confides, but one of the highlights of working and studying is the opportunity to implement everything that he learns in real time. For instance, in one class — The Why, What, and How of School, Family, and Community Partnerships with Professor Karen Mapp — Abif learned new strategies to prevent chronic absenteeism. Previously, he was only familiar with efforts to tackle the problem once it had gotten out of hand.

Abif also helps with youth development through local mentoring groups including the Prove Them Wrong basketball training program and The Gathering, an initiative for young men run by Boston Public Schools. Its mission is to develop well-rounded individuals who will be “comfortable in any environment” after they graduate from high school, Abif says. Sometimes this work can involve fun travel, like taking students on a STEM-based trip to NASA “to meet astronauts and to see how rocket ships are built,” or skiing or hiking, he says. “Different things that are out of the norm for people coming from densely populated urban cities” that give them “the confidence they need to really flourish and walk in joy,” he adds. Other times, it’s just a matter of Abif showing up for them. “A lot of the times our youths don’t think that they can do something because they haven't seen it done before, or by somebody who looks like them.” He tells them, “I've done this, you can do this too, and I'm here to help you do that.”

As for Abif’s future, he says there’s no dream job that he has in mind for after graduation. His “ultimate goal” is to “effect and make change for as many people as possible.”  Every morning, he asks himself, “How can I get up and be better today?”