He was speaking to a dozen high school students in TeenSHARP, the program he co-founded with his Ukrainian wife, Tatiana Poladko, while both were graduate students at UD and Temple University, respectively.

Since its 2009 launch, their college-prep, youth leadership program has placed hundreds of underrepresented minority students into the nation’s most competitive and elite universities, including numerous Ivy League universities. The program has graduated 500-plus students to date, and from the last few classes of 80-90 students, roughly 25-30% have chosen UD. (“A great option,” said Alleyne, who graduated in 2009 with a master’s in political science and international relations.)

Speaking about Black History Month on that fateful February night, he quoted the timeless words of Dr. Martin Luther King: “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.” 

“Whether it’s Putin or racial injustice, you need a fierce urgency of now,” Alleyne told his TeenSHARP students. “You need courage. There needs to be a fire that keeps burning. There will always be a level of distraction, but what really matters, and how do you stay connected to those things?”

Now, one year since war began, Alleyne holds onto hope that the end may be in sight. “I’m a person of faith,” he said.

Faith is what drives his philanthropy and desire to give back — a calling he first learned from his mother. As a child, Alleyne watched her commute two hours to a New York City law firm, where she worked her way from secretary to HR director, all without a college degree.

Proudly Afro-centric, she gave her youngest son an ancient Egyptian name (Atnre, pronounced ah-tin-ray, “the revealed spirit of the water”) and sent the young American to a boarding high school in Ghana — his second trip on an airplane and first to Africa.

“She wanted us to see our own brilliance and excellence and not feel like our intellect had to be validated by someone else,” Alleyne said.

It’s a mission he and Poladko continue with TeenSHARP, a community dedicated to uplifting marginalized, minoritized populations through educational and economic mobility. Ensuring students graduate debt-free (or with as little debt as possible) is one of the program’s key goals.

In the meantime, Alleyne keeps working, expanding TeenSHARP’s reach through additional programs and opportunities, such as The Proximity Project, an eight-week training program for meaningful diversity, equity and inclusion, and the Ukraine Grassroots Leader Fund, which raises money for smaller, on-the-ground war efforts.

“I feel like we have a capacity to do both/and,” he said of his cross-continental, service-driven work. “You can care about humanity — all of it — when you put good into the world. Everything connects.”