The Skillman Foundation

Sometimes in Michigan, I feel like I live in a bubble. This is both very good and, at times, disconcerting. I can be quite honestly paralyzed with fear as I read headlines and see footage and images, not only from across the globe but from across the Midwest, across the country. And then look up from my phone to the diversity of faces across The Skillman Foundation, across a conference room, across a Zoom screen, and see hard-working, earnest folks who are determined to make the place better and who, given the purple nature of our state, have practiced care in how to avoid triggering words that might divide us. Still working on entrenched social issues, but increasingly doing so through conversations and collaborations with an ever-expanding constellation of people.

We are builders here in Michigan. Yes, autos; yes, new tech start-ups; yes, the future of mobility; yes, award-winning riverfronts; yes, music that changes history. But more quietly, maybe more importantly, we build bridges between each other, across difference, toward something new.

Our strategy at The Skillman Foundation is about nurturing the brilliance of youth. We do it by listening to them and the people closest to them, helping them redesign public education so it propels every student toward a brilliant future. That’s the WHAT. Then there’s the HOW might we achieve it: by rooting in community and then linking arms with as many people from as many sectors, cities, and walks of life to help make this happen.

How do we solve problems together, working across our differences and conflicts in 2026? How do we build trust and care at a time when a woman is shot in the face by her country, by a federal agent who is being protected from investigation and discipline? What is the way toward common ground when people are disappearing in government-sanctioned raids that aren’t based on criminality but on genealogy? Will we be able to protect ourselves and our families if we don’t also protect our neighbors and their children? When our days are done, and we return to the soil, where will all the things we should have said and done go? Will they surround us like albatrosses of shame for eternity?

We start this year thinking about our duty of loyalty, care, and responsibility, yes to Skillman, yes to our mission, yes to young people in Detroit and everywhere, and yes to America, the Malleable.

This year, with our country now a young 250 years old, we get to decide who we are with our voice, our values, our votes, and our actions. The pen of history, it is writing. With each action—or nonaction—it writes.

When it writes our chapter, may it again begin with E Pluribus Unum; out of many, one.

Together,
Angelique