Participation in a prestigious fellowship brought Chandani Battle back to Richmond Promise

FOR A YOUNG PROFESSIONAL, the definition of success often follows a familiar script.

Graduate from college. Get a job. Build a career.

Richmond Promise alumna Chandani Battle had all those pieces in place. After graduating from El Cerrito High School in 2018, she moved across the country to attend one of the world’s most renowned collegiate business schools, The Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania.

In 2022, she graduated with a degree in Economics and continued down the path that made the most sense, landing a job as a financial analyst at Goldman Sachs. 

But, even as her career was taking off, Battle kept coming back to the same question.

What does success actually mean?

“I think that as I was pursuing a more traditional aspect of success — going to an Ivy League school and going into traditional finance — I still wasn’t finding fulfillment in myself, even though I had on paper what people would consider to be a success,” Battle said. “Through my struggles, I was really able to kind of take a look at who I am, who I want to be, and be intentional about building out who I want to be as an adult.” 

Looking within led Battle to make a change. She applied to and eventually joined the Coro Fellows Program in Public Affairs, a national fellowship that for over 80 years has helped young professionals develop the skills to become civic leaders in communities across the country. 

As part of the fellowship, participants gain job experience through multiple field placements over a seven-month period. In Battle’s case, she started at the San Francisco Housing Accelerator Fund, joined an electoral campaign for the Oakland Unified School District School Board, spent time at a virtual reality gaming company and worked in the office of California Governor Gavin Newsom.

For her final placement, Battle got the opportunity to pick her own path and select an organization that she was interested in. As she considered her options, she continued to search inward for her own definition of success.

“I spent a lot of time reflecting on my childhood in Richmond and what kind of influenced me to be who I am and influenced me to care about community, work and impact,” she said. 

“A lot of it came back to Richmond.”

What Battle was finding was the ideas she truly cared about — social justice, inequality, personal fulfillment — all came from lived experiences in her own hometown. 

One of those experiences came through Richmond Promise. Between her first and second year at Penn, she spent the summer working as a Richmond Promise Summer Associate. She was assigned to work with one of RP’s longtime partners, the Youth Finance Institute of America (YFIA). 

Through that experience, she merged her interest in both finance and social justice, and in working with YFIA founder and executive director Amiko Foster, Battle started to see how broader issues like financial literacy could help make an impact in communities like Richmond.

“I learned the power of having a localized impact. I loved that her nonprofit had a specific focus,” Battle said. “I feel like, when I was a high school student going away across the country, I was kind of searching for what was outside of Richmond in certain ways. The ability to work with Amiko, as well as with Richmond Promise, helped show me the impact of being within the community. And, it also helped me with my communication style in terms of public speaking, since I was speaking to workshops with a lot of Richmond Promise Scholars.” 

To finish her fellowship, Battle wanted to come back to Richmond. She reached out to Richmond Promise Executive Director Christopher Whitmore with a proposal, and joined the staff in late February. 

Under the direction of Chief Operating Officer Anjanine Bonet, Battle took on two key project assignments. First, she began an analysis of Scholar survey data gathered throughout RP’s history. Through her analysis, she searched for key qualitative indicators that can help Richmond Promise tailor programming to fit the changing needs of RP Scholars. 

She also joined RP’s Scholar Success and Career Services teams in ideating what a new Richmond Promise Alumni Association might look like. Through her own experience as an RP alum, she delivered recommendations not just for the formation of the group but also provided ideas on how to engage former students and sustain the initiative.

In just one month, Battle’s work has made an impact that will serve Richmond Promise Scholars well into the future. 

“It feels incredibly fitting that a Richmond Promise alumnus would return to our organization to lead critical work that will benefit students for years to come,” Whitmore said. “In many ways, Chandani’s exemplary leadership is representative of our Scholars and alumni as a whole — young leaders who are ready to step up to support their community.”

Although working at Richmond Promise represents the final field assignment in her fellowship, her impact on Richmond as a community is just getting started.

Even as part of her fellowship cohort, pride in her city has come through. She’s brought fellow cohort members to Richmond to show off the Rosie the Riveter National Historical Park, and spent time with her colleagues examining issues around housing in the city.

“A lot of them didn’t know much about (Richmond). They just knew that it’s in the East Bay,” Battle said. “Some people, not my fellows exactly, but a lot of people might align it more with Oakland and San Francisco, and I just think it’s so important for people, especially within public policy, to understand that our cities are individual cities with individual issues that need individual support. So, sometimes programs may focus a lot on places like San Francisco and Oakland, and it’s really important that I was like OK, we’re going to go here. This is where I’m from. This is also a place that needs people to come here to contribute.”

As she searches for her next full-time job, Battle is also thinking about projects that might have long-range benefits throughout the city. She and her best friend (and fellow RP alum) Cienna Clark have what she describes as ‘a million ideas’, but she says that sharing the history and uplifting the voices of Richmond is an aspiration of theirs.

While the journey has led Battle back to Richmond, it has also provided clarity around what comes next. And, it has her focused on creating her own career path.

“Now, my definition of success is a little more holistic. I want to be happy. I want to live a good life. I want to love the people around me. I want to be loved. I want to contribute to a community in a positive way. I want to leave a positive impact in whatever space that I’m in. And, I want to pursue my own ambitions and my own ideas, and I want to see them come to life.”