ShoMari Payne Announced as SRS Director of Policy Projects

Student-Ready Strategies (SRS) has announced the appointment of ShoMari Payne to serve as the organization's Director of Policy Projects, a position focused on researching institutional and state policies to improve equitable outcomes for historically-marginalized student populations.

“We are thrilled for ShoMari to join our growing staff. He has passion and unique experience that will greatly benefit our partners, and most important, the diverse students we collectively serve,” said Sarah Ancel, SRS’s Founder and CEO.

ShoMari is a native of Dayton, Ohio and has a wide range of experiences working in higher education over the last decade, including as an academic advisor, success coach, researcher, and faculty member. ShoMari most recently served as the Assistant Director of Annual Giving at Miami University of Ohio.

He has also supported first-generation, low-income students as an instructor for the Young Scholars Program at Sinclair Community College and currently serves at Central State University, an HBCU, as an adjunct professor in the college of Engineering, Technology, and Agriculture.

He completed his MBA at Miami University and is currently approaching the dissertation stage of his Ph.D. in Educational Leadership, also at Miami University, where his research focuses on occupational outcomes for African American male students that attended high-poverty urban schools in the Dayton region. In 2020, he delivered a TEDx Talk entitled, “The Inheritance of Poverty” which chronicled his personal experience navigating familial and community poverty.

“I’m excited to be a part of the SRS team and to pursue state and institutional policies across the nation that are empowering students and uplifting communities," Payne said. "Policy has the power to transform lives. I've seen it firsthand and am eager to play a central role in this this important work."