Possible Zone

Shout out to The Possible Zone alumna Aicha Kaba for taking her business Really Just Shae to the next level -- her Brown Label Collection is now available at Logan Airport (Terminal E)! Aicha recently showcased her Personal Workshop Kits on NBC-Boston. You can find Really Just Shea at the Fish & Farm Market at the Seaport and online at reallyjustshea.com. Congratulations, Aicha! We are so proud!!

https://tinyurl.com/reallyjustsheaNBCbos26

Step into the future of work, where high-tech innovation meets hands-on mastery. Join us at The Possible Zone' s Innovation Center and explore careers that will endure in the future. From sustainable energy to advanced manufacturing, the trades hold endless possibilities. This is your chance to connect with industry professionals, learn about "earn-while-you-earn" apprenticeships and union-track positions, and find career paths that honor your hustle and creativity.

When? Saturday, October 17th, from 1:00-3:00 p.m. Learn more and reserve your spot today! https://tinyurl.com/tpztradesfair2026

"Adaptability, a TPZ competency defined as 'Being able to adjust emotions, thoughts, and behaviors to new situations or changes when the outcome is not clear,' develops when young people encounter uncertainty, make consequential choices, receive feedback, and revise their approach. Research indicates that adaptability plays a key role in our engagement and growth. If we want students to thrive in a changing economy, we need to design more learning experiences where they don’t already know exactly what happens next," Meg Riordan, Ph.D., Chief Learning Officer, shares on The Possible Zone Insights blog.

"At TPZ, we design immersive Deep Dives that center around building STEAM and durable skills and gaining exposure to career pathways. Like Outward Bound, young people encounter unfamiliar tools, ideas, people, and need to adapt as learners in order to design products, interact with industry partners, solve-problems, and navigate uncertainties. In this way TPZ cultivates adaptability by providing students with opportunities that spark curiosity, lead to inquiry and innovation, and help them develop skills they can apply to their lives and careers."

Read Meg's full article online: https://possiblezone.org/building-adaptability-adjusting-mindsets-and-actions/

The Possible Zone Innovation Center Fab Lab turned into a glowing garden, illuminated by our students’ prototypes in the Lights and Bytes Deep Dive. Students explored lighting controls, materials, and form using computer-aided design, electronics, and fabrication to create a custom lamp for someone in their lives. 💡

Visitors from Lutron Electronics shared how a product goes from an idea to a prototyped, tested final design, and how they approach many of the same design challenges the students faced. Students took apart lights and controls to better understand how components fit together, and contribute to a product’s function.

Students prototyped their designs, and created finished products with printed, laser-cut, and electronic elements, from voice activation, to clap-activated color changes. Whether for an elder family member or an older sibling headed to college, every project was personalized for its recipient.

Thank you to TPZ Educators Sam Mayer Svarczkopf and John Mendizabal for leading this course, and to our visitors from Lutron, Jordan Threlfall and Jess Bardio for showing our students what careers in electronics can look like.

Last Friday, The Possible Zone (TPZ) was proud to host Navigating AI: Tools, Ethics, and Impact in Youth Work in partnership with the , Office of Youth Engagement () and the . Youth-serving professionals from agencies and organizations across Boston heard about meaningful work underway by ACLU-MA to protect civil rights. They also engaged in workshops facilitated by TPZ staff, including a Make → Model → Meaning workshop led by Alisha Collins, Senior Director of Experiential Learning; an interactive Family Matters session led by Dre Woodberry, Regional Senior Director of Students and Families; Transform Education by Designing Next-Generation Learning Experiences Powered by AI led by Rodrigo Tempestini, Vice President of Learning & Development; and the AI Schedule Challenge and closing reflections led by Phil Gay, Senior Manager of Program Operations.

Attendees shared some powerful insights throughout the day, including:

“A question for young people: How do you want to learn? What tools do you want to incorporate? We should have this conversation together.”

“Our current education system was made for the Industrial Revolution, not the AI technology revolution that’s here now.”

“Very similar to the internet, people made a lot of assumptions early on because we were in a stage of uncertainty. That’s where we are with AI now… technology helps some students and doesn’t empower others, and we’re still discovering that.”

The real-time feedback was phenomenal. On a Friday before a holiday weekend, guests left asking for a Part 2! Thank you to Daniel Bryan, Olivia Santoro, and Gideon Epstein from ACLU-MA, and our TPZ colleagues who shared their time and talents to make the day such a great success.

Students in our Podcasting summer Deep Dive, Youth Voices on the Future, developed storytelling and editing skills to share their experiences as young people today. Working in production teams, they developed ideas, interviewed subjects, recorded their episodes, and collaborated in post-production.

Dylan Keith Humphrey, Denver H., Deirdre Stanford from our partner Fourddo visited our class, offering career insights and leading an immersive workshop on active listening, ethical storytelling, and building rapport with interview subjects. Our students practiced their communication skills in mock interviews, and learned how to pull meaningful stories from short conversations.

Our partners JAKE Small 🏳️‍🌈 and Angela Richard from TEDxBellingham Square led a workshop explaining how TED speakers craft their presentation into an “idea worth spreading,” and helped focus student ideas into concise story pitches.

Students identified meaningful community-centered ideas, practiced public speaking and storytelling, and learned how to capture and conduct interviews. Students spoke to members of their community or school on topics ranging from music and emotion, to mental health, student agency at school and Gen Z’s approach to AI usage – all of them shared real pieces of themselves, what they’re passionate about, and what they want their futures to look like.

Huge thanks to The Possible Zone educators Tori Saia and Kahmal L. London for leading this course, and to our wonderful partners from FOURDDO and TEDx Bellingham Square for helping our students tell their stories!

hashtag hashtag

Staff, students, and an alumnus from The Possible Zone (TPZ) had the honor last Friday to support Community Servings, a local nonprofit (also serving RI), that provides medically tailored, nutritious, scratch-made meals to chronically and critically ill individuals and their families. It was TPZ's second time volunteering, and the Community Servings couldn't be more welcoming. We prepped sides for meals, including kale and chicken salad, couscous salad, hummus, and cranberry cookies. Volunteers scooped, weighed, packaged, and labeled sides to be delivered as part of neighbors’ healthy meals.

Community Servings offers 16 medical diets designed to help people improve their health through nutritionally-appropriate food scratch-made from wholesome ingredients. Since their founding in 1990, they have provided more than 15 million medically tailored meals to their clients across Massachusetts who are living with severe critical and chronic illnesses such as HIV, cancer, diabetes, and kidney disease. We look forward to volunteering with them againServings offers 16 medical diets designed to help people improve their health through nutritionally-appropriate food scratch-made from wholesome ingredients. Since their founding in 1990, they have provided more than 15 million medically tailored meals to their clients across Massachusetts who are living with severe critical and chronic illnesses such as HIV, cancer, diabetes, and kidney disease. We look forward to volunteering with them again!

@

Jessika Pun shares her journey of growth as a TPZ alumna and current staff member on the TPZ Insights blog. She writes:

"When I think about my journey at The Possible Zone, I don't see a straight line. I see identities that emerged over time, each building on the last, as my exposure to experiences and people grew. I arrived as a learner, curious and eager to discover what I was capable of. I grew into a business founder, taking ownership of ideas, projects, and new challenges. And then, I became a mentor, realizing that growth isn't only about what you achieve, but what you help others achieve. Each role shaped not only what I could do, but who I was becoming."

Read about Jessika's journey as a Learner, Founder, and Mentor: https://possiblezone.org/an-alumnas-journey-of-growth/

A group of Boston teenagers recently got an inside look at what it means to build a career at the intersection of food science and culinary technology at the sprawling headquarters of , a leading global product design and technology company located in nearby Needham, MA.

Since 2023, The Possible Zone (TPZ), an education nonprofit that prepares students for careers of the future, has partnered with SharkNinja to empower the next generation of innovators. While TPZ designs and leads afterschool programming on topics such as Autonomous Robots, Tech & UX Design for Escape Rooms, and How to Build a Care Bot, partners like SharkNinja open their doors and make career exploration even more meaningful.

“Partnerships like this help close the gap by giving young people direct access to mentorship, to industry leaders, to real world experiences, and the confidence to see themselves as future innovators and leaders,” said Franchesca Carrington, M.Ed. (she/her), SharkNinja’s Head of Philanthropy.

The high school students visiting SharkNinja — most of whom attend Boston Public Schools — are part of Cooking for Humanity, a 20-session afterschool LaunchLab course run by TPZ which asks the question: How can food be both a celebration of culture and means to potentially improve health outcomes?

Read the full article by Aiden Stein about this healthcare-focused LaunchLab on our TPZ Insights blog: https://tinyurl.com/TPZcookingforhumanity26

The Possible Zone's CONVERSE Deep Dive is in the box! More than two dozen students explored Converse’s product creation process through consumer insights, creative briefs, graphic design, customization, prototyping, and merchandising. This annual summer partnership invites Deep Dive participants to reimagine Chuck under the guidance of multidisciplinary mentors from Converse's Boston Headquarters.

In teams, these Boston area high schoolers began the process by creating a collage vision board based on a muse -- Casual & Athletic, Elevated and Classic, Trendsetter, Individualist, and Femme & Trendy. Working alongside enthusiastic Converse designers and TPZ staff, students turned their shared vision into a group design for a graphic T-shirt. Students customized white high tops with patches, punches, and hand-drawn details to create a matching look which they presented at Converse headquarters. The diversity of the students’ designs never fails to surprise and delight, underscoring the infinite creativity of future-forward creators.

Thank you to Gonzalez, Margy Mackin, and the entire Converse Team, as well as TPZ program staff Grace Klein-Lee, Yari Dudley, Meyling Galvez Contreras, and Shira Zar-Kessler for making this year's Deep Dive another great success. We were also happy to welcome several guests during the program who wondered at the creativity and possibilities of this partnership, including City of Boston leaders Jose Masso, Chief of Human Services, and Joseph Henry, Chief, Office of Arts & Culture.

Photo credits: Whitney Goncalves from Converse and Aiden Stein from The Possible Zone