Meet Nenelwa Tomi!

Nenelwa Tomi

By Zoey Patterson

Nenelwa Tomi is the new Associate Director of Admissions and Financial Aid. She’s especially interested in working in admissions because of the unique perspectives she can bring to the table.

“In thinking about my role here...what comes to me is my experience in admissions as a student ...and just feeling like there wasn’t much support along that journey, and feeling like there were people in the spaces who didn’t represent the experiences that I had gone through,” Tomi said. “So part of what drew me to this work was trying to be that person for others, to see themselves represented.”

Tomi is also interested in how the current pandemic provides an opportunity to reimagine Athenian’s admissions process.

“I think this year, because we don’t have the capacity to have prospective families visiting our campus, it offers us a really interesting opportunity to think of new ways to showcase our experience, or...what distinguishes Athenian from other spaces and places,” Tomi said.

The current admissions process, she said, has “been a bit stale.”

“We’ve all done kind of the same things across institutions,” Tomi said. “Whether you are at a school on the East Coast or the West Coast, you kind of have the same standard of experience. We just have different campuses.”

However, Tomi not only believes in Athenian’s mission, but has a personal connection to it.
“It values experiential learning, which is something that was a core component of my upbringing not just in the classroom, but also outside of [it],” Tomi said.

Tomi finds this quite meaningful and is excited to share it with more people.

“The fact that I’m at an institution that places high value on that...idea of creating and innovating in the classroom and finding ways to be yourself, or bring yourself into that classroom space, is so powerful to me,” Tomi said. “[I want] to think about how to increase...the capacity that Athenian has to reach more phenomenal students to experience this.”

Being off-campus, however, has made it harder for Tomi to properly acquaint herself with working at Athenian.

“It’s kind of a strange space to be in in terms of being a new person because you don’t even know how to be proactive because you don’t really know people, and you don’t know the systems yet,” Tomi said. “So it’s been great to engage with...forum and community meetings and see students from that perspective, but it’s been strange to not meet them.”

Tomi is still eager to meet whoever she can within the limitations of (partial) distance learning.

“I encourage students—or faculty and staff who are interested—to just reach out,” Tomi said.

When we do fully return to campus, Tomi has a note on something distinctive students might notice about her.
“I love to sing, so you can find me singing in the car,” Tomi said. “If you’re ever leaving the Athenian parking lot and you see someone singing and dancing in their car, that’s probably me.”