Darnell Epps is a writer, speaker, and social entrepreneur whose work focuses on expanding educational and economic opportunity for students too often left at the margins of our systems. Raised in public housing in Brooklyn and educated in New York City public schools, he experienced early on how unevenly opportunity is distributed—and how much potential goes unseen in working-class communities.

Darnell went on to earn a B.A. in Government from Cornell University and a J.D. from Yale Law School. While at Yale, he also enrolled at Lincoln Technical Institute, completing training in Manufacturing Technology and Machining. Moving between law school seminars and the machine shop has shaped his conviction that young people deserve multiple, dignified pathways into the middle class, and that public education must function as a bridge, not a sorting mechanism.

He is the founder and CEO of Thurgood Industries, a career networking platform that partners with CTE high schools, trade schools, and community colleges to connect students directly with employers in the skilled trades and advanced manufacturing. His writing on education, economic mobility, and the dignity of labor has appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, Slate, and The Hill, and he has been a guest on CNN, Fox Business, NPR, and Mike Rowe’s “The Way I Heard It.”

As a father and as a leader working alongside educators and employers across the country, Darnell is committed to building systems that recognize talent wherever it lives and translate learning into real opportunity.