Corporate trailblazer

Read Alliance (READ) presented its 2025 Trailblazer Award for Corporate Social Responsibility to Deutsche Bank, honoring its commitment to youth literacy and teen leadership. The award was presented at READ’s Seventh Annual Youth Summit in August at Columbia University.

Founded on a commitment to educational equity and youth leadership, READ works to accelerate the educational trajectory of early elementary students through the power of teens who provide one-to-one literacy tutoring in under-resourced communities.

READ’s dual impact model serves two important populations: young children striving to read and teens who live or attend school in the same neighborhoods. This model addresses the achievement gap for early elementary students from low-income families while engaging teens from the same neighborhood in serving their communities as paid reading tutors. Since 2000, Read Alliance has employed more than 19,000 high school youth providing over 21,000 K-2nd grade students with one-to-one reading tutoring in all five boroughs.

Deutsche Bank Americas Foundation funding has made it possible for READ to expand into new school partner sites and provide programming in communities that are some of the highest need, lowest income in the country.