Biography

Constance Olivia Harvey, is the Founder and President of the OLIVIA Group Community Consulting. The OLIVIA Group provides free professional consulting to community members mainly through Legacy Education and Community Empowerment Foundation, Inc. "Legacy". Constance co-founded Legacy in 2011 to provide a one-stop educational enrichment nonprofit in rural central Mississippi. Additionally, Constance is pursuing her Doctorate in Education Leadership and Management, homeschooling her elementary son and working with Scott County Youth Court as assistant legal secretary. Constance received her diploma with high honors from Forest High School (Forest, MS) where she served as the first African American female Student Government President and held the first interracial prom. She received her Bachelor of Science in Political Science/Pre-Law and Journalism, Magna Cum Laude from Tougaloo College (Tougaloo, MS) where she was the first African American female president of the Pre-law Society. She received my Master of Science in Reading Education with distinction from St. Thomas University (Miami Garden FL). Constance has written and facilitated many youth leadership and education community engagement models and is in the process of publishing them. Her research has developed through practical experience and scholarly methodology that centers on the global community’s role in shaping education through youth leadership development, educational enrichment and literacy opportunities such as summer camps and afterschool programs. She has extensively studied and practiced the impact of nonprofits, parents, businesses, and communities as critical supports to early childhood literacy, especially in rural and southern areas. Constance has over nineteen years of experience and networks working across the nation to improve education literacy in Mississippi, Alabama, Louisiana, Florida, South Carolina, North Carolina, Georgia, Illinois, and Rhode Island. As a former W. K. Kellogg Foundation Community Leadership Fellow and Ford Foundation (AED) Fellow, Constance understands the service to others is the purpose of life. Constance has worked as Children's Defense Fund's Servant Leader, AmeriCorp Program Director with Operation Shoestring, Southern Echo's Assistant Director of Education, and a United States Legislative Director and Staffer for Mississippi in which she was noted by Jet in 2000 as being the youngest permanent congressional staffer in history. Her primary experience comes from being a co-founder, board member and program director for summer camps and after-school programs with “Legacy” (leacef.com) for over 20 years. She grew up in the Slaughter Memorial Foundation (the umbrella foundation to the current “Legacy” in my hometown) which is a community service and educational enrichment community development foundation that began in the 1980's. Constance saw firsthand that her grandmother, Mrs. Olivia Slaughter, believed in and loved literacy. Her grandmother was the head librarian and after-school director and would provide a safe, educational, and nurturing space for students to get off the bus and do homework daily. Constance's grandmother would privately teach adults how to read in the back of the library and saved the lives of many people, including Constance's life, by spending quality time with them to ensure the youth felt safe and encouraged to study, perform well in school, and become more confident in themselves. Her grandmother provided weekend, summer and after school enrichment opportunities for youth at the library that kept youth out of the streets. The youth were taught proper socialization and literacy skills. Constance appreciates her grandmother's commitment to youth literacy and has proudly followed in her grandmother's footsteps, and dedicated her life to the memory of hergrandmother.