Co-founder of the Kheprw Institute in Indianapolis, she has a passion for empowering black youth to succeed academically and gain valuable life skills that will serve them and their community into adulthood.
Paulette Fair
Featured Leadership Topics
Understand Leadership
“A leader is a servant, a servant of the people who are doing the work with your assistance.”
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Defy Injustice and Inequality
“ I was from the segregated south and you can see what happened to me in the south because I was in this closed community where I cam up where the whole is important to the individual, and then I came north and it was terrible.”
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Storytelling
“I thought of it as the nurturing morning sun will help little shoots of grass be strong, and be strong enough to withstand the fires of their life, especially as young adults. So, for me, the [Kheprw] scarab beetle connotated us nurturing shoots of grass, these young people, through that fire and to become the best that they can be. ”
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Influences and Impacts
“ I grew up in a city where there was two kinds of human beings - there were black people and there was everybody else.”
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About Paulette Fair
Paulette Fair is a co-founder of the Kheprw Institute in Indianapolis. She has a passion for empowering black youth to succeed academically and gain valuable life skills that will serve them and their community into adulthood. In the summer of 2003, Fair, along with two colleagues, founded KI to provide tutoring for her grandson, her colleague’s son and a couple of their friends in reading, algebra and public speaking. Since then Fair has served as KI's program director and overseen its growth to serve a broad group of youth and community who work to improve themselves and change the world.
Ms. Fair was raised in San Antonio, TX, where her father worked at Randolph Air Force Base. She attended Brackenridge High School in years immediately following the U.S. Supreme Court’s landmark ruling on desegregation, Brown vs. the Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas, issued in 1954. Fair attended Wayne State University in Detroit, Michigan, majoring in chemistry and biology, graduating in 1969 as a medical technician.
In 1979, Ms. Fair moved to Indianapolis to accept employment, which is when she met Adisa Imhotep and his wife, Pambana Uishi. Together, the three started the Kheprw Institute in 2003. KI became a non-profit in 2004, and since then it has grown to include KI New Media; Community Controlled Food Initiative; and Scaraby’s Consulting. KI focuses on youth and seeks solutions for community problems and challenges in the areas of education, environment, economy, and empowerment.
In 2010, as a recognition for her work with KI, Ms. Fair was awarded the Purpose Prize Fellowship by Encore.org. These fellowships are selectively awarded nationally through a referee process. According to Encore.org’s website, Purpose Fellowships are intended to demonstrate that older people comprise an undiscovered and still largely untapped solution to an array of pressing societal challenges.
Explore the complete oral history of Paulette Fair