As a teacher and nonprofit leader, Jenny Walker ('02) is always looking for grants that can help adult learners.

So when one regional charitable foundation denied her application for her organization, Walker didn't give up. She wanted them to understand the urgency for support.

"That didn't sit well with me," she says. "I thought, 'Well, I'm going to make it successful. I'm going to fight for my students.'"

Walker eventually got the grant for the Literacy Council of Bowie and Miller Counties in Texarkana, which focuses on adult literacy.

Now she shows that same fierce support as executive director of Literacy Texas, a statewide nonprofit that supports adult learning. She has led the organization to develop new programs and has earned a national fellowship. Success has come from talking personally to her clients to find out their needs -- and from her determination, which she attributes to growing up in poverty in Texarkana and being a first-generation college student.

"You're just scrappy, you've got to make it happen," she says. "When I came to UNT, I was the first person in my family who had ever gone to college, and one of the first people in my family to ever leave my county for a different pathway in life. I mean, it really was a big deal for me to come to UNT. And the fact that I made it through that first semester gave me so much confidence -- at that point, I felt like I was unstoppable."

Learning to Lead

Walker came to UNT after attending a UIL journalism tournament with her teacher, Laura Barrett, who attended UNT. 

"I got the personal tour, and she said, 'And this is where we had our picnics, and this is where I did this.' And I just thought, 'What a fun place.'"

Walker even recruited her high school sweetheart and now husband, Greg Walker ('01), to come to UNT. One of her favorite classes was a statistics class taught by John Quintanilla, professor of mathematics. She was impressed he knew everybody's names in a big class by the end of the second week.

Walker carried that attention to detail with her when she taught high school journalism for 15 years.

"When I became a teacher, I had 150 students in my classes," she says, "but it was important to me to learn their names because I knew how special that made me feel."

More than Reading

After working in high schools, she pivoted to teaching and working as coordinator of student engagement at Texas A&M at Texarkana in 2018. Two years later, she went on to serve as  executive director of the Literacy Council. She also earned her master's degree in education administration in 2012 and her doctorate in education leadership in 2023, both from Texas A&M at Texarkana.

In 2024, she became executive director of Literacy Texas, which provides professional development training, resources and advocacy. It does more than teach people to read -- it also prepares clients for employment, with training for digital and computer literacy, GED preparation and financial literacy.

"Our goal is to help men and women have the knowledge and skills they need so they can contribute to the educated workforce and can best provide for themselves and their families," Walker says.

'We Should Just Be Good People'

One of Walker's biggest challenges -- and victories -- came when she was rejected for the grant.

She decided to dig deep. The grantmaking organization's officials told her they wouldn't fund adult literacy programs because their low attendance rates meant they weren't always successful.

So Walker asked the adult learners why they weren't coming. They told her they lost their transportation or childcare or living arrangements.

"What I realized was that their success in my program had nothing to do with the actual academic part of it. It was everything to do with those factors that were outside of the scope of my job," she says. "I thought, 'OK, how can I solve all of these other problems while I'm in this position?'"

She came across an Arkansas-based program called 100 Families. Inspired by that organization and its collective impact model, her team pulled together more than 100 Texarkana nonprofits, government agencies, church ministries, social service providers, employers and others who were committed to working together to support people in need. The Literacy Council she was running at that time was the backbone organization.

She got the grant two years later -- and has since earned other recognition. In 2024, she was selected for a national State Advocates for Adult Education Fellowship from the Coalition on Adult Basic Education, which allowed her to advocate for federal funding and other legislation in Washington, D.C.

"I feel like I'm a human being who loves other human beings, and when I have the opportunity to use whatever influence I have to impact positively the lives of other people, that's what I'm going to do. That's what I have to do. And I think that's how people should be. We should just be good people, but I'm very proud of that work."