Focus on What Is Possible, Not What Is Probable: How OneGoal Georgia Walks Students From a Diploma to a Credential (with Taylor Ramsey)
A social worker once walked Taylor Ramsey's mother from high school dropout to technical degree, and today Taylor leads OneGoal Georgia, which does the same for students across the state.
In this episode of The Stronger Podcast, Mike Montoya sits down with Taylor, Executive Director of OneGoal Georgia, a nonprofit that builds postsecondary advising into the school day, to talk about getting students from a diploma to a credential that pays.
Taylor was born and raised in Honolulu, in a 32 story apartment building surrounded by others like it, with classmates from China, Japan, the Philippines, Laos and Vietnam. Her mother had dropped out of high school in tenth grade in the Ozark Mountains and run away from home. A social worker got her into a GED program and then a technical college, where she trained as a medical transcriptionist and moved out of the service industry. The family was on public assistance through Taylor's childhood.
She went to a liberal arts college in the Northwest and joined Teach For America at 22, telling the interviewer there was no plan B. In Baton Rouge she taught under a principal she was terrified of, who then wrote a letter about her that Taylor still keeps in her office. She has led OneGoal in Georgia for seven years.
Mike and Taylor get into how the program works: students take OneGoal as a class inside the school day, and the team stays with them through the first year after high school, the stretch when they do not belong to anybody. They also take on summer melt, the move to start advising in ninth grade instead of eleventh, the growth beyond metro Atlanta that made OneGoal Metro Atlanta into OneGoal Georgia, and why Taylor thinks the harder public argument about whether college is worth it is a good thing.
Tune in to hear the hiring mistake Taylor made at 26, and the advice from a mentor she has carried ever since.
Chapters:
- (01:21) - A sterile conference room in Atlanta, and a suburb she never imagined
- (02:11) - Born in Honolulu to a mother who ran away from the Ozarks
- (02:32) - A 32 story apartment building and classmates from all over the world
- (03:14) - A social worker, a GED, and a job training program
- (03:53) - We are the working poor: the ethos that stuck
- (05:21) - Calabash aunties and a support group for single mothers
- (05:52) - Head Start, childcare cuts, and a preschool teacher’s recommendation
- (06:53) - Bringing the house down at the Hawaii State Capitol
- (07:24) - Sleeping in the back of YWCA conference rooms
- (08:40) - From powerless to powerful, and the shadow side of that drive
- (10:59) - Mission driven work, and the privilege of being paid for it
- (11:55) - College was not if, but how and when
- (12:45) - Food stamps at the grocery store, and the shame she remembers
- (13:19) - Teach For America at 22: there was no plan B
- (13:56) - Baton Rouge was an education, and a fast one
- (15:43) - Ms. Garrett, high expectations, and the letter still in her office
- (18:57) - What OneGoal is, and why a diploma alone is not enough
- (20:36) - What high schools are measured on, and what they are not resourced for
- (21:40) - A class in the school day, and support through the first year out
- (22:51) - Summer melt: the students who never make it to campus
- (24:05) - The secret sauce, and the barrier to scale
- (25:24) - Moving the start from eleventh grade to ninth
- (29:06) - Now OneGoal Georgia, and the students outside the metro area
- (29:43) - Is college even worth it: the conversation that changed most
- (30:48) - Technical colleges are mostly built for adults, not 18 year olds
- (32:15) - Three year degrees in Oregon and Georgia
- (33:12) - The everyday kids with a B or C average
- (36:08) - Scalable public goods, not one off angels
- (37:27) - Strong women mentors, and being hard driving with empathy
- (38:40) - The hire she made because the better candidate intimidated her
- (41:39) - Explicit training in coaching, feedback, and positional power
- (42:36) - Go hard early, and stay in a learning posture
- (43:59) - Focus on what is possible, not what is probable
Referenced in this episode:
Georgia's approval of 90 credit hour bachelor's degrees: https://www.ajc.com/education/2026/08/georgia-greenlights-3-year-college-bachelors-degree/
Oregon's first three year bachelor's degrees: https://www.opb.org/article/2026/05/01/george-fox-university-3-year-bachelors-degree-oregon/
Research on summer melt among college intending students: https://edpolicyinca.org/newsroom/mitigating-summer-melt
National six year completion rates, including by income: https://nscresearchcenter.org/yearly-progress-and-completion/
National student to school counselor ratio data: https://www.schoolcounselor.org/getmedia/62807f33-a020-4c4f-ac6f-bf284803fd97/pr_ratios-24-25.pdf
Links:
Taylor Ramsey at OneGoal Georgia: https://www.onegoal.org/locations/georgia/
More about OneGoal: https://www.onegoal.org/
OneGoal on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/onegoal/
Connect with Mike: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mmsc/
Stronger Consulting: https://strongerconsulting.com
Start a podcast that matters: http://podcastsmatter.com
For more great podcasts like this one, visit https://podcaststhatmatter.org/
Stay strong.
Creators and Guests
Host
Mike Montoya
Thirty-two years in education, twenty-two of them inside the kinds of organizations Stronger now serves before founding the firm in 2016.
Guest
Taylor Ramsey
Executive Director of OneGoal Georgia, which builds postsecondary advising into the school day across 17 partner high schools