Rashad Turner was born in 1985 in Minneapolis, Minnesota. At the age of two, his father was shot and killed, leaving his mother alone with no means to take care of him. His grandparents took on the role of raising him. His grandparents told him, “That if he wanted to change his life for the better, education was the answer.” He drove himself to succeed in school and worked hard for his education. He graduated from Saint Mary’s University of Minnesota with his master’s in education. He is the first in his family to graduate from college with a degree.
Turner believes that “no matter your start in life, quality education is the pathway to success.”
He set out to bring this success to the communities to help better education. In 2015, he was the founder of the Black Lives Matter in St. Paul, Minnesota. He believed that the organization stood for what the name implies, “Black Lives Matter.” Within that first year of the organization, he learned – ‘ugly truth.’ The organization had little to no concern about strengthening black families, nor did they care about improving their education for the students in the community.
Turner learned this when the organization publicly denounced charter schools alongside the teacher’s union.
As an insider, he learned that the moratorium of the charter schools did not support rebuilding black families but instead created a barrier to better the education for black children in the community.
After a year, he left Black Lives Matter and continued to work hard to better education and black families in the community.
He now serves as the president and executive director of Minnesota Parent Union, which strives to help parents place their children into successful schools from failing schools. This program has placed hundreds of children in better education to help them succeed and break the generational curses of poverty.