Rahni Kellum is a doer.

And in 2020 when she noticed a gap within Sandia’s Academic Alliance Program, she did a lot more than speak up.

At the time, Rahni was working in business development supporting the program’s strategic research partnerships with five universities, the University of New Mexico, Georgia Institute of Technology, University of Texas at Austin, Purdue University and the University of Illinois.

“As I matured in my role, I realized we didn’t have any relationships with historically Black colleges and universities,” Rahni said. “While we did recruit from HBCUs, we didn’t have that strategic research tie like we did with the Academic Alliance Program, which is how we create those mutually beneficial relationships.”

Because of Rahni’s work in business development, she knew just how important those relationships could be for a university. Especially for an HBCU.

“HBCUs are historically underfunded and under resourced,” Rahni, a graduate of Prairie View A&M, one of nine HCBUs in Texas, said. “These schools don’t have the same name recognition some of the larger institutions do, and so there can be a stereotype that the caliber of students who come from these schools is going to be less than students graduating from predominately white institutions.”

Launching START HBCU

Committed to redefining stereotypes and championing for HBCUs, Rahni got to work.

“My first step was to partner with Sandia’s Black Leadership Committee,” Rahni said. “They had been pushing for Sandia to have bigger investments with HBCUs for a while and because of my work with the existing academic partnerships, I was able to take those ideas and put them into context and create a plan.”

Rahni worked with the Black Leadership Committee to create a proposal that would go in front of Susan Seestrom, who at the time was the associate Labs director for Advanced Science and Technology and the chief research officer.

“We were proposing the ability to create a program similar to the Academic Alliance Program, but specific to HBCUs,” Rahni said.

In February 2020, Rahni met with Susan, pitched the proposal and got the green light.

“Susan liked the idea,” Rahni said. “She asked me to formalize the program, decide which schools to engage, gain their buy in and bring everything to fruition.”

Global pandemic aside, Rahni made it happen.

Working alongside the Black Leadership Committee and the University Research Association department, Rahni selected schools based on how well their capabilities matched with Sandia’s needs and existing relationships already developed on the recruiting side.

In October 2020, the Securing Top Academic Research and Talent with HBCU program, also known as START HBCU, officially kicked off with partnerships with Florida A&M University, North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University, Norfolk State University, Alabama A&M University and Rahni’s alma mater, Prairie View A&M University.

Rahni managed the program, all five HBCU relationships and START’s internship institute until 2023 when she became an equal employment opportunity specialist. Rahni has recently been appointed a distinguished Human Resources strategic specialist.

Anthony Sanders currently manages the START program, which has 15 active research collaborations across the five HBCUs.

Rahni’s ‘why’

A graduate of an HBCU herself, Rahni has a deep love and appreciation for what she sees as the families created within HBCUs.

“I love the community and comradery developed at these schools,” Rahni said. “These communities become like family. There are over 100 HBCUs in the country, and I can meet someone who went to a different HBCU in a totally different part of the country, and we’ll have this instant connection, like we’re all cousins.”

And as Rahni said, you want to lift your family up however you can.

“While the START program is focused on our intern pipeline, the research collaboration between Sandia and these schools really helps elevate their profiles,” Rahni said. “These relationships foster long-term, meaningful connections, specifically with the faculty. And if we think about a university like a body, where students are the blood, they flow in and out, the faculty is the veins, these are the relationships we need to nourish.

“These partnerships also help expose students to the work we do at the Labs. It’s one thing to see Sandia at a career fair, but to be in a classroom and see your professor working on a Sandia project, that’s a front row seat, which helps students see the kind of work they could be doing at the Labs one day.”

So far, START seems to be working. Anthony says that there has been a 69% increase between 2023 and 2024 in the number of interns onboarded from HBCUs.

“Historically, we know that interns become Sandia employees,” Rahni said. “If we can get them in the door as interns and find the right career fit, we can keep the pipeline going.”

Getting it done

When Rahni started the groundwork to develop START HBCU, she was working two other jobs within Sandia. “It was a total stretch project,” Rahni said.

But Rahni saw a place where Sandia needed to improve and so she raised her hand. “Sandia has been a place where I have been able to both find and make my way, and that’s pretty special,” Rahni said. “Part of this has been me taking the time to get to know Sandia. I realize we have our challenges, but getting to know what those mean for the organization and then finding ways to say, ‘What are we going to do about it?’ and then being able to step up and help make those changes.

“Other organizations might say, ‘No, that’s not what you were hired to do,’ but here we have the ability to learn about ourselves, our passions and use those to fuel our careers to make a real difference in the world.”