Tireless Tulsa Tech Teen Makes Prom Wishes Come True

Tiffany Grant, Tulsa Technology Center student and senior at Sperry High School, is the kind of person who makes you feel lazy about your own inactivity. But in a good way.

She’s a polite, charming teenager with a positive attitude and a bent toward helping people. That has led her to contribute 2,283 community service hours through 4-H Club (she has been president of Sperry 4-H for two years). Grant has played first chair clarinet in the Sperry High Band and was editor of the first Sperry FFA Newsletter, the CareerTech student organization affiliated with agricultural education. She also has claimed first place at the Tulsa County Free Fair with her handmade quilts.

Grant transformed a 4-H project into a tremendous accomplishment called Prom Wishes, Inc., a non-profit organization that provides prom clothing and accessories to economically disadvantaged high school students. In 2003, when Grant was 15-years-old, Prom Wishes outfitted 19 students for the prom. In 2004, that number rose to 125. And in 2005, Prom Wishes gave dresses (and four tuxedos), shoes, purses, corsages, prom pictures, manicures, gas cards and restaurant gift certificates to 253 teens from 46 towns in Oklahoma. Grant has secured corporate sponsorship from Bama Pie, Oneok, PSO, Quick Trip, and Samson Resources, and she is mentoring two sixth-graders in Sperry to take over the project when she goes to college.

Photo by Tom Gilbert

To make Prom Wishes succeed, Grant organized dress drives, raised money, established a teen advisory board and adult board of directors, and produced a brochure, business cards and web site. Grant went at things a bit backwards having established a successful non-profit corporation, Grant then went to the classroom at Tulsa Tech during her junior year to learn about business.

“At first I wanted to go into nursing,” Grant said. “I wanted to take the nursing class at Tulsa Tech, but the class was full, so I enrolled in the Marketing/E-Commerce class. Since taking the class, my opinion of business totally changed. I really enjoyed it. With Prom Wishes, I had business and marketing experience but not the educational background. The class helped me to learn what I wanted to do.”

Now Grant plans on majoring in marketing in college. She’d prefer a Christian school and has her eye on Southwest Baptist University in Bolivar, MO. Then she’d like to attend graduate school at Harvard. In fact, a Harvard professor who heard about Grant called and spoke to her mother to encourage the family to consider Harvard.

Grant’s accomplishments are even more impressive as she has Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) and had such serious speech problems and other developmental delays as a youth that doctors told Grant’s mother that she should be institutionalized.

“The doctors told me to just forget about her, that she’d never do anything,” said Cheri Grant, Tiffany’s mother. “I think it was just the mom in me that said she was going to get through it.”

Grant was eventually diagnosed with an auditory processing disorder, and through speech therapy and other treatments was able to overcome it. She has participated in speech contests and even won first place at a 4-H Communication Rally. She obtained the corporate sponsorship for Prom Wishes by speaking to the Tulsa Corporate Volunteer Council in front of a group of business leaders.

“She can work a room so quickly now,” her mother said.

When the city of Tulsa was looking to annex land in Sperry, Grant circulated petitions against it and spoke in front of area groups to help stop the annexation.

“The land they were looking at was right across from her house,” said Tracy Lane, extension educator at Tulsa County 4-H Youth Development. “They were looking to change it from agricultural to commercial use.” Such a change would have negatively affected some local 4-H members who raised animals in the area.

Lane says Grant has worked on 104 different 4-H projects. Grant’s activities include collecting food and clothes for the food bank, delivering Christmas presents to children at hospitals, making Thanksgiving dinner for an elderly couple, working at the Habitat for Humanity store and volunteering at local livestock shows.

“Tiffany is an exceptional young lady with a promising future,” Lane said. “She has a passion for community service and wants to make it her life’s work. I admire Tiffany’s determination and initiative.”

In last year’s Tulsa Tech course, Grant learned about how to catch customers’ eyes, networking, promotion, window displays and many other facets of marketing. During her upcoming senior year, she will attend Tulsa Tech’s Business and Entrepreneurship class.

“My Tulsa Tech instructor from last year was Callie Armstrong, and she was terrific,” Grant said. “I’m looking forward to this year’s class.”

Her business education will continue even before that. In July, she will attend the Global Business Entrepreneurship Junior M.B.A. program in New York City for 10 days. She will visit Wall Street, receive mentoring from business executives, and work on a team to execute all aspects of a full-scale business plan.

Grant recently won a $27,000 scholarship from Discover Card for her leadership, talents, speeches, overcoming of obstacles and her creation of Prom Wishes. She was selected as the Oklahoma 4-H Citizenship Project Winner and was named to the Oklahoma 4-H Blue Award Group, which recognizes the top 20 4-H members in the state. Grant has also served as a page for Oklahoma State Senator Randy Brogdon and was recognized on the floor of the Oklahoma State Senate with a citation for Prom Wishes.

For more information go to her website at http://www.prom-wishes-inc.org/.