At an orientation dinner for a Knoxville summer program for aspiring finance students, two sets of parents meet before saying goodbye to their children for a week. They discuss the project that Lausanne Collegiate School student Christian Love (11) is working on. After dinner, Tre Suggs (11) learns of the website Love has set out to create through his parents. Interested, he gets to know Love over the course of the week. They find that despite being total strangers, they have a lot in common. They are both Memphians, they have mutual friends and they share the goal of making opportunities for high school students more available and publicized. Together, armed with shared ideals, they flesh out the idea of Opportunity Bridge 901.

Opportunity Bridge 901 is a website designed and run by Love and Suggs to make experiences such as competitions, internships and volunteer opportunities more easily accessible to students. 

“Opportunity Bridge is a website for all students,” Suggs said. “They can go on there and see different opportunities like leadership. If there’s a leadership [opportunity] or summer experiences or different clubs that might be outside of school things, they can see that on one platform. So no matter what school they go to or how their counselors send out information, they can see it.” 

On the website, students can filter options based on their availability, interests or the program’s format to easily sort and view upcoming opportunities. Opportunity Bridge 901 eliminates the need for students to research these upcoming programs.  

“I thought it was really cool because sometimes it’s always a thought, like when I go to … different opportunities [I always see] the same type of people,” Suggs said. “And it’s … not that there’s anything wrong with that, but I know there are more people out there who want to be in stuff like this.” 

Currently, Love and Suggs are looking for high school students across Memphis to join and become ambassadors for Opportunity Bridge 901. These ambassadors would share the website with their school and work closely with Love and Suggs to be the voice for their high school.

“[Opportunity Bridge is] still in the beginning stages, I feel,” Suggs said. “So once we get the ambassadors down … we can start really expanding it out to schools, especially the schools who really need it, so we can start doing what we really want to do with the website.”

Much of the current outreach falls to Suggs as the Peer Recruitment Lead. He helps run the social media page and secures partnerships with programs like Reach Memphis to find the experiences posted on the website. Reach Memphis is a program that follows high school students from sophomore to senior year to teach life skills and help with college. 

“So basically I do the outreach,” Suggs said. “We’re doing something that we sent out recently where we want ambassadors for schools. So I made the forms. I reach out to people I feel could help us. Like schools or organizations, like Reach [Memphis] or Bridges [USA] on [Love’s] part … and I just helped with other behind-the-scenes stuff [Love] might need.”

Besides Opportunity Bridge 901, Suggs is very involved in his community through volunteering, keeping him busy throughout the year. However, being the organization student-run has been beneficial for the program’s leaders. Love and Suggs are very collaborative, critiquing each other’s work and helping each other grow in this new professional environment.

“I think the fact that we’re both students, we both know how to spread it out so neither of us get overwhelmed with one task,” Suggs said. “We spread out tasks. I’m not doing a lot. He’s not doing all the work. It’s spread out between us.”

Working as the Peer Recruitment Lead has allowed Suggs to improve his professional email writing, learn website design and use programs such as Canva. Additionally, it has grown his confidence in talking with adults about what the program needs to run. 

“I think it’ll allow me to, if I ever come up with my own idea, start it just like [Love], be a lead in clubs, like a presenter or something, and have the confidence to do it,” Suggs said. “[Even though] I’ve never done it before, I feel like I definitely could now. I wouldn’t be hesitant.”

Working on Opportunity Bridge 901 has given Suggs the skills he needs to excel in whatever else he chooses to do, from personal projects to a potential career in finance. It has also allowed him to leave an impact greater than himself on the Memphis community.

“Check out Opportunity Bridge,” Suggs said. “Even if you don’t feel you need it, share it. It’s gotten to places like I see who like our posts and who follow the page and it’s crazy … I’m excited and I’m glad that I have the opportunity to be a leader.”