As I was growing up, it was made clear that the fat me wasn't welcome, that a thin person was expected and awaited, and impatiently so.

When popularity is your only goal, doing well in class is going to feature very low, if at all, on your priority list.

Success, in whatever form it takes, is a tricky thing - once you've achieved your goal, then what? Where do you aim?

I'm the co-chair of the PTA at my kids' school, Ashmount Primary, in north Islington, London.

I like to be asked about the projects I'm working on. I like to be asked about the books I'm reading, the things I'm interested in, what's exciting me right now, or even politics. Sometimes that's fun.

My grandmother lived to be 100 years old. Her grandmother was a slave, yet she was a college graduate in the Spellman class of 1917. She taught art for 50 years and she saved her Social Security checks for her children's education.

I don't know whether I much enjoyed education. I was not academically gifted.

City Year resonated with me because when I grew up, we were poor - and an education is a way out of poverty. It's a way out of the current situation that can seem isolating and hopeless for some kids.