The National Center for Global Engagement is the resultant of a merger between the Bardoli Global Foundation and the BrownBell Foundation. The two organizations were founded with strikingly similar missions in 2005 and 2008 after founders Anthony Jewett and Marquis Brown separately realized the profound role that their study abroad experiences played in their own lives and careers as young professionals and HBCU alumni.

Upon completion of his commitment to Teach for America in New York City in 2005 Anthony founded Bardoli Global. After competing against nearly 1,000 other applicants to win a $90,000 seed award from Echoing Green, he piloted the Bardoli Global Scholars program from 2006-2008 with mostly K-12 schools and youth-serving, community-based organizations throughout Georgia, North Carolina, Texas, and Washington DC. During the pilot phase alone, he raised nearly $2 million in financial and in-kind support and was able to invest in over 130 outstanding minority students from 14 schools and community organizations to connect them to work and study abroad opportunities in 26 countries around the world. The program received widespread coverage in media outlets including TIME Magazine, National Public Radio, and FOX News.

After leaving his posts in the private and public sectors Marquis ventured into the field of social entrepreneurship. Marquis started the BrownBell Foundation with the aim of creating a high impact career preparatory fellowship for talented students from HBCUs, Hispanic Serving Institutions, and Tribal Colleges to study abroad at leading universities around the world. The program was to be largely funded through social investment partnerships with global corporations, NGOs and governmental agencies who would groom students to enter their workforce pipelines and assume fast-tracked leadership roles. Soon after starting the BrownBell Foundation Marquis was accepted to the Woodrow Wilson School at Princeton University and incubated the organization during his tenure as a graduate student.

The two entrepreneurs were introduced to each other through a prospective funder and worked collaboratively for nearly a year to design an earned-income venture with the help of consultants from the Monitor Group of Cambridge, MA. After realizing that they made a phenomenal team, Jewett and Brown decided that combining their knowledge, networks, and dogged personal work ethics could lead more quickly and efficiently to the system-changing solution to the “international opportunity gap” that both had envisioned. Thus, the National Center for Global Engagement was born in 2009 with a renewed mission “to increase access to worldwide educational, civic and career opportunities for working-class Americans of color” from kindergarten to college and beyond.