Brian Weinstein and Jessica Pliska’s Opportunity Network Is Helping Underrepresented Creatives Find Success

variety.com:

Carole Horst Brian Weinstein and Jessica Pliska have helped thousands of students through their nonprofit Opportunity Network since they launched it 20 years ago in a single New York City high school.With a board of directors that includes heavy hitters from entertainment, law, accounting, and beyond, OppNet’s primary mission is plain in its name: opening doors of opportunity for underrepresented students and getting them on a path of networking through high school to college and beyond.

For their work, Weinstein and Pliska are being honored as Variety’s Philanthropists of Year.The pair, who met as college undergrads, both burned with idealism and recognized their privilege could be leveraged for a game-changing idea.

As young professionals (Weinstein at a law firm, Pliska as a marketing consultant), their idea for OppNet was simple: to level the playing field for underrepresented students through mentorship, a curriculum built to helpthem achieve academic and career success and guiding support from a wide-ranging professional community.“It was not hard, and unfortunately, still is not hard, to see how deeply inequitable structures in education are,” says Pliska. “It was a place where I really felt we could have impact and we could have impact early.”In 2003, Weinstein was ready to launch their vision. “I walked across the street in midtown Manhattan to my college classmate and we shook hands, and started brick by brick, one class at a time, to address this issue,” says Weinstein, whose day job is president and COO of Bad Robot (“Alias,” “Lost,” “Westworld,” “Cloverfield,” “Mission: Impossible — Rogue Nation,” “Star Wars: The Force Awakens,” “Star Trek: Beyond”) “We just had an idea.