Annie Jonas’ 90 story starts, as these things often do, with a feeling that won’t quite go away — though, in Annie’s case, the feeling arrived while she was already where most people assume the searching ends: a longstanding professor at Warren Wilson College, settled into the kind of role that signals you’ve made it.

Not a grand declaration. Not a lightning bolt. Just a quiet tug that lingers in the background of a life that, by most measures, is already going well. For Annie, the feeling showed up anyway, a desire to reconnect to youth work and community work that’s been important to her for most of her career.

“I’ve always had this connection with youth, but I wanted something deeper,” she says. “Something where I was a little more engaged with them.”

So, after 20 years at Warren Wilson, she left. Left the security, the title, the version of success that reads cleanly on a CV and quietly impresses at dinner parties.

Because somewhere underneath all of it was something older, steadier, and far more insistent: a belief that young people matter. Not in the abstract, not in the language of mission statements, but in the lived, ordinary stretch of time between the last school bell and dinner.

These days Annie is the program manager for the WNC After 3PM Collaborative, part of the North Carolina Center for Afterschool Programs. It’s the kind of work that doesn’t always draw attention, but matters deeply.

The Hours That Decide Everything By the time the last school bell rings across western North Carolina, the day is far from over for many kids. The buses pull away, the classrooms go quiet, and what comes next can look very different depending on what’s waiting on the other side of the afternoon. For some, it’s a warm room, a steady snack, a familiar adult who knows their name and notices when something feels off.

For others, it’s a long stretch of hours to fill, hunger that hums in the background, homework that might as well be written in another language.

Afterschool programs, in these places, are not enrichment in the abstract. They are a kind of soft landing – part classroom, part kitchen, part refuge – where learning continues, yes, but so does something more fundamental: the quiet, daily assurance that someone is paying attention. Annie overlooks programs many might take for granted.

A math problem explained one more time. A second helping of something warm. A place where the lights stay on long enough for a child to finish what they started. In a region where distance can be isolating and resources uneven, Annie says consistency becomes its own form of stability.

“Studies after studies show that kids perform better when they feel safe,” she says. “They show up differently when they aren’t worried about their next meal or whether anyone will notice if they don’t understand.” And so the stakes, while rarely framed this way, are enormous. Because in the small, steady rhythm of those afterschool hours – snack, study, conversation, care – entire futures are being quietly, persistently shaped.

The collaborative stretches across 18 counties – rural, spread out, the kind of geography where distance isn’t just measured in miles but in access. Annie’s new position is about a year old, but she already sees her role as equal parts convener, coach and translator, bringing together after-school providers who might otherwise feel like they’re working alone.

This is where she works now. “Just bringing folks together in these widely dispersed geographic areas has been really powerful,” Annie says.

And then the hurricane came. In 2024, Hurricane Helene didn’t just knock out power lines or flood roads. It scrambled routines. It stretched already thin systems.

It left families looking for anything stable.

And in that gap, after-school programs – the ones that rarely make it into glossy reports – became something else. Second homes.

“After the hurricane, after school providers ended up being these safe spaces of resilience for families and youth that we had not even imagined,” she says.

Food. Batteries. Basic supplies like water and toilet paper. But also something harder to measure — a place to land.

“Sometimes it’s as simple as kids just need somewhere to go,” Annie says.

That sounds small until you imagine the alternative.

Why Young People

Ask Annie why she keeps circling back to young people, and she pauses — not because she doesn’t know, but because the answer feels almost too plain to dress up. “I think … they are the ones inheriting the earth and our society,” she says. “And that sounds pretty simplistic.” But then: “They’re learning from us all the time about how the world works and the kind of world that they want to live in,” Annie says.

This is where her work lives — in that quiet exchange. The modeling. The watching. The slow accumulation of what it means to be a person in the world. “I’ve really tried to center their voice and center their perspectives and help them gain skills and a sense that they matter,” she says. Not just helping young people. Believing them into themselves.

Guilford’s impact

Before the programs and the advocacy and the long drives between counties, there was Guilford College, where brothers Eric ’85 and Jim ’88 also graduated. And before that, a version of Annie who liked kids but hadn’t yet built a life around them.

“I’ve always enjoyed kids, but it wasn’t like, oh, that’s going to be a career,” she says. Guilford changed that – not loudly, but steadily. “I found Guilford to be much more … relational and community-minded than my own experiences in school,” she says.

“I felt like I was in a community that seemed to want to know who I was and asked me to contribute my gifts and skills.”

She uses the word agency. “A strong sense of agency,” she says.

It showed up in working at WQFS and spending a semester abroad in Munich.

And then it sharpened.

Annie had several internship opportunities through the Psychology Department that included working at the juvenile detention center and working on a ropes course for first years that once ran through the College’s woods.

“I started to see in myself that I wanted to do that, to be involved in their lives. Guilford brought that out of me or, maybe, helped me find that in me.”

So many Guilfordians share similar stories of finding their passion during their time at the College.

Often that passion is nurtured here eventually — with professors who don’t quite leave.

For Annie, two names come quickly: Psychology professors Richie Zweigenhaft and the late Claire Morse.

“I think I knew when I was at Guilford how important they were,” she says. “What I didn’t see – gosh, how could I? – was how they would continue to be lifelong … inspiring mentors.”

Richie and Annie remain good friends. He says he was initially surprised when he learned Annie had given up so much security at Warren Wilson to pursue working with young students. At least at first.

“The more I thought about it. Annie has never shied away from doing anything,” he says. “She’s always been open to doing interesting things and different things. This is more of that plus it’s such important work.”

The Long Way Around

After Guilford, the path wasn’t straight, but it was consistent.

Outward Bound. Wilderness trips. Students learning more than how to read a map.

“It was a great launching point … to learn about best practices for working with young people,” Annie says.

The South Bronx. North Carolina wilderness programs. A master’s degree at Harvard. Teaching. Nonprofits. Leadership. A deanship back at Warren Wilson.

On paper, it reads like a climb. In hindsight it now appears to have always been a loop.

“I wanted to return to some of the work that made me the most passionate at the beginning of my career,” she says.

So she did.

Spend enough time listening to Annie, and you realize her work isn’t really about programs.

It’s about presence. After-school spaces, she says, aren’t just extensions of the school day. They’re something looser, more human. Homework help. Snacks. Structure.

But also woodworking. River sampling. Robotics. Music.

“They’re engaged in really meaningful experiential activities,” she says.

“It’s really exciting to see kids flourish in these programs where they … have not had opportunities like that.”

At Guilford, Annie learned what it felt like to be noticed. To be challenged and supported in the same breath.

Years later, she’s doing the same thing — just in different rooms, across more miles.

“I think [Claire and Richie’s] mentorship showed me it’s important you challenge people, but at the same time, you’re offering that support and guidance,” she says.

And now, somewhere in western North Carolina, a student is finishing homework. Another is picking up a tool for the first time. Someone else is learning how to speak in a room full of adults.

And nearby, there’s an adult paying attention. Not announcing it. Not branding it. Just showing up. The kind of attention that lasts. Maybe even a lifetime.

“At the end of the day, it’s just about making sure young people know they matter,” says Annie, “and then showing up in ways that prove it.”

If you enjoyed this story you'll find more like it in the 2026 Guilford College Magazine.