In high school, Brieon Fonoti knew what attending a high-quality four-year college could mean for his life. “School was always the goal,” he says. But growing up in a poor neighborhood in Long Beach, California, where he attended “a lot of inner-city schools,” even the state’s well-funded public colleges felt unattainable. His mother, who raised him and his three siblings by herself, cycled between jobs—call centers, the post office—and struggled to make ends meet. Looking for a better life, Fonoti heard that the military often pays for higher education after a period of service. “I was trying to do something to make it easier on myself financially,” he told me. “And so, I joined the Army.”
After graduating from high school in 2017, Fonoti, whose mother is Black and father is Samoan, left Long Beach for a paralegal position with the U.S. Army Judge Advocate General’s Corps, or JAG Corps, at Fort Riley in Kansas. “I was looking for a job that would transfer over to the civilian side,” he explained, and paralegal work held such promise. There, a senior officer recognized his talent. “You work hard,” he recalled the officer saying. “You’re really smart. Why don’t you go to school and become an officer?” The way to become an officer was through the U.S. Military Academy in West Point, New York, so he applied.