A Wendy’s employee is headed to Yale University this fall after his managers helped him pay for community college and encouraged him to pursue his education.
Thalles Winner DeSouza, 23, started working at a Wendy’s on Cape Cod while he was in high school, and eventually became a shift manager. His supervisors, Usama El-Sehrawey and Ernest Smily, quickly recognized his potential, according to PEOPLE.
When DeSouza was considering leaving school to pursue construction work so he could afford college, his managers offered to help. They began putting money aside based on the hours he worked to help cover his education, ABC News reported.
DeSouza celebrated his acceptance and publicly thanked his managers in a July 28 Facebook post.
“What has always stood out to me is not what they built as business owners,” DeSouza wrote. “It’s the way they invest in people.”
The duo helped DeSouza pay for three years at Cape Cod Community College before he transferred to Bunker Hill Community College, according to PEOPLE.
DeSouza told ABC News that his managers’ support gave him confidence that college was possible. Smily, who died in 2024, had continued encouraging him to pursue his goals. Now, he’s on his way to an Ivy League University, with a full-ride scholarship.
The soon-to-be Yale student’s path to the Ivy League began in Brazil, where he survived a shooting in 2016 before moving to the United States with his mother at age 13. He learned English after arriving in the U.S. and later found a job at Wendy’s while still in high school, PEOPLE reported.
El-Sehrawey told PEOPLE that the decision to help DeSouza came from seeing a young employee with potential and wanting to give him an opportunity to succeed.
At Yale, DeSouza plans to study political science, minor in human rights and follow a pre-law track.
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