Estella Pyfrom, a daughter of farmworkers who grew up in Belle Glade and capped a career in education by coming out of retirement and bringing computer technology to the underserved, has died at age 85.
Pyfrom was heralded as a hero for launching Estella's Brilliant Bus, a custom school bus outfitted with 17 computer stations to bring internet connection to rural and under-connected communities in Palm Beach County. 
The bus won her recognition at the White House during the Obama Administration, was featured in a 2015 Microsoft commercial that aired during the Super Bowl, and, to Pyfrom's thrill, captured the attention of and shared the stage with Oprah Winfrey, who remained in touch for years to come.
Pyfrom, who lived in suburban West Palm Beach, died Wednesday after a lengthy illness that had hospitalized her a handful of times in the last year, according to her family and friends.
"She was phenomenal," Pyfrom's friend Daphne Taylor told The Palm Beach Post on Saturday. "We will keep her legacy going." 
A 'hero':CNN names retired Palm Beach County teacher a ‘hero’, gives her $50k and shot at $250K
White House commemoration:Palm Beach County woman honored at White House ceremony commemorating 5,000th Point of Light
Inside the bus:All aboard Miss Estella’s Brilliant Bus

At the 2014 ESSENCE Festival, we hosted our first-ever #YESWECODE Tech Village, an all-day event featuring community leaders, thinkers and technical training and mentoring organizations working to fill the minority gap in Silicon Valley and beyond. In this It Takes a Tech Village series, we profile the organizations that made our Tech Village a success.

If Estella Pyfrom looks familiar, it’s because she was recognized last year as a CNN Hero, a honor she received for the humanitarian genius behind her Brilliant Bus initiative, which really is quite brilliant.


Pyfrom, a retired 50-year veteran of Florida’s Palm Beach County School District, didn’t have any training in technology before she realized students in her district lacked the digital know-how to meet the demands of the 21st century workforce. 


“The minute I decided that [in retirement] I wanted to continue what I was doing for 50 years [as a school administrator], I knew I needed to be creative, and I needed to understand it,” Pyfrom said in a phone interview.


So Pyfrom, who is now 76, brushed up on her tech skills in 2009 and emptied her pension to build a non-profit, state-of-the-art mobile learning center called Project Aspiration, which was later renamed Estella’s Brilliant Bus. She’s been offering free tutoring to students since 2011.


Students who were among the winners of the #YESWECODE Hackathon at the 2014 ESSENCE Festival for their GlucoReader app rode from Florida to New Orleans on Estella’s Brilliant Bus, and Pyfrom takes great pride in her affiliation with the winners.


And that’s just one of many success stories tied to Pyfrom and her work. She spoke to us about what’s next for her organization.


​ESSENCE: Why did you decide to launch your Brilliant Bus?

Estella Pyfrom: I started Brilliant Bus in an effort to expose kids to technology. I became passionate about technology when I realized that it would give kids so much exposure and different ways to connect with the world. I also just looked at what was going on in the community.  When I was building my curriculum, I coordinated with area schools so that I could correlate what I was doing on the bus with what students were doing at school.  I started working with kids at day care centers, churches, schools and community centers, and I ended up being able to offer a program for kids at all levels to prepare them for standardized tests, readiness tests and GED tests.

ESSENCE: What’s special about this method of teaching?


EP: Not only is it unique and innovative, it’s an idea that works. The Brilliant Bus is customized and I built it from scratch. The bus is a mobile learning lab and it can do whatever a classroom can do. Instead of kids who live in undeserved neighborhoods finding me, I am able to take the learning to the neighborhoods.


ESSENCE: What do your students tell you is their favorite part of the Brilliant Bus?


EP: Kids will do anything to get out of the classroom. They say it’s like going on a field trip. One of the good things they tell me is that the activities [on the bus] are so much in sync with what they are doing in the classroom and that it’s a good supplement. Everything that I do with kids on the bus is grade and age level appropriate.


ESSENCE: What’s next for the bus? How will you expand on it?


EP: Brilliant Bus isn’t just a bus; it’s a movement. We plan on building these clubs in various communities. We’re conducting surveys now so that we can move beyond coding and into Robotics. We are going to get really creative with science and math so we can build robots.
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Don’t forget to follow the #YESWECODE conversation on Twitter and keep up with Estella’s Brilliant Bus on Facebook.

Click here yfrom used her retirement money to buy and customize a bus and outfit it with computers, creating a mobile classroom that she called Estella's Brilliant Bus; since 2012, she's been out on the road with it, helping underserved communities. Pyfrom's program includes a curriculum that self-adjusts to each student's level, and that kids can access from any device. If they don't have a computer at home, Pyfrom finds them one.
After Pyfrom was named a CNN Hero, big donors took notice—Microsoft now gives computers, and Office Depot provides technology support, computers, and financial contributions. Though her main focus is combating digital illiteracy, Pyfrom also gives her young participants whatever they need: food, school supplies, tutoring, college counseling.
The years aren't slowing Pyfrom, who sleeps only four hours a night. "I'm blessed," she says. "I feel good every day. Maybe because I'm pumped up about what I do. A lot of your age is in your mind. Just because you're getting older doesn't mean you can't still make a difference."

Most are aware of America’s Small Business Development Center (SBDC) organization, formed by a partnership between congress, the SBA, private sponsorship, universities and regional governments. Currently there are nearly 1,000 SBDC centers in the U.S. 

​according to the organization’s national website. But here’s another reason for small businesses to consider working through their regional SBDC. In addition to training and mentorship, in many cases the organizations provide PR assistance to their participating members as well.

For a great case in point, consider the story of Estella Pyform. In Fall 2011, Pyfrom came to the SBDC at Palm Beach State College in Boca Raton, Florida for free help in marketing the full-size passenger bus she had turned into a mobile high-tech classroom. She was bringing the bus to low income neighborhoods throughout Palm Beach County, Florida to give under served children free access to computers, the Internet and educational software. This 76-year-old retired Florida educator—who grew up in Belle Glade, the daughter of migrant farm workers—had used her life savings to make her vision a reality. Yet she had trouble getting the word out and raising additional funds to keep her program going.

With the help of the SBDC, Estella Pyfrom branded her "Brilliant Bus" (Image courtesy of CNN.com)
I learned about Estella from Sharon Geltner, Business Analyst for the SBDC that is Florida's state-designated provider of small business assistance and Palm Beach State is its host institution. After Geltner and the SBDC created a brand for Pyfrom, by April 2013, it was natural and easy to secure the attention of broadcasters. Estella appeared on national television on NBC Nightly News and internationally as a CNN Hero in recognition of her "Brilliant Bus." By Fall, Pyfrom was a Top Ten CNN Hero and was in a global televised ceremony, hosted by Anderson Cooper. She was the same woman, but with different PR. Once the snowball of publicity started she moved easily and naturally from obscurity to worldwide attention.

More recently, Microsoft featured Pyform in a $9 million 60-second Super Bowl ad, seen by 104 million viewers in February 2015. In that same month she appeared on The Dr. Oz Show. Pyfrom’s nonprofit has received donations from Microsoft, Office Depot, Toyota and other organizations and received countless awards. Oprah Winfrey honored Pyfrom in front of 13,000 fans at a stadium in Miami (on Oprah’s eight-city tour), named her the top VIP in the nation, and profiled her in the January 2015 issue of O Magazine. President Barack Obama honored her as a Point of Light at the White House. Pyfrom has also appeared in Essence and won a Diamond Award from the National Coalition of 100 Black Women. This year, with the help of the Children’s Services Council of Broward County (Florida), Pyfrom added a second bus to her fleet. The last two summers she has toured southern cities, teaching children computer code. Pyfrom has received requests to replicate her bus from around the country and as far away as Africa.

But just a few years ago, when Pyfrom came to SBDC, she had an incredible humanitarian accomplishment, but could get neither funding nor press. Geltner and her team believed Pyfrom’s challenge was related to problems in her branding and site. She had a wonderful tangible object, which was the bus, but the name of her nonprofit organization, “Project Aspiration—A Class Act,” didn't describe what she did or provide her with a clear identity. Furthermore, it didn't say anything about the bus, which is her calling card.
As an advisor, Geltner kept pounding away on having the word “Bus” in the business name, with some alliteration, if possible. Pyfrom then wanted “Brain Bus,” but after Geltner showed her the name was in use in Kentucky, she suggested “Brilliant Bus." The name stuck.
The team then turned its attention to revamping Pyform’s website and developing a social media presence, which gave Pyfrom her legitimacy for attracting donations and media attention. (Once Pyfrom achieved fame, various media outlets and volunteers overhauled her website, www.brilliantbus.org, again and she recently won praise from a website that monitors nonprofits’ online presence.)









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​As Geltner urged Pyfrom to take her mission online in a serious, consistent way, she noted that these days, even if a person is Michelangelo or Leonardo da Vinci or even a combination of the two, if he’s not online or if she doesn’t have a clear identity, they’re ignored. Decades of experience and real world accomplishment won’t matter without the foundation of an online presence and a memorable brand. This rule held true when Geltner vouched for Estella with reporters she’d known for years. Now Geltner uses Pyfrom’s success as an example to other clients who are reluctant to go online.

With a new name, website and social media in presence place, getting media coverage was the next hurdle. The door opened after Fort Lauderdale-based NBC News correspondent Kerry Sanders became interested and made Pyfrom the subject of a two-minute "Making a Difference" segment he reported in January 2013.
CNN producers saw the segment, and when they realized Pyfrom had already been nominated for CNN Heroes by one of her volunteers, they got excited. When she was selected as a CNN Hero in April, a flurry of press followed with coverage emerging organically from virtually every local media outlet as well as national outlets such as Jet magazine and other publications and TV shows.

More Lessons
Working with Estella Pyfrom and her Brilliant Bus showed Geltner how life experience that seems unrelated to PR, social media, search engine optimization and business counseling is extremely valuable.
“All of my clients need marketing help, especially for online marketing, but not everyone can handle the new Internet concepts,” Geltner said. “When I first got this job, some people asked if I had enough corporate experience to be successful. I soon learned that what really made the difference, were skills which were instrumental for helping clients, from a variety of previous jobs—none of them corporate.”

One important gig was as an aspiring author, carefully studying how literary agents render judgment in seconds. The same was true in working as a reporter in a newsroom. Both editors and agents must distill messages to their essence in seconds and sum them up succinctly. Those skills are perfect for social media as well. Another position in social service agencies and her observation of the way clinicians interact gave Geltner insight into how to persuade people to make decisions in their own best interests. In addition, her nonprofit work suited her support for small business owners. In both cases, clever strategy and tactics matter, because there little money to spend for promotions.

The common element for these entrepreneurs is fear of the unknown. After the Great Recession and the rise of the Internet, the world turned on its ear, and no one was successful in marketing without having to alter their approach. “All my clients are smart enough to change, but will they want to?” Geltner mused.
What freezes clients in their tracks is the wrenching emotional decision: “Am I going to do what it takes to stay modern and stay relevant, and frankly stay in business?” Not everyone decides to go forward. The longer they hesitate, the further they fall behind. Not everyone wants to face these hard facts.

But Pyfrom didn’t let age, custom, tradition, complacency or inertia get in her way. 

She updated her methods and assumptions. Over her many sessions with Geltner, Pyfrom saw the possibilities, knew that her success required these changes and kept an open mind. As for Geltner, she looks forward to helping Pyfrom get more Brilliant Buses and to helping many additional small businesses achieve strong public relations outcomes as well.

With SBDC’s increasing their impact through the U.S., perhaps great PR is yet another reason to consider engaging the help of one of these entrepreneurial teams.
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