How Head Start Helped Derrick West Become an Attorney

Head Start began 61 years ago with a big idea about little kids.

Launched in 1965 as part of President Lyndon B. Johnson’s War on Poverty, Head Start was created to give children from families with limited resources a stronger foundation before they entered school. What began as an eight-week summer program recognized something that remains at the heart of Head Start today: Preparing a child for kindergarten requires more than teaching letters and numbers.

Children needed access to nutritious meals and health services. Parents needed support. Families needed resources. And young children needed safe places where they could learn, build relationships and develop the social and emotional skills that would follow them into elementary school and beyond.

Over the next six decades, Head Start grew from that summer program into one of the nation’s most enduring investments in early childhood education. Millions of children have passed through Head Start programs since 1965.

For those millions of Head Start students, the program represented something even purer. Field trips. Hot lunches. Their favorite slide on the playground. A teacher who helped them learn more than just the alphabet.

Derrick West remembers the fire trucks.

He remembers visiting the local fire department and learning how to stop, drop and roll. He remembers the field trips, his classmates, snack time and nap time. And he remembers how much he cried when his mother first started dropping him off at PEPPI Head Start in Belle Glade.

It was around 1997, and for a 4-year-old who had spent most of his young life close to his mother, Head Start took some getting used to. But as things tend to go, Derrick adjusted. He made friends. He learned. And his single mother went to work.

In addition to those two things, his home had plenty of love. Resources, however, were harder to come by. As a single mother raising seven children, she worked hard to balance the needs of a large family with limited resources.

“Prior to me starting Head Start, she didn’t have anyone to watch me, so she couldn’t work,” Derrick said. “She didn’t have the network of support to have people keep me while she worked.”

Head Start gave her that opportunity. She was able to get a job at the Palm Beach Post.

It gave Derrick something, too. “My mom did everything she could for us, and Head Start became another part of that support system, making sure her baby boy had the educational foundation he needed to be successful,” he explained.

That dual impact has been part of Head Start since its earliest days. The program helps prepare children for school while recognizing that a child’s success is closely connected to the strength and stability of the family around them.

For Derrick, those early building blocks carefully placed at PEPPI Head Start took him to Pinenell Park Elementary School, Lake Shore Middle School and Glades Central High School. From there, he attended Bethune-Cookman University, where he earned a bachelor’s degree in criminal justice.

After college, Derrick moved to Tampa and started looking for his first real job. Through Alpha Phi Alpha Fraternity, he met Louis Finney, former LSF Head Start executive vice president, who encouraged him to apply at LSF.

After college, Derrick moved to Tampa and started looking for his first real job. Through Alpha Phi Alpha Fraternity, he met Louis Finney, former LSF Head Start executive vice president, who encouraged him to apply at LSF.

In 2016, nearly two decades after Head Start helped his mother go to work, Derrick went to work for LSF Pinellas Head Start.

As a Family and Community Engagement, or FACE, specialist, Derrick managed a caseload of around 60 families, helping parents enroll and connect with resources. His supervisors pushed him to take on more responsibility, including leading Pinellas Head Start’s AMEN program and organizing its first father-daughter dance.

“I remember really encouraging the dads to participate,” Derrick said. “We had the room filled and it felt really special.”

Derrick spent a little more than two years with LSF Head Start, working in both Pinellas and Hillsborough counties. It was his first major job out of college and taught him how to manage cases, maintain detailed records, communicate with families and, perhaps most importantly, meet people where they were.

“As a child, Head Start helped me build a foundation,” Derrick said. “And then coming back as a FACE specialist, Head Start taught me the importance of good work and made me a stronger professional.”

During that time, Derrick began talking seriously about becoming an attorney. Conversations with LSF’s general counsel and encouragement from Dr. Marie Mason, LSF Head Start vice president of operations, helped push him toward that goal.

He left Head Start, worked as a legal assistant, earned a legal certification from Hillsborough Community College and enrolled at Southern University Law Center. After returning to Florida, Derrick passed the Florida Bar exam and spent around three years as a public defender.

The caseloads and files were familiar territory. More importantly, so was working with people who needed someone willing to understand their circumstances.

“If I weren’t a Head Start employee, I wouldn’t have that same compassion I have now for people who need my help,” Derrick said.

After later working for a larger firm representing insurance companies, Derrick realized he missed the people-driven work that had shaped his career. On July 1, 2025, he opened D. West Law.

Since then, he has turned some of that success back toward Belle Glade and the community that built him. Derrick organized a back-to-school drive that provided more than 150 backpacks to local children and created a $1,000 scholarship for a graduating high school senior. In 2026, he was named Member of the Year by the F. Malcolm Cunningham Sr. Bar Association.

“My journey with Head Start has allowed me to meet people where they are on a personal level,” Derrick said. “I always wanted to be heavily involved in the community and give back, and I’m happy I’ve been able to do that.”

Nearly 30 years after Derrick first walked into a Head Start classroom, he recently returned to Palm Beach Head Start to speak to staff ahead of the 2026-27 school year. He came back with a law degree, his own firm and a pretty compelling answer to a question Head Start programs have been answering for more than 60 years: What can happen when you give a child and family a strong place to start?

“I want people to know that Head Start works,” Derrick said. “The proof is in the pudding, as people say. Some people may not know how and why it works because they’ve been privileged not to be in a situation where they need the services. But the program leaves lasting impacts on the people who do need the service.”

Derrick would know. He has been both the child receiving the services and the employee providing them.

“I owe Head Start a lot for helping me get to where I am today,” he said. “If I didn’t go to Head Start at 4, and then if I didn’t come back to Head Start, my life would be totally different.”