A Wendy’s worker who once lived on the streets after fleeing gunfire in Brazil has been accepted to Yale on a full scholarship – four years after his bosses at the fast-food chain paid his way through community college.
Thalles DeSouza grew up in a dangerous neighborhood outside Rio de Janeiro, where he says gunfire, poverty and uncertainty were part of everyday life.
“I was just another statistic unlikely to make it,” Thalles wrote in an Instagram post describing his childhood. “But God had the final word. In 2016, after nearly being killed in a shootout inside my own home, my mother decided to give up everything and come to the United States.”
The family settled in Massachusetts, and Thalles started working at a local Wendy’s while he was still in high school. He impressed his managers quickly, and was soon promoted to shift manager before he’d even graduated.
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His bosses, Usama El-Sehrawey and the late Ernest Smily, saw potential in him and made an offer that changed everything – they would cover his tuition at community college.
“College to me was something really far from my reach,” Thalles said. “It changed my whole perspective and it changed the way I saw life.”
He enrolled at Cape Cod Community College and spent three years working hard, before setting his sights on more competitive schools. And his bosses bet paid off when this May, Yale said yes, offering a full-ride scholarship covering his entire tuition.
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Terry Smily, Ernest’s son, said the gesture reflects a philosophy the chain has followed since its founder, Dave Thomas – who was adopted as a child and made giving back a cornerstone of his own philanthropy.
“That’s definitely Wendy’s culture,” Smily said. “We really live by Dave Thomas’s values. Dave always said, ‘Give something back.'”
Thalles starts at Yale this fall, majoring in political science with a minor in human rights, with hopes of becoming a lawyer.
“Where you come from does not determine where you can go,” he said. “Sometimes, the most impossible journeys take us to places we never imagined reaching.”
He marked the anniversary of his bosses’ offer with a message thanking them for changing his life. “Sometimes all it takes is one person who believes in you,” he wrote. “I’m living proof of that.”
