Since Harvard’s season came to a close, Webster has begun traveling to Boston-area schools, speaking about the importance of education.

“I’ve always been interested in education, and I love being around kids.” Webster said. “Education can open so many doors. It opened so many doors for me.”

As a kid growing up in Washington, D.C., Webster never imagined he would end up at Harvard. Until he was 14, Webster attended Deal Junior High School in the city.

He was planning on enrolling at a private school in D.C. until a family friend showed him the Landon School, in Bethesda, Md.

Webster applied, and soon he was traveling nearly an hour each morning from his home in D.C. to the small prep school.

“At first I was like ‘I cannot be here, I don’t know any of these people, they’re not from where I’m from,’” Webster recalled. “They were talking about things I didn’t even know about.”

But Webster’s parents, a social worker and an accountant, insisted he stay at the school, and soon enough he adjusted to his new environment.

“My parents were like, ‘You need to stay here; this is going to be good for you,’” Webster recalled. “I listened to them, so now I’m at Harvard. It all paid off.”

Webster hopes his story can serve as an inspiration.

“I feel like with my background in basketball I feel like I can maybe touch a kid or two and hopefully change their lives,” Webster said.

***

This summer, Webster will travel to Cuba with Full Court Peace, an organization founded by former Harvard basketball graduate assistant Mike Evans.

Along with seven other Americans, Webster and Evans will build a court in Alamar, Cuba, over the course of six days.

While playing professional basketball in Northern Ireland in 2007, Evans founded the organization with the goal of  “unit[ing], strengthen[ing] and educat[ing] local and global communities through the creation of youth basketball teams.”

Since then, Evans and his organization have regularly worked in Juarez, Mexico, Bridgeport, Conn., and—for the past four summers—Cuba.