“All that you touch, you change. All that you change, changes you. The only lasting truth is change.” – Octavia Butler
In a season of great change, I am writing to announce one more. June 15, 2025 will be my last day as a Co-Executive Director of Y-WE. After 10 years of being a daily reminder to our young people to show up as their full selves, to honor their gifts and take creative risks, I am taking my own advice.
As many of you know, last year I published a book called Still True: The Evolution of an Unexpected Journalist (which recently won an Ippy Award!). But most people don’t realize that Still True is my 6th published book. Before falling in love with Y-WE, my dream was to be like Madeleine L’Engle and publish a whole shelf of Young Adult Fiction novels. I grew up reading the Babysitter’s club and Sweet Valley Twins, which were great, but there were very few books that told stories about the kind of kid I was. Now that has changed a lot, but there is still much to be done.
I want to write books that our youth will see themselves in, stories of courageous girls, non-binary and trans youth and their badass friends, having adventures, using their voices and creating a future better than what we can even dream.
Rather than a resignation, I am viewing this as a graduation. Like I tell our graduating youth, once you’re a part of this community, Y-WE is a part of you forever. And I will forever love this thing we have built together. Knowing I am leaving Y-WE in capable hands and hearts gives me the freedom and ability to focus on new and exciting personal and artistic opportunities. My deepest wish is to see Y-WE continue to grow and thrive for generations to come and I have every faith that this awesome team will help Y-WE do just that.
How it started:
In 2013 I received an invitation that changed my life in an incredible way. Victoria Santos invited me to give a workshop at Y-WE Career Day. That was my first experience of the Y-WE Magic. I walked into Denny Middle School on a Saturday and was surrounded by amazing young people. I knew from the moment I walked through those doors that Y-WE was something I wanted to be a part of. Even though it was a Saturday, and we were in a school, the youth were so excited to be there to invest in their dreams for their futures and when I looked around there was no discernable ethnic majority. This is what diversity is supposed to look like, but somehow never does and miraculously everyone was getting along great.
I sat in on part of the presentation before mine and was introduced to Suzanne Hayward, the former Executive Producer of the Oprah Show (at that time a Y-WE board member). She was showing videos of herself in South Africa with Oprah…and I was like oh no! What kind of career do I even have? I was a recovering classroom teacher and a poet who had a brief stint as a study abroad program leader but had somehow become a community organizer with Making Change at Walmart. Interesting work, but none of that seemed remotely as impressive as hanging out with Oprah. My inner 8th grader was convinced that these kids were going to eat me alive.
At the start of my presentation though it felt really vulnerable, I named my insecurities. Instead of the mean girl response that I had been conditioned to expect, I was met with deep kindness and interest.
“We want to know you,” one of the youth said. That was one of my first experiences of being on the receiving end of a radical welcome and it rang through me like a bell. For the next hour I shared my journey. At the end of the day, I told Victoria that she should call me when she was ready to hire me. She laughed, but she knew I was serious. Two years later I got the call.
Y-WE has been more than a job. It has been my heart work. I began as a Youth Program Specialist. Within two weeks I was promoted to Program Manager as Victoria and Rose piloted Y-WE’s first co-directorship. There were only 5 of us including Anna McCracken, then an Americorp and my right hand in everything and Alison Driver who was a part time development associate. We met daily around Rose’s donated kitchen table in our office in Kirkland in a house next door to the Unitarian church where our programs were held. At that time, we were running 2 core programs in the school year, Y-WE Lead and YLC and Create and Write Overnight Camps in the summer.
After a couple years we moved to Beacon Hill to be closer to our youth and began to expand our staff and our programs, building out Nature Connections and Y-WE Code to be stand alone programs. I became a Program Director. Then in March of 2020 I stepped into Co-Directorship with Y-WE’s Founder Rose Waterstone. The early days of the pandemic were fraught with uncertainty, but we found a way through, giving up our office and hosting virtual programs. Our community partner Coyote Central and WaNaWari helped us by sharing their spaces when we began to host hybrid programs before venturing back into being together again.
How it’s going:
Our community has continued to grow. Both Victoria and Rose said their goodbyes. I’ve had the privilege to work with many staff and contractors over the years and each one holds a special place in my heart. We moved into our new space in Hillman City. Silvia Giannattasio and I became co-Directors and have been doing our best to build this iteration of Y-WE.
I’m so proud of all the ways we’ve met the moment from our affinity programs to our arts based programs that support young people to take creative risks and find their voices, to our farm where youth learn about soil remediation and how to combat food apartheid. We run 20+ programs annually and support youth to connect with amazing mentors and internships. Last year alone we provided over $240,000 worth of free programs to our community. We distributed $36,500 in direct aid to youth, families, alumni, and facilitators. We also supported our youth and alum to get culturally responsive therapy and wellness support through our Healing Justice Collective while investing $60,000 in local BIPOC mental health practitioners. It may not look the same as the same scrappy org I first started working for, but the core, the beating heart of what we do, cultivating the power of diverse young women, non-binary and trans youth to become creative leaders and courageous changemakers…that remains, that endures. Y-WE is still Y-WE.
As I reflect on the past decade, I am overcome with memories and so proud of what we’ve built together. I think often about my time with the Youth Leadership Council and the transformative experiences we had from getting to meet Sonya Renee Taylor and Virgie Tovar to youth publishing their own books, being paid to facilitate workshops in our community, starting their own podcast, and learning krav maga. My last ten years is a collage of name games, primal screams in the woods, late summer nights of shit talking while playing uno and eating too many red vines, laughing til my stomach hurt or swiping away the tears from a poignant poem shared at our open mic.
It’s bittersweet. I am going to miss this, but I am also filled with deep love and gratitude for all the friends, coworkers, mentors and youth I’ve connected with along the way. And I look forward to continuing to collaborate with many of you beyond Y-WE. Thank you for welcoming me. Thank you for letting me show up in the fullness of who I am and allowing me to serve this community.
“True belonging doesn’t require you to change who you are, it requires you to be who you are.”- Brene Brown
As my time comes to an end, I am struck by the realization that my inner teen has received the gift of healing, joy, connection, community, and belonging that I hope all of our youth will receive.Today, because of Y-WE, I am a better version of myself, more confident in my leadership and clearer in my vision, and just excited as I’ve always been to see our youth thrive. I am so grateful for everyone I’ve met along the way and for the team that will carry the torch for the next generation. Though this is goodby, I will carry a piece of Y-WE in my heart everywhere I go.
With joy and in solidarity,