Changeist is a Saturday youth empowerment program for middle, high school and college-aged youth from across Los Angeles and Stockton. The mission of Changeist is to build a community of diverse young people that utilize their personal agency to create a more just society.

With a team of advisors, I created the concept and set a vision for the 5 year implementation and growth of Changeist, formerly Big Citizen HUB. I was responsible for ensuring programmatic excellence, rigorous program evaluation, and consistent quality of fundraising, communications, and systems.

The Obama Foundation Fellowship supports outstanding civic innovators from around the world in order to amplify the impact of their work and to inspire a wave of civic innovation. The program itself is a two-year, non-residential program that offers hands-on training, resources, and leadership development to equip Fellows to scale the impact of their work. This class of Fellows bringing together 20 individuals representing 10 countries across the globe, who are confronting many of the world’s most pressing problems through civic innovation. I’m honored to be one of the 2019 Obama Foundation Fellows and join a diverse class of community-minded civic innovators. The Obama Foundation Fellowship will allow me to continue and strengthen my work as a youth worker, uniting young people to tackle challenges they care about in Los Angeles, Stockton and beyondMy hope is that I can work with the Obama Foundation and members of my Fellows class to scale my work and develop new and effective methods to further the impact of what I’m working on while also inspiring other civic innovators in their respective fields.

Each year I managed 4-5 Program Managers in leading teams of up to 17 diverse 17-24 year olds. I had the opportunity to cultivate and manage relationships with eight Los Angeles Unified School District schools and would help analyze student level data to identify school needs and deploy resources for events, tutoring and academic interventions. In addition, each year I was responsible for securing up to $400,000 to sustain the program.

I supervised two Program Managers in leading teams of diverse 17-24 year olds. I led and oversaw the program while we launched leadership development programs for 250 middle and high school youth.

For three years, in two cities, I managed diverse teams of AmeriCorps members to plan and implement a researched based six-month Leadership Development Program for middle and high school aged youth called Heroes. I developed and managed strategic partnerships with schools and local business to support the Heroes Program model. In 2007, I was selected to serve as a program expert on local task force to prepare City Year Chicago Heroes full program launch in 2008.

I was selected to lead a diverse team of 6 Corps Members that facilitated, planned and developed a Saturday service-learning program for high school aged individuals, emphasizing on leadership and civic engagement. I had the opportunity to establish and mentor the first ever City Year Greater Philadelphia Heroes alumni board- created to maintain and increase recruitment efforts and service involvement. I was also given the privilege to participate on a National Task Force to standardize the Heroes program and devise new initiatives for implementation in City Year’s national network.