Details

Journey

I'm here because	Why me? My professional background in the education field is vast and varied ranging from working with preschoolers on how to pour milk from a pitcher into a cup to training professionals in the education field on trauma responsive care and restorative practices. All of which has brought me here to where my experiences and passion live to help reframe and bring innovation. Why this? I’ve listened and worked with students and heard their concerns, frustrations, and joy. It’s time that we, as protective factors for our youth, be champions for them and help them build skills so they can empower themselves. Portico gives us the space and structure to have those conversations to make the world better for our youth. Why here? Having a team of people who have your back, understand the frustrations, and not feel siloed is invaluable. Those people can help push boundaries and bring to light new ideas, thoughts, and feelings in a time when we may need it the most. Why now? Well, we’ve seen how tough it’s been to navigate the world in the past few years and it’s not going to get easier. It’s time to be doing the work now so it doesn’t feel so overwhelming and daunting, as especially when you have a team of people behind you.
I got here through	My values and beliefs hold very true to who I am and how I conduct myself both professionally and personally. What I value and believe to be important and true has led me to take steps that were outside my comfort zone and allowed me to grow and challenge myself. So I guess all of that to say that what has helped me most is to examine those thoughts, actions, or transitions to see if they align with who I am and who I want to be.
My hope for this community	My greatest hope for our leaders this year is that they will be able to build a strong relationship with someone who they can lean on, and we are able to build a space and community where each leader can feel brave, heard, and accepted. I hope that we can help challenge, support, and grow our leaders so they can feel empowered to make those transformational changes at their sites to better serve each and every one of their students.
I can support you with	One of my strengths is being able to see the connection between ideas, thoughts, and actions. My hope is that because I see the world as being interconnected I can help shed light on those connections for others as well!
My story	I have been in the education field in many different capacities for over a decade. I’ve been fortunate enough that my passion and career has led me to the intersection of advocacy and education and it’s where I want to stay. The population I mainly worked with over the past 5 years have been with adjudicated youth and youth who have been impacted by familial incarceration. I repeatedly heard from them that they felt as if their voice didn’t matter or they couldn’t be change agents, which made me build lessons and trainings that were responsive to their needs and help them build skills to hopefully empower themselves. Working with these resilient, bright, and talented students allowed me to create trainings at conferences and professional developments for educators, directors, school staff, counselors, etc. on how to be a protective factor to these students who have dealt with trauma and how trauma effects a person physically and psychologically. Understanding that these students are unique and bring a lot to the table if only we engaged them and brought them into the conversation. I recognized early on that in order to support each and every student to the best of our abilities it means supporting their supports too.

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