Creative Life / Community
Mentorship, advocacy, and program design — and the slow discovery that the deepest version of the work is almost never the one that scales.
Two roles, one instinct
For years I worked two sides of the same problem. As a CASA advocate with Child Advocates of Silicon Valley, I stood beside individual young people navigating systems that were never built for them. As a chapter director for the New Leaders Council, I helped train the next wave of civic leaders — people learning to build things that outlast them.
Different altitudes, same instinct: find the people the system keeps overlooking, and make room for them.
Building bridges to opportunity
A lot of that work looked like mentorship and program design — connecting people who'd been systematically excluded to the mentors, skills, and openings that others are simply handed. I designed curricula, ran sessions, and built the kind of on-ramps I wish more people had access to. The point was never a headcount metric; it was whether a specific person got a real shot.
Forward Fast — the program I designed
I took a run at scaling it, too. Forward Fast was a mentorship-and-life-skills program I designed as my New Leaders Council capstone — module-based learning, community, and a mentor network, aimed at giving young women an easier path to success. It was a good idea on paper.
But the deepest version of the work turned out not to scale at all.
One person at a time
Instead of launching a curriculum, I went all in on a single young life — I became a foster, and then adoptive, parent. It's the least scalable, most demanding, and by far the most meaningful thing on this whole site. Everything else here is about making room for people to become who they're going to be; this is that, without the abstraction.
Show up. Make room. Repeat.