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For the past two years, Youth Rise Texas has been transitioning from a single Founding Director to piloting a shared leadership model with Kymberlie Quong-Charles and Roxanne Lawson. We are delighted to embark on this new journey of youth-led shared leadership. This is a tremendous opportunity to realize our vision for youth leadership within our organization. Darriana and Bria bring a wealth of experience, knowledge, and commitment to the success of Youth Rise Texas.

YRTX has gained valuable lessons through this transition that will benefit our future, such as learning the importance of investing in building a strong working relationship between the Co-Executive Director team and ensuring a culture fit between staff, Co-Executive Directors, and Board Members.

In preparation for making this announcement public, our team has completed a Narrative Building and Storytelling Workshop facilitated by Fearless Communicators that has provided us with tools to curate strong messaging about this transition. 

We recognize that there may be some uncertainty due to this change in leadership; however, we want to assure all supporters of Youth Rise Texas that the organization is invested in maintaining Co-Executive Directors with established visions for youth-leadership and aligned roadmaps for the future. The commitment to promoting leaders from within demonstrates our dedication to creating an environment where young people are given the opportunity to grow and develop their skills.

YRTX’s vision for the upcoming fiscal year includes implementing a Youth Advisory Council that consists of youth who have progressed through our Leadership Development Pipeline and are elected by their peers to serve. The committee will be tasked with keeping the organization accountable to the youth-led vision of YRTX and will guide how governance and decision-making are carried out in programming. A representative from the Youth Advisory Council will hold a voting seat on the Board of Directors.

YRTX’s programmatic vision includes creating a Youth Policy Agenda for legislative session 2025 focused on bodily autonomy, our Liberate/¡Libérate! Campaign, and utilizing restorative justice-based models in schools. Finally, we will train and hire 57 youth members across all programs. Period.

Through these initiatives, we will continue to build power with young people across Texas and advocate for meaningful policy change.