An Important Announcement from Emma
It is bittersweet to announce that on September 15th, I will be stepping down from my position as Co-Founder and Founding Executive Director of Alliance for Girls*. When I started this organization at 24 years old, my dream was to create an organization that could thrive beyond my time at the helm. Ella Baker has always been my social justice (s)hero, and I believe deeply in the power of cultivating leadership and stepping aside to make space for new leaders. As I take a step back and reflect on the last eleven years, I am proud of all that we have accomplished together.
Today, Alliance for Girls (AFG) is a powerful alliance of organizations and champions that are essential to the ecosystem that advocates for and supports girls and gender-expansive youth in the San Francisco Bay Area and Los Angeles County, as well as across the state. Three thousand girls and gender-expansive youth have been engaged in our girl-centered research, sharing their own stories and resulting in the publication of nine reports. These youth have led community processes to develop 50 policy recommendations. Together, we have advocated for the enactment of 10 policies that have resulted in tangible improvements to girls’ and gender-expansive youth safety in schools and on public transit. Our advocacy has also led to the public allocation of over $30 million in public budgets to meet their needs. Our training program has reached 3,500 service providers and educators to provide stronger services to girls and gender-expansive youth based on what they expressly need, with 90% of members reporting that due to AFG, they can achieve more together than they could alone.
What has always made this organization unique and powerful is the people within it. Our members show up every day for the girls and gender-expansive youth they serve - oftentimes transforming their own stories of pain and discrimination into stories of power and unconditional love and subsequently, a track record of meaningful systemic change. The girls and gender-expansive youth we serve, who know that a better world is possible, bring that world to life by telling their stories, organizing, and advocating. Our Board of Directors, many of whom have been serving on the board for nearly a decade, and our powerful staff give everything they can to support girls and gender-expansive youth's vision for change. Together, we are a community of people who know that when girls and gender-expansive youth thrive, we all thrive. This community has grown tremendously over the last decade. We are thousands of adults and hundreds of thousands of girls and gender-expansive youth who are organized, and actively changing the landscape in our communities and across the state of California. With this powerful community at the helm, I am excited to see what comes next for AFG.
Thank you for standing with us and the girls and gender-expansive youth of California. While I will be transitioning out of this role, there is no doubt that this is my life's work, and I will always be a part of the AFG community.
Warmly,
Emma Mayerson
Dear AFG Partners and Supporters,
As Emma steps into this next season in her career, please join me in expressing our deepest gratitude for her eleven years of leadership and commitment to AFG. We, together with our members, are creating equitable communities where girls and gender-expansive youth thrive. Under Emma’s leadership, AFG is in a strong place, positioned for growth. Our successful annual The World We Imagine conference marked AFG’s 10-year anniversary and included the debut of our 10-year anniversary video. On May 23rd, AFG will formally kickoff its work in Los Angeles County with our inaugural LA Advisory Group Members.
As we dream of what the next decade of impact can look like at AFG, we’re looking for a new leader that will carry forward the work led by Emma and AFG’s members to reach for even higher heights. We’ve partnered with Cook Silverman, an executive search firm specializing in nonprofits, to help us find our next Executive Director. Our plan is to include as much overlap time between Emma and the new Executive Director as possible. You can find our Executive Director job description here. We hope that you will help us spread the word with your networks.
While change for any organization or team can feel both exciting and a little unsettling, I have the utmost confidence in the entire AFG staff and board that this transition will be seamless. We have exciting plans on the horizon for AFG and it’s because of members and supporters like you that we continue to make leaps and bounds in our fight for equity for all – together.
Please stay tuned for more updates as we engage in our search process.
Gratefully,
Dr. Raquel Donoso
AFG Board Chair
*"Girls and gender-expansive youth" refers to cis girls, trans girls, non-binary youth, gender non-conforming youth, gender queer youth and any girl-identified youth."
