A Q & A with our Executive Director Gladis Molina Alt
1. As the Young Center’s ED, what is a tangible way you have demonstrated courage this past year in leading the organization?
I don’t have very many models in my life for how to be an Executive Director, so it takes a lot of courage to be in this role and to show up as myself every single day. Doubts are bound to surface, and they certainly do for me in this role, so I constantly remind myself: “You can do this!” For all of us in life, it takes courage to fully show up, with doubts and all.
This year, I demonstrated courage when I took a sabbatical from work. I knew I needed a break, yet it was difficult for me to honor that. And I knew it was an opportunity for me to model taking actions that support our mental health so that we can continue moving forward with strength and clarity. All of us reach points in life when we must muster the courage to do something we need to do for ourselves.
As an Executive Director, I often make difficult decisions. These decisions require conversations, reflection, humbleness, and openness for my thinking to change or evolve as needed. I recognize it takes courage to engage in this process.
2. How do you feel you’ve demonstrated courage as it pertains to our work fighting for immigrant children? Where is there an opportunity for you to grow as a courageous leader?
In mid-September, I joined some of my colleagues in DC for advocacy meetings. In one of those meetings, I, along with two of my colleagues, were sitting across representatives from the Department of Homeland Security, sharing recommendations.
One of the recommendations we were making is that there ought to have a limit on the number of days children could be held in processing facilities — even when they’re with a parent. It took courage to name this because we expressly talked about the horrific incident involving an 8-year-old kiddo from Panama who died in May of this year while with her mother in a Customs and Border Protection (CBP) facility. This child’s death was preventable and CBP deliberately ignored this mother’s cries for help. As a mother, I can’t imagine the pain this mom felt while begging to get her daughter medical help and being ignored. My stomach was in knots during that meeting. But we wanted CBP to know we were bringing this recommendation forward with this little girl’s memory in mind, and with her mother in mind, and we needed to remind them this little girl’s life mattered.
I felt proud to be there with our team to say that. When I am in these government spaces, it’s not always comfortable. So, it does take a moment of courage to say let’s talk about what really matters and the precious lives that have been lost because they’re in a jail. Those are the moments where I believe we’re speaking truth to power. CBP is a massive and powerful agency, but here we are telling them “You screwed up. Don’t do it again. These are some recommendations you can put into place. Learn from this.”
As for where I can grow as a courageous leader, I want to be bolder in centering the needs of the children we serve. What I mean by that is that at my level of leadership, I’m often navigating multiple relationships: our staff, the kids we serve, government partners, our volunteers, our Board, our donors, and the public.
Although I’m balancing different conversations, I must remind myself more that one of our core values is to center the children we serve in the decisions I make. I want to talk more directly to the children we’re serving in my capacity as ED. I need to always be asking the question — does this decision bode well for the kids we serve? Is this a decision that benefits them or is this a decision that doesn’t? And that takes courage in my view.
3. Equity and Justice are also core to the Young Center’s values. Part and parcel of these two values is our commitment to ensuring children are treated as children, and are never subjected to the harms of detention, deportation, or separation from their loved ones. What part of our strategic plan do you think moves us closest in our efforts to ending the harms of detention, deportation, and family separation for children?
I love that we were extremely intentional in our strategic plan about putting a stake in the ground and saying, “We must challenge the systemic issues and procedures that put children in detention in the first place. Detention is not benign.”
By putting this in our strategic plan, we’re readying ourselves to engage with the public in understanding our message when we say children should be treated as children. It’s not normal that the process in this country involves putting children in detention. And our strategic plan refused to accept that this process is just the way things are. Instead, our strategic plan says, we’re going to change people’s hearts and minds about this issue, to think outside the box with us, and to challenge the systems, assumptions, and structures that criminalize immigrant children.
I would work with children in custody who would ask me “Why do they treat us like criminals?” This crushed me. Children are internalizing that because they’re an immigrant, and get thrown into a federal detention facility, they must have done something wrong. In other words, “I must’ve done something wrong to be here.” As a leader within the Young Center, I don’t want us to get so focused on supporting kids in these systems that we forget to challenge these systems. Our strategic plan asks us to think: “What if we broke these systems down?”
Another aspect of our strategic plan that I want to highlight is our ethical storytelling initiative. If our goal is for children to be seen as children, as human beings, and for people to understand the depth of their experiences in the systems they go through, the best way is to change people’s minds and hearts. It’s about telling the story through the child’s experience- to show people what children are feeling, seeing, dreaming about or what they are struggling with and that’s best done when you tell their story. Our Ethical Storytelling initiatives require us to get into an intimate conversation with that child to truly understand and honor what they’re telling us. I think that’s really powerful. As a lawyer, I didn’t ask kids “how does it feel to be detained.” I think some of them tried to tell me, but I didn’t want to hear it at times because I was more focused on getting answers to questions that would support their case: “Were they abandoned or neglected? Did they suffer persecution? Etc. I was focused on gathering that information for their case. But storytelling is about honoring their experience. It’s about providing the space and opportunity for them to share their inner thoughts, their hopes, their dreams. We can learn about their experience of deportation and the processes that they are forced to go through or what it means to be separated from family-even if it was just for a couple of days. I can sit here and make all the legal and political arguments about why detention is bad and give you statistics, but what stays with us the most is when we hear the human experience of someone.
4.What are steps YC leadership can actively take to ensure that collaboration is grounded in trust, connection, and respect? How do you intentionally show up for staff and their peers through the highs and lows of our work?
For me as a leader, it’s important to let people know where I’m at and what I’m thinking about from my perspective. It’s important for people to have a view into my thought process, to understand how I’m factoring in information, and to get a sense of the information I am considering from various sources. All of this is a way to build trust. And it really comes down to having open conversations with people as to what I’m thinking, why I’m thinking it, the options I’m looking at, and the information coming my way. I am also open to sharing about the sources of information so that people have a window and ability to assess the information coming my way or add to what I’m thinking.
My thought process might not always involve fully-cooked ideas –which can sometimes make me hesitant to share — but my nature and my default is to be open and give people insight into my decision-making. That helps us build trust. And it takes courage to let people into what I am thinking, and I hope that me being open allows people the opportunity to respond to what I’m sharing.
I also think it’s important to extend grace towards one another. I don’t always have everything figured out, but when we extend grace to one another in these conversations, there’s a mutual understanding and that opens us space for being vulnerable. In that vulnerability there can be a lot of connection to understand each other, a sense that we are all holding onto the same rope at different points. We are all connected to the same rope, allowing for the give and pull between us. I lean into connection as much as I can. It’s important to focus on what connects us and not on what divides us.
Self-responsibility is also a big thing; and what I mean by that is that, as a leader, I always want to take responsibility for what I have said, not said, what I’ve done and not done, and when I mess up. I want this self-responsibility to apply to everyone, starting with me, all the way to our volunteers, board members, and staff. We all know the roles we hold and what’s expected of us and what responsibilities we have, so it is important to hold ourselves accountable. Taking ownership allows us to also use our time wisely and to focus on the work. At the end of the day, we have a mission to accomplish as an organization. We are a highway that needs to drive in unison to advance immigrant children’s best interests and to challenge certain systemic assumptions.
5.How do you intentionally show up for staff and their peers through the highs and lows of our work?
Acknowledgement for what people are going through, especially in the hard times. I often tell staff “I see you. I see what you’re doing. I see what you’re contributing. And I see what you’re holding” especially when I know they’re holding a lot.
I also take ownership for my part when I might be the one making things harder. I will self-reflect, and I will self-account. And I always try to open up spaces for dialogue, especially in challenging times, because I think people need to say their piece. I might not always agree with it or see it in the same way, but that space is warranted. And I support opening up those spaces. I reflect on staff feedback — it stays with me, and I’ll often circle back to conversations with people and, if appropriate, revisit those conversations.
6.How do you see the Young Center continuing and expanding our commitment to our org values over the next year? What changes do you hope to see by this time next year as it relates to living our values?
When it comes to changes, I hope to see our Ethical Storytelling Framework embraced across the organization. I would love to hear about the experiences of the children and families we serve more and to ensure that the programming and services we provide are truly informed by the needs of the community and not by the institutions or the funding world.
The other change is more personal. I like to keep getting bolder in my decisions. In the two and half years I’ve been in this role, I often reflect on when I’ve been scared and where I’ve shied away from certain conversations or certain decisions. We need boldness in decision-making internally, in conversations with government agencies, etc. Going forward, just as I do an annual visit to the border, I’d like to do an annual visit to the Nations capital. I want to continue showing our courage in front of the White House, in front of CBP headquarters, and in front of offices on the Hill.
