Alyia Gaskins’ commitment to making communities healthier, more accessible, and inclusive is rooted in her own lived experience growing up in Pittsburgh. From a young age, Alyia was no stranger to doctors’ offices and emergency rooms. Her mother struggled with pre-existing health conditions that made it difficult for her to juggle the needs of her family with her own well-being, and despite her mother balancing multiple jobs to make ends meet, the financial strain was too much on their single-parent household. Oftentimes, Alyia’s mother was forced to choose between food, rent, and medication, which ultimately negatively impacted her health—and ignited a fire inside of Alyia. Her mother’s experiences taught her invaluable lessons about perseverance and resilience, while showing her firsthand the systems and policies that make cities difficult places for everyone to thrive. 

“It is undeniable that structural racism and historic and contemporary policy decisions have exacerbated inequity and inequality in communities across the United States,” Alyia says. “I do the work I do because I want to ensure that all people, especially other mothers like my mom, have the resources they need to live healthy lives and thrive, regardless of where they live or their race or income.” 

Determined to make a difference, Alyia earned a bachelor’s degree in medicine, health, and society at Vanderbilt University and a master’s degree in public health from the University of Pittsburgh. Her path then led her to Washington, D.C. where she began working at D.C. Hunger Solutions to increase children’s access to nutritious meals at school and at home. She worked with the D.C. Council and local elected officials to pass two pieces of legislation, the Healthy Schools Act and the Healthy Tots Act, to improve the availability of healthy meals for underserved families. Eager to influence more widespread change, Alyia moved on to a position with the National League of Cities and worked on former First Lady Michelle Obama’s Let’s Move! initiative. In her role, Alyia collaborated with hundreds of municipalities across the country to garner support for and pass policies that would help children grow up healthier and thrive. This exposure to diverse cities and communities throughout the United States inspired Alyia’s decision to go back to school and receive a second master’s degree in urban planning from Georgetown University. 

“I wanted to gain a deeper understanding of how our cities are designed, built, and maintained. I wanted to know who makes decisions for city residents and who pays for it,” she shares. “My master’s at Georgetown led me to my current job at the Center for Community Investment (CCI) where my work focuses on helping communities that have suffered from decades of structural racism and disinvestment.”

As Assistant Director of Programs for the CCI, Alyia supports communities by mobilizing investments that expand access to healthy food, affordable housing, and transit. She builds relationships with stakeholders and public health experts to unlock capital, promotes equity and opportunity in city design and public health, and drives policy change at the local, state, and federal levels. A strategic thinker and master collaborator, Alyia thrives on building coalitions, identifying shared priorities, and engaging with community partners—and her dexterity in that regard is something that she first began at Ellis. 

“Collaboration was something I learned at Ellis and something I was pushed to get better at. I was taught how to build links and bridges between people who were different from me, while also learning how to be my full authentic self. I learned the best voice I can lift up is my own,” she said. 

As dedicated as Alyia is to her professional work, she draws the most joy and inspiration from her interests and passions outside of her day job. Since moving to Alexandria, Virginia, she has worked diligently to understand the needs and concerns of her fellow community members through her efforts at: the Alexandria Transportation Commission, the Alexandria Chamber’s Government Relations Committee, Hunger Free Alexandria, Women of Color in Community Development, Good Shepherd Housing’s Leadership Council, and Agenda Alexandria. For Alyia, it’s not a job to be involved in your city and lend a hand—it’s a way of life.

“I don’t just want to live in a community; I want to be part of a community. Nobody knows a place better than the people who live there. The people who live and experience the systems that affect them every single day are the ones with the best ideas to change it. Everyone might not have the time to come to a meeting or share their story, but my goal is to co-create that space with people instead of putting a solution on top of them. I can’t work to change other cities if I’m not working to change the city that I now call home.”

 

When Susan Ellenberg feels that something is unjust, she speaks out. As a member of the Santa Clara County Board of Supervisors, Susan advocates for children and families and works tirelessly on their behalf to bring about positive change in the community. Prior to her foray into public office, Susan was a real estate attorney turned social justice educator who encouraged her students to get involved with causes they believed in. This ethos Susan championed in her classroom carried over into her own life when she was confronted with a proposed policy at her daughter’s school that didn’t sit well with her. She took the advice she had been giving her students—and ran for a seat on the school board. She won the seat and became an integral part of the decision-making process in the San Jose Unified School District, serving on the board for four years. 

At the end of her term, Susan began to think about her ability to make an even bigger impact. Having noticed that the majority of the issues the school board grappled with were inextricably linked to socioeconomic barriers, she decided to focus her efforts on rectifying that reality. She ran for an open seat on Santa Clara County’s Board of Supervisors, a five-member board that oversees the safety and welfare of nearly two million residents across fifteen cities with a budget of more than seven billion dollars, and won. She handily defeated seven competitors and was sworn into office in January 2019. 

“Without a doubt, my Ellis education played a part in my decision to run,” shares Susan. “Women are dramatically underrepresented in elected office, and it takes a significant amount of fortitude to dive into this aggressive and competitive work. Ellis taught me that very hard work yields rewards, and I knew how to work hard. Ellis also imbued within me the confidence to run and honed my belief that I was every bit as capable—if not more so!—than any man who would seek this office. Because of my time at Ellis, I knew that my voice mattered and that I could have an impact.”

Susan’s voice is being heard loud and clear in Santa Clara County now that she has the platform, budget, and team necessary to put her big ideas into action. Determined to leverage her position to ensure more families are thriving and successful, Susan has focused her work largely in four areas: universal childcare, juvenile justice reform, access to mental health services, and youth homelessness. 

As chairperson of FIRST 5 Santa Clara, Susan leads prioritization efforts and connects resources to ensure that the developmental needs of children from birth to age five are a priority. Because access to affordable child care disproportionately affects women, Susan’s efforts have been largely focused on implementing universal child care. In regards to juvenile justice reform, Susan is leading efforts to reduce the rate of juvenile detention by prioritizing school engagement and rehabilitation over incarceration. She works with public defenders, probation officers, judges, and the district attorney to introduce and enact legislation that serves this initiative and is focused on expanding the age range of the juvenile system to include transitional youths aged 18 to 24 years old. In her role as Vice Chair for the Health and Hospital Committee, Susan is working to expand mental and behavioral health services to children. She has a plan in motion that will put mental health service providers in every kindergarten through grade 12 school in Santa Clara County, and she hopes that by offering more access to providers more children will receive the services they need. The final major initiative she’s working on addresses the problem of homelessness in her county, and it’s one that Susan is approaching with a lead-by-example attitude. In the 100-Day Challenge, Susan and her fellow community stakeholders will work together to tackle college student homelessness.

“We have one of the largest populations of unhoused residents in the country,” Susan says. “The 100-Day Challenge focuses on a specific, targeted group, and our goal is to house 100 college students in our county in 100 days. The part I’m most proud of is that I will be a peer role model myself. We’re signing a six-month lease with a local college student. I want to show other community members that if I can do this, they can do this.”

During her time as a lawyer, a teacher, and now a county supervisor, Susan’s ability to identify a problem, collaborate across disciplines, and work toward a solution have been constant. Led by her own willingness to step up and lean in, her sense of civic duty and social responsibility inspire her constituents, collaborators, and colleagues today and the changemakers of tomorrow.

Nancy Debevoise admits that she sees herself as more of a troublemaker than a changemaker, but the various titles that have preceded her name—communications director, New York Times contributor, conservation activist, and Emmy Award winner—suggest that, in her case, the terms are not mutually exclusive. A fiercely passionate self-starter, Nancy has forged her own path, professionally and personally, since she graduated from Ellis in 1962. 

After graduating from Colby Sawyer College, Nancy entered the workforce and began a series of secretarial jobs in Boston and Washington, D.C. Left unchallenged by such work, she eventually moved into communications and public relations jobs with high-profile advocacy groups in Washington. Changing course again, fueled by chutzpah and her new expertise, Nancy broke out on her own and started Debevoise & Associates, a small communications firm. For the first time, she could choose the clients and the causes she wanted to champion. To her surprise and delight, she soon began working with nonprofits that supported her newfound mission. Her clients included national and international behemoths like World Wildlife Fund, NAACP Legal Defense Fund, Planned Parenthood, and National Geographic Society, to name a few.

“Going out on my own was a daunting decision, but once I jumped off the cliff, I found it immensely affirming and liberating to make my own way in the world, on my terms,” Nancy recalls.

While the business thrived, Nancy also made time to write travel articles and features for notable publications like The New York Times, The Washington Post, Travel & Leisure, and Outside. But little did she know that one freelance assignment in the Northern Rockies would change her life—and be the impetus for her to shutter her successful business, move across the country, and change career paths yet again.

“Moving to Wyoming was a huge leap of faith after a lifetime on the East Coast," Nancy says. "I fell wildly in love with the state during road trips in the late 1980s on travel-writing assignments. I knew little about Wyoming's customs and culture and knew virtually no one when I picked up my life and moved here in 1993. Although I had worked for national and international conservation groups in Washington, D.C., I had only a vague idea of the real stakes involved in their battles. Once I moved to Wyoming, I could clearly see, virtually in my own backyard, the serious threats posed by industrial-scale energy development, logging, and livestock overgrazing to the state's world-class wildlife, treasured wildlands, and enviably clean air and water.”

Upon her arrival, Nancy wasted no time getting involved, rolling up her sleeves to contribute to conservation initiatives at the local and state levels. Over the course of a decade, she worked as a project director for the Dubois Wildlife Association; was a contract writer and board member for the Wyoming Outdoor Council; and also served on the National Bighorn Sheep Center and Wyoming Wildlife Federation boards. Her writing and fundraising efforts earned her several conservation-activism and journalism awards. After a decade of dedication to the preservation of her state's natural bounty, Nancy officially retired but began frequently freelancing for Wyoming PBS as a program narrator, scriptwriter, and editor. Last year, she was recognized with a Regional Emmy Award as the writer for Glaciers of the Winds, a documentary about the rapidly melting glaciers of Wyoming’s Wind River Range.

Whether on the page or on the screen, Nancy’s commitment to advocating for what she believes to be right and just in the world is evident at every turn. Armed with an acerbic wit and guided by a strong moral compass, Nancy has poked holes in the status quo, asked and answered critical and complex questions, and proven that age really is just a number. 

When asked how she feels about being considered an alumnae changemaker, Nancy was hesitant at first, but she has come around to the idea. “I'm happy to represent feisty, bold mischief-makers who have made a difference," she says, "albeit in small, determined, righteously angry ways.”