Board Leadership Transition at the Young Center
At the Young Center’s most recent board meeting in June, Teresa Sullivan stepped down as Board Chair and former co-Vice Chair, Frances de Pontes Peebles was elected as the new Board Chair. We are so grateful for Teresa’s six years serving on the Board of Directors since 2016, with 5 of those years in the role as Board Chair. She will officially step down from the board this November. Frances de Pontes Peebles joined the Young Center board in 2018 and has been leading the Connections & Engagement Committee since 2019. Please join us in celebrating both of these leaders and learn more about them here:
ABOUT TERESA
ABOUT FRANCES
Teresa Sullivan is the General Counsel at Legal Aid Chicago, where she started off as staff attorney with the Children and Families Practice Group. Teresa earned her J.D. degree from the University of Chicago and her B.A., summa cum laude, from Washington University in St. Louis. Between undergrad and law school, Teresa spent one year as a Coro Fellow in Public Affairs followed by three years as a healthcare consultant with Epic Systems. Teresa first became involved with the Young Center while a student at the University of Chicago Law School where she served as a Child Advocate. She later served as Young Center Board Chair from 2018 to 2022.
Frances de Pontes Peebles is the author of The Seamstress and The Air You Breathe. Both books have been translated widely. The Seamstress has been published in nine languages and won the Elle Grand Prix for fiction, the Friends of American Writers Award, and the James Michener-Copernicus Society of America Fellowship. It was adapted for film in 2017 by Conspiração Filmes and for a television miniseries which aired to record-setting ratings on Brazil’s Rede Globo network in January 2018. Born in Pernambuco, Brazil and raised in Miami, Florida, Peebles is a graduate of the University of Texas at Austin and of the Iowa Writers' Workshop. She is proud to serve on the board of the Young Center for Immigrant Children’s Rights.
1.How did you get involved with the Young Center initially?
Teresa: I have been involved with the Young Center since 2010. Back then, The Young Center had a legal clinic at the University of Chicago Law School. Through that clinic I served as a child advocate and worked on three separate cases for teenagers fleeing conflicts and violence in Central America. I stayed involved when I graduated from law school, first serving on the Board's fundraising committee, then joining the Board in 2016 and becoming Board Chair in 2017.
Frances: Anita Maddali, a former board member, inspired me to get involved with the Young Center back in 2018.
2. Why is fighting for the rights of children important to you?
Teresa: Because geography should not determine destiny. Children all over the world deserve to live safe, healthy, fulfilling lives, regardless of where they are born. Children deserve to be treated with dignity, respect, kindness, and humanity, especially when facing the adversity of their immigrant journey. The Young Center helps fill in the gaps where governments, politicians, and other adults have failed to treat immigrant children as children. Additionally, as a mother myself to two young children, I fight for the rights of immigrant children because I would want someone fighting for my own children if we were faced with a situation that caused me to send them across a border to an unknown destiny. In thinking about the immigrant journey that our child clients and their families make, I am often reminded of the Warsan Shire that reads, in separate parts: "no one leaves home unless/home is the mouth of a shark...you have to understand, that no one puts their children in a boat unless the water is safer than the land.”
Frances: Who will fight for them if we don’t? It’s a sacred responsibility that all adults have—to give children comfort and care, and to make sure they are treated with dignity and respect. If we neglect this responsibility, we do it at our own peril. Because children become adults, and they will care for us and our world in the same way we cared for them. They are our mirrors. So we must embody the kind of care we want to see in this world.
3. What is one thing you’d like everyone to know about the Young Center’s work?
Teresa: As someone who wants the United States to be a safe place for immigrant children to land and thrive, I can say that the Young Center fights every day to make that our reality. The organization’s work is unique and therefore all the more critical. There is no other organization dedicated to fighting for the best interests of immigrant children at the national, local and individual level. That fact alone means that it is necessary and imperative that we continue to fund the Young Center's work.
Frances: How dedicated and driven staff and leadership are. They pour their hearts and souls into their work.
4. What’s your dream for immigrant children?
Teresa: That they have joyful and carefree childhoods free from the trauma that the current immigration system inflicts upon them. That they are treated as individuals deserving of dignity, respect, humanity and kindness. That they know love and care and welcome in a country that often treats them as second class.
Frances: That they are welcomed into a community of care. That they see themselves as vast and expansive human beings. That they aren’t stifled into one "correct" or model identity, but allowed to express the multiplicity of who they are.
5. What are you most proud of during your time serving as Board Chair?
Teresa: I am proud of a lot of things we accomplished together with the exceptional Young Center staff. First, the fact that we grew and thrived during the last administration, when they threw everything they could at immigrant families, including the horror that was the Family Separation policy. Second, that we as a Board were able to help the organization transition successfully from our amazing, visionary founder and executive director, Maria Woltjen, to our brilliant, kind, and talented Executive Director, Gladis Molina Alt. I have learned so much from and enjoyed working in partnership with each of them, and I am so lucky to have both of them in my life. I know the Young Center will continue to thrive and grow to meet the needs of even more immigrant children under Gladis' thoughtful, steady and compassionate leadership. And I am thrilled that she will have my friend and colleague, Frances de Pontes Peebles, there by her side. Frances is warm, wise, creative, and generous with both her time and talents, and is already proving herself to be an excellent Board Chair. I'm grateful to her for volunteering to serve in this role, and to the Board for their support of her chairwomanship.
5. What do you hope to achieve for the Young Center in the next years serving as Board Chair?
Frances: I hope to follow Teresa's example of caring and driven leadership. I hope to foster a deep sense of engagement among board members so that we can help the Young Center fulfill its mission. The board is a group of extremely impassioned, committed individuals with unique talents. My hope is to encourage and uplift these talents for the benefit of the Young Center and the children it serves.
6. How can folks get involved with the Young Center?
Teresa: Bilingual folks can volunteer as child advocates, which means (weekly? bi-weekly?) meetings with one of our child clients to get to know their stories and support the work of our lawyers and social workers who advocate for that child. Other folks can volunteer with our fundraising efforts -- you can walk in the Waymaker race, you can attend an event, you can co-host an event in your city, you can serve as an ambassador and help us raise money during different events throughout the year like Giving Tuesday, and much more. If you have a few hours to give, depending upon the time of year, the Young Center staff can normally find a way to use your time and talents.
Francis: There are many ways to partner with the Young Center to fulfill its mission to help immigrant children. You can join the Waymaker Race in September and run/ walk/ roll in a 5K to support the cause. You can become a Child Advocate for a child in government custody. You can follow the Young Center on social media and spread its message of fighting for the rights of immigrant children.