webinar

Facilitating Youth Engagement: In Tandem

Join GTY as we talk with In Tandem

Ideally, any youth-focused product, service, research study, program design, or policy would benefit from youth insight. Yet logistical barriers often prevent effective youth engagement.

Past Event

DATE

August 28, 2024

TIME

1-2p ET / 10-11a PT

LOCATION

Virtual

Join GTY as we talk with In Tandem about how they help organizations tap into the power of youth voice to design products, programs and services. We’ll hear from Asha Canady (CZI); Natalie Mitchell-Bay (Hewlett Foundation); and In Tandem staff and Youth Voice Fellows. In Tandem, a new organization founded by Character Lab alumni, aims to increase youth voice throughout the R&D cycle of any youth-focused project or organization. We’ll learn how In Tandem works, talk with the Youth Voice Fellows about their experiences, and discuss opportunities related to youth-focused philanthropy.

This program is free and open to grantmakers and others in the thriving youth community. GTY’s webinars and funder learning opportunities are made possible through the time and expertise of presenters from the field. In the spirit of transparency, GTY will make available the list of webinar participants to presenters upon request, unless the registrant requests to remain anonymous (please indicate your preference via the registration form).

Session Summary

This webinar, hosted by Grantmakers for Thriving Youth, featured a dynamic discussion on the critical importance of directly engaging youth in the R&D process. The session emphasized the need to shift our perspective of young people from “problems to be solved” to active “agents of solutions.” The presentation included a practical demonstration of a youth engagement session, highlighting the value of open-ended questions, empathetic listening, and focusing on the individual’s experience. Overall, the webinar showcased the transformative potential of genuine youth engagement, unlocking more relevant, responsive, and effective solutions.

Read full session brief.

Key Takeaways

  • Youth as Experts: Young people are experts in their own experiences. We should engage them in ways that allow us to leverage that expertise. Solutions anchored in users’ experiences are more likely to be impactful.
  • Iterative R&D: Youth-engaged R&D is an iterative process where individual insights at each stage of the R&D process generate hypotheses that get tested at later stages of the R&D process. 
  • Prioritize Understanding: While understanding youth experiences is a priority at all stages of the R&D process, it’s especially critical at the earliest stages. Ideally, we should aim to understand young people’s experience of something before defining the problem to be solved. At the least, we should understand it before developing a solution.
  • Remove Friction: The key to increasing youth engagement is eliminating the logistical and procedural barriers that often prevent organizations from engaging them.
  • Democratization of Youth Engagement: If the goal is to engage youth in everything that affects them, we need to ensure that it doesn’t require expertise that few possess. You shouldn’t need to be a user-centered design expert to conduct effective youth engagement sessions. Natalie and Asha modeled with Trinity what this can look like. This is much easier when we orient ourselves toward young people as experts in their experience. All we need to do is create conditions enabling them to share their experience authentically.

Speakers

Asha Canady

Senior Program Officer, Chan Zuckerberg Initiative

Asha Canady is a Senior Program Officer at the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative where she leads district partnership and evidence generation portfolios for the foundation. Asha is an experienced educator and joined the foundation after a successful career as a school based practitioner including roles as a school leader, instructional coach and a secondary English Teacher.

Asha imagines an education system that offers young people a joyous, engaging, rigorous and affirming education. She believes this is possible by partnering with caregivers, centering the whole child, and advocating for evidence based instructional practices. Asha lives in San Francisco where she enjoys tennis lessons, learning new things and live music.

Natalie Mitchell-Bay

Program Officer, Education, William and Flora Hewlett Foundation

Natalie Mitchell-Bay is a Program Officer in Education at the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation. Her portfolio is comprised of grantmaking that centers educational justice and equity, district/systems transformation, and student voice and agency. Natalie’s investments sit largely in the K-12 Teaching and Learning strategy at Hewlett.

Prior to arriving at the foundation, Natalie served as the Director of Title I Programs and School Improvement for Alexandria City Public Schools in Alexandria, VA. In this role, she led a team in the implementation of cross-cutting instructional and improvement initiatives that included a complete redesign of the system’s school and department improvement, monitoring, and accountability processes and tools, and the implementation of a comprehensive, district-wide diagnostic assessment system. Prior to this, Natalie worked in federal grants reform at Washington, D.C.’s Office of the State Superintendent of Education. In this role, she was statewide policy lead for a number of Title I, Part A; Title I, Part B; and School Improvement Grants program areas. She also oversaw applications for funding, programmatic monitoring and accountability, provided technical assistance for a cohort of LEAs, and was the final administrator of the District’s Reading First (Title I, Part B) program.

Natalie holds a bachelor’s degree in jazz studies from Howard University and a master’s degree in education policy and management from the Harvard Graduate School of Education. She is originally from the U.K. but considers Washington, D.C. her home in the U.S. She finds abundant joy in music and dance, cultivating gardens, laughing with those she loves, and wearing bright colors.

David Hersh

Founder & Chief Executive Officer, In Tandem

Dave is the Founder and CEO of In Tandem, an organization that makes it safe, easy and effective to engage youth in the things that affect them. His prior roles include CEO of Character Lab, Director of the Proving Ground project at Harvard’s Center for Education Policy Research, CFO of a school district, Deputy Attorney General and Math Teacher.

Dave holds a Ph.D. in Public Policy from Rutgers University, a J.D. from Temple University and a BA in Mathematics from Northwestern University.

Trinity Holderbaum

Youth Voice Fellow, In Tandem

Trinity Holderbaum is a senior in Ohio where she is dually enrolled at the district HS and the county career center. . She is involved in her school’s Show Choir, Drama Club, Culinary Arts Club, Spanish Club, and Academic Challenge. She plans to attend college to major in education or culinary science. She is excited to be a part of the Youth Voice Fellowship at In Tandem because she has a voice and can make a genuine impact. In her spare time, she likes to sing and spend time with her family and friends.

Beyonce Abe

Youth Voice Fellow, In Tandem

Beyonce Abe is a high school junior in Texas. She is a member of the National Junior Honor Society, involved in the Pre-Law Society, and is a three sport athlete. She plans to attend college to major in political science. After her undergraduate studies, she plans to attend law school. As a lawyer, her goal is to help build successful communities. Her interests include social justice, justice reform, and creating pathways for low income or first generation students to pursue higher educations.

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