webinar

Youth Leaders on Mental Health

DATE

July 23, 2025

TIME

3-4p ET / noon - 1p PT

LOCATION

Virtual

Pathways to Healing & Wellbeing for All

Join GTY and the National Collaborative for Transformative Youth Policy for an important discussion about youth mental health and well-being. Hear directly from youth leaders from across the country about how they are ensuring they and their peers have the support they need to thrive.
Register

Young people are fighting for increased awareness, support, and accessibility to opportunities for healing and well-being and shifting the narrative about youth mental health to acknowledge that it’s okay to not be okay. This session will feature the voices of young people and practitioners who will discuss how current practices and policies impact youth mental health and well-being and present a vision for a comprehensive approach to youth mental health.

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).

Speakers

Mikayla Arciaga

Georgia Advocacy Director, Intercultural Development Research Association (IDRA)

Mikayla Arciaga, M.A.Ed., works to connect parents, students, and community members with the resources needed to engage in the state policymaking process. She leverages her experiences as a teacher, coach and mentor of young people to advocate for more diverse and inverse classrooms, that are safe and welcoming for every child and their families.

Mikayla coordinates IDRA’s Education Policy Fellows program. The 2022-23 class of fellows is gaining real-world advocacy experience and training during the Texas and Georgia legislative sessions, representing advocates and communities of color. Mikayla guides the fellows as they learn about policy advocacy, work with coalitions, students and families to craft a community-centered education policy agenda, and join a network of advocates and policy influencers focused on improving racial equity in education policymaking spaces. On March 31, 2025, she was honored with a resolution by the Georgia General Assembly House of Representatives for Women’s History Month for her work to connect parents, students and community members with the resources needed to engage in the state policymaking process.

While still in the classroom, Mikayla spent her summers working on school board-level policy. She collaborated with and led a team of policy fellows assisting school board members in metro Atlanta and across the country on several projects to improve outcomes for marginalized students including a line-item review of an $800 million budget, an audit of almost 200 school board policies, and an analysis of both school and state-level per-pupil expenditure data. These projects cumulated in a comprehensive strategy to increase outcomes for the most underserved students in the key areas of policy and budget.

Throughout her work at the school district level, she recognized the need for high-quality accountability processes in the public school system, which motivated her to pursue a master’s degree in program evaluation in the educational environment from the University of Florida. Mikayla’s policy interests center on culturally inclusive learning environments, accessibility for students with disabilities, and authentic engagement for parents and families. Outside of education policy, her other great love has been to make swimming accessible to learners of all ages, backgrounds and abilities. As a swim coach, she has worked to create a space focusing on sportsmanship, community, and joy, bringing home the first city championship in school history..

Saanvi Arora

Executive Director, Youth Power Project

Saanvi Arora is a public policy and computer science student at UC Berkeley and the Executive Director of the Youth Power Project, a youth-led organization that empowers young people under 25 to inform local, state, and federal policymaking based on their own experiences and has introduced/passed over a dozen state and federal policies.

She is focused on understanding the intersection between public policy, technology, and community attitudes towards health, and published a paper in the Institute for Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) in 2020 regarding the potential for the Internet of Medical Things to reduce costs and barriers associated with healthcare. She has also been recognized for her contributions to key policies improving access to reproductive, sexual, and mental healthcare for young people, and has written and/or advised numerous state and federal policies/initiatives on the subject matters.

Recently, she drove the youth-led effort to write, introduce, and pass S.Res.769, declaring an adolescent mental health emergency & advancing experience-informed recommendations for state and local actors to respond, unanimously through the U.S. Senate. Overall, she is invested in bridging gaps between successful policymaking and younger generations by advocating for cultural, educational, and institutional improvements that encourage youth civic engagement and promote free expression.

Dr. Hazel Guzman

Program Officer, Adolescent Mental Health, Carmel Hill Foundation

Dr. Hazel Guzman, a psychodynamically-trained psychologist, brings over 15 years of experience in mental health clinical practice and non-profit leadership to her role as Program Officer of Adolescent Mental Health at Carmel Hill Fund. Trained in a range of evidence-based modalities, including Dialectical Behavior Therapy for Adolescents, Parent-Child Interaction Therapy, Child-Parent Psychotherapy, Perinatal Child-Parent Psychotherapy, and Triple P, she has worked as a practitioner for all ages. She holds the distinguished endorsement from the New York State Association of Infant Mental Health as an Infant Mental Health Mentor.
Prior to joining CHF, Dr. Guzman served as Chief Program Officer at Northside Center for Child Development, Inc., a Harlem-based non-profit agency providing educational and behavioral health services. In this role, she oversaw all the agency’s programming.

With substantial expertise in her field, Dr. Guzman’s impact reaches beyond direct clinical practice and program management, extending powerfully into early childhood education. She developed and delivered comprehensive training on child development and mental health to early childhood education centers throughout New York City. Her work has emphasized the critical role of nurturing social-emotional development during the formative years, and the importance of integrating social-emotional learning frameworks into educational settings to support lifelong well-being and resilience. She has also served as an Adjunct Professor at Hunter College, enriching the educational experience of future mental health professionals.

Dr. Guzman’s leadership also includes advocacy for policy reform and equity for marginalized communities. She has served on multiple New York City coalitions advocating for improved access to mental health services to diverse populations and on the Board of Directors of the New York Zero to Three (NYZTT) Network, a community of professionals committed to strengthening the development of children during their first three years.

Naomi Porter

National Collaborative for Transformative Youth Policy, Changemaker

Naomi Porter is a community builder who is committed to new experiences and connecting people with each other. Motivated by her passion for entrepreneurship and the diminished capacity of her education to meet this need, she founded EntrepreYOUership in 2019. Now, an international 501(c)3 nonprofit EntrepreYOUership works to remove financial and educational barriers and create space for young people from all backgrounds to participate in the field of entrepreneurship and financial literacy.

She oversees a global team of over 200, whose average age is 16, working in 42 countries to implement their curriculum. Naomi’s work focuses on education reform and she has been noted as a catalyst in her field by Forbes, Wharton, Business Insider, Yahoo News, and Voyage LA Magazine. At the core of Naomi’s work is collaboration, empathy, and dedication to redefining how we educate youth.

Learn more about her work.

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