FOUNDATION FOR TACOMA STUDENTS
The Foundation for Tacoma Students is the backbone organization to the Graduate Tacoma community-wide movement.
Our mission is to build and strengthen Tacoma’s community-wide movement to help every child achieve success from cradle to college and career by aligning goals, data, resources, and partners.
Our Priorities
We facilitate a sense of belonging and create shared ownership by engaging Tacoma parents, youth and community (indirectly and directly), policymakers, and elected officials across multiple sectors to address equity gaps facing youth — cradle to career.
We provide a trusted source of aggregated, disaggregated, and student-level data for Graduate Tacoma Networks and community partners to best impact, influence, and improve outcomes for youth and families — cradle to career.
We serve as a key intermediary, to help align funding and community resources around strategies that positively impact youth achieving success from cradle to career.
We inform, activate, and elevate the Graduate Tacoma community movement in local, regional, and state policy to affect equitable outcomes and dismantle systems of oppression cradle to career.
We are a resource for community partners to help expand and sustain their capacity and capability to improve measurable outcomes for youth by supporting and facilitating continuous skills sharing.
Our Commitment to Equity
Equity is an approach. Equity recognizes that we do not all start from the same place because advantages and barriers exist. Equity is a process. By acknowledging these varied starting places, the Foundation seeks to correct the imbalance for the most marginalized and minoritized populations.
Focusing on populations furthest from meaningful opportunities.
Disrupting and dismantling structural and institutional racism and systems that result in oppression.
Aligning and directing resources to populations under-resourced.
Representing the community in which FFTS serves at all levels.
Redress past systemic and institutional practices by partnering and contracting with women-owned businesses and business owned and operated by people of color.
Our Values
Equity
Accountability
Courage
Innovation
Transparency
Collaboration
Inclusion
Optimism
Meet Our Team
Dr. Tafona Ervin
Executive Director
Devin Rydel Kelly
Director of Data
Ben Mitchell
Director of Advocacy & Policy
Shaima Shamdeen
Director of Communications
Sarah Detweiler
Data Analyst
Leigh Butler
Finance Manager
Rosie Ayala
Associate Director of Collective Action
Rodney Wolfenbarger
Associate Director of Pierce County Pathways
Chanel R. Hall
STEAM Network Manager
Kennadi Bouyer
Operations Manager
Wendy Holcomb
Strategy Manager
Hannah Hibbs
Strategy Manager
Asha Richardson
Strategy Manager
Meet Our Board
Cassandra Mitchell
BOARD CHAIR
SVP of Diversity, Equity, Inclusion Strategy & Engagement, KeyBank of WA
Stuart Young
VICE CHAIR
Managing Principal, BCRA Design
Tanisha Jumper
SECRETARY
Chief Communications Office, Tacoma Public Schools
Ivan Harrell III
AT-LARGE
President, Tacoma Community College
Josh Knudson
AT-LARGE
Principal Consultant, Advancement Enterprises
Lois Bernstein
Chief Community Executive, MultiCare Health System
Elizabeth Bonbright
School Board President, Tacoma Public Schools
Katie Condit
President/CEO, Workforce Central
Shon Sylvia
Executive Director, Metro Parks Tacoma
Sara Irish
Pierce County Engagement Specialist, Molina Healthcare
Victoria Woodards
Mayor, City of Tacoma
Melanie Denise Cunningham
Director of Multicultural Outreach & Engagement, Pacific Lutheran University
Carrie Prudente Holden
President & CEO, Boys & Girls Club of South Puget Sound
Andrea Cobb
Senior Program Officer, Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation
Richard Remmert
Production Engineering Manager, The Boeing Company
Dr. Josh Garcia
Superintendent, Tacoma Public Schools
Patty Rose
Secretary Treasurer, Pierce County Central Labor Council
Brooke Johnson
Managing Attorney, North x Northwest Law Group
Arielle Flesher
Administrative Assistant, City of Tacoma
Holly Bamford Hunt
Executive Director, Bamford Family Foundation