Activist Toolkit

1. What motivates you to seek this office? What skills, experiences, and perspectives would you bring, and why would those contributions be valuable in the office you are seeking?

In this position, I would have the ability to directly impact the health of our community. I have spent my career in the non-profit sector. To succeed in this field, you need to have a large impact with a limited budget and be able to collaborate with various stake holders to share resources. With limited resources I developed successful outreach plans to ensure that the individuals I committed to helping received the resources to make informed decisions. My outreach and collaboration plans kept in mind, language, social, and economic barriers that communities face when accessing resources and information. I will bring this experience to the Township Supervisor position, where there is so much opportunity to do good in the community.

2. When in the past have you had to balance competing interests? What process did you use? What did you learn?

When I sat on the Board of the PAV YMCA, I was a member of the Fund Development Committee. It was my job to solicit donations for our Scholarship Program. In 2016, when I transitioned to working for the Berwyn Development Corporation, I identified that I had direct access to donors I had solicited or had the potential to solicit. I identified this perceived conflict and decided to transition from my role as a Board Member at the PAV-YMCA. I did not want to be put in a situation where businesses felt pressured to contribute to the boards I was associated with. Separating my personal endeavors and my work responsibilities is important. When a clear line is not set, you leave yourself open to future conflicts of interest.

3. What does transparency in government mean to you? How would you put it into practice?

Transparency means giving your constituents access to you as their representative and access to information. Information includes accessible financials, meeting minutes, agendas, and upcoming critical decisions. It also means that Government works to provide information through various reasonable means. For example, as Township Supervisor I will develop a more user-friendly website, an opportunity to sign up for township email notifications and I would offer meetings to be live streamed for easier viewing from home.

4. As more of our local discourse happens in social media, what is your view on how local elected officials should communicate with and respond to constituents?

I started my campaign on social media. As you may have seen, I have been very open and accessible on social media. Elected officials have a responsibility of being accessible. If they decide to be accessible via social media, they should be prepared to engage in discourse. It is up to the elected official to set the tone for their page.

How will you engage with the breadth of the community, and not only those on social media?

It is incredibly important that I find ways to meet constituents in person. My plan is to transform the Township Office and adjacent park into a hub for connection between residents and resources. I plan to invest in a better intake plan that would allow the Township to capture better contact information for residents. This intake process would help identify the best way to communicate with our residents. Before this can be captured, I need to go out and find our residents through targeted outreach.

5. What barriers do you see for community members who wish to engage with Berwyn’s township government?

The barriers I see are language, trust, and the lack of clarity from residents about what services the Township offers. As I have taken an inventory of the programs and services offered by the Township, I have identified that not many people knew about these programs or services.

How would you work to reduce or eliminate those barriers?

In all my roles, I have worked to identify and eliminate barriers when accessing information. The language barrier is just one piece. You cannot assume that just because information is translated into Spanish, more people will automatically engage. You need to put forth effort in reaching the community you seek to serve. This means, go to where they are.

6. What do you feel are the most important issues facing Berwyn, and what steps can the Township take to address them?

Berwyn is a working-class community that is continuously changing. Berwyn has successfully recruited new residents that seek the exciting amenities and diversity it touts in its marketing, but the current internal structure of services has not kept up with the times. Our working-class community feels squeezed out and new residents are eager to activate the opportunities they were enticed with to move to Berwyn. The Township can plan a big role in balancing the pushing and pulling of our residents. Across the board, the Township can make resources available to community members that are struggling on various levels. The Township can be more proactive with developing programs and partnerships that help keep all our residents thriving.

7. How do you define equity? Have recent events and discussions in the larger community informed or changed your thinking?

To me equity means that you work hard to identify barriers and the needs of an individual, then you work to provide that individual with those resources to help them to thrive. Covid-19 revealed the inequity in access to health care, jobs, and resources for black and brown communities.

8. How do you plan to solicit feedback from people who may be experiencing Berwyn in a different way than you?

Feedback is immensely important. As a leader it is important to make yourself available and go out and seek information through a few different avenues. I think that meeting with other elected officials, community leaders, and residents themselves is especially important to solicit this direct feedback. I would love to create a space where residents feel heard and empowered to share their experiences. I would like to work with other local leaders to determine if a space, forum or survey, is the best way to continue the dialogue. I would hope other elected officials would want to solicit this feedback as well.

What barriers do you believe may exist in this process?

Trust from the community will be a barrier. Residents have shared their feedback in the hope that change or continued action would take place, but instead they were met with opposition or negative feelings. We should work hard to earn residents trust and keep it.

9. Name an influential Berwyn community member. How did this person’s influence change Berwyn?

Joel Wallen, Youth Development Programs Director of Youth Crossroads, is in my eyes, an influential community member. Joel is helping to change Berwyn through the support and empowerment he gives our Berwyn area youth. Joel is a master at collaborating and finding opportunities for the Youth of Berwyn. He also can rally our community to give back, engage and support each other through various means. Joel is leaving a mark on our community every day.

As an elected official, what do you imagine your influence will be on the community?

My hope is that my influence will be one that leads more residents to want to get involved in volunteering, resource sharing and taking on a leadership position locally. I want to set a path for residents to feel comfortable in asking questions and holing their elected officials accountable, me included.

10. Many Berwyn residents have expressed confusion about the disparate roles of the City and the Township, particularly in the past year as the importance of the Health Department has increased due to the pandemic. What steps would you take to increase the visibility and community awareness of the township’s mission and programs?

One of the biggest goals of my campaign has been to inform the Berwyn community of what the Berwyn Township is. It is surprising as to how many community members do not know. I worked hard to create graphics and digestible information for residents to be aware of the impact this entity has on the community. My goal is to roll out an aggressive outreach and marketing campaign for the Township. I have the experience creating strategic awareness campaigns with little to no money. I want to better utilize the physical space the Township office occupies along with the adjacent park. There is so much opportunity to bring together community members and the resources they need into one space. I plan to host quarterly resource fairs that help make the connection of why the Township exists. For example, I would like to convene a Youth Programs Resource Fair on the grounds of the park. I would like to continue the tradition I started with my campaign and host Health and Human Services related conversations with experts and invite the community to learn and ask questions. You may not know this, but I’ve hosted these conversations already as a candidate and have helped make the connection to the Township.

11. How would you evaluate the Health Department’s handling of the pandemic?

Inadequate. I feel like so much more could have been done by our Health District. The pandemic revealed the need for stronger relationships between intergovernmental units and community partners. Additionally, it revealed that the Health District does not have a strong communication or outreach plan in place to reach its residents with critical information. A year into this pandemic, not much has changed as far as consistent access to information in one location, in Spanish and in a timely manner.

What structural or oversight changes do you believe are necessary to improve the Department’s responsiveness to further crises?

The three-member board should all have at minimum their NIMS training to understand the level of response needed in an emergency situation. NIMS training helps provide a framework that can help guide an entity through various levels of preparedness and action.

What needs to be addressed by the board and executed is the following at minimum:

Communication: Develop a weekly update that residents and businesses can count on to receive information that is relevant to them.

Location of Covid-19 testing site

Process to become Vaccinated.

Updated info on mitigation plans as it relates to our designated region.

Collaboration: Strengthen partnerships with other intergovernmental units and community organizations to see if there are opportunities to resource share and cross collaborate to meet the needs of residents.

12. As an elected official, what lessons will you draw from the experience of the pandemic about the purpose and role of government?

The government is supposed to represent all of its constituents and work hard to represent all of them. This Pandemic elevated the lack of representation of all residents. The Pandemic specifically impacted some of our most marginalized neighbors. I'll speak for our local government... had locally our government made greater strides to discuss inequity and access to resources, maybe, just maybe our community would have been less affected? What I am drawing from this Pandemic is that I need to work to understand the barriers our community faces every single day. As a future elected official, I need to work with the community organizations that are on the ground supporting our residents.

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[The above answers were supplied on 2/4/21.]