Karen Feldman inspires young leaders

Karen Feldman is co-director of Young Voices, a Rhode Island organization that transforms urban youth into powerful advocates. She brings more than 20 years of experience in the field of youth leadership development. Young Voices engages young people from across the state in various efforts to impact public education policy at the district and state level.

She is the founder and former executive director of Youth in Action. Under her leadership, Youth in Action grew from just an idea into one of the most recognized youth organization in Rhode Island.

“I met Karen over eight years ago when I was 14 years old. At the time she was the executive director of an organization in Providence called Youth in Action. What made Youth in Action unique was that the organization was focused on youth in leadership roles at every step of the way. Whether it was having youth on the Board of Directors and having a majority of the seats or having youth processing time sheets, it was the one place that I ever went to where young people were to be seen and heard. Where young people’s voices actually mattered,” Chace Baptista, Young Voices co-director says.

Feldman, who earned Leadership Rhode Island’s prestigious David Sweet Award for her achievements, has a bachelor’s degree from Wellesley College and a master’s degree from the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University.

Through her work with Young Voices, an education action team consisting of youth has been formed and is gaining traction on one of it’s major goals: to ensure excellent teaching is rewarded and to hold all educators accountable to quality teaching.

“In our effort we are working for systemic change of all the schools, which in its nature is eliminating racism, since it’s pretty clear that it’s the youth of color who are getting short-changed out of the education they deserve . . . that is just unacceptable to me,” Feldman says.

The helping hands presentation thanks a special friend of YWCA Northern Rhode Island. Karen Feldman and Young Voices extends expertise to YWCA’s collaborative Parenting in Progress program, an alternative education program for parenting and pregnant young women.