Events

Sondra Samuels, President & CEO - Northside Achievement Zone (NAZ)

Sondra Sameuls is the President & CEO of the Northside Achievement Zone (NAZ), a collaborative of over 30 partner nonprofits and schools. Ms. Samuels has been a resident of North Minneapolis for over two decades and is a national leader committed to results-based leadership and accountability. She, her staff, and their partners work tirelessly to ensure the integration of effective cradle-to-career solutions across the NAZ collaborative - to scale and sustain results across the community and to achieve the systems and policy changes needed for low-income families and children of color to truly share in the prosperity of the Twin Cities Region. Under her leadership, NAZ was named a federal Promise Neighborhood Program, and has become a nationally recognized model for place-based community and systems change. Sondra serves on the boards of HealthPartners, Great MN Schools, the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis Community Advisory Board, and is a member of the leadership team at Generation Next. She received her Bachelor's degree from Morgan State University in Baltimore, MD, and an MBA from Clark-Atlanta University in Atlanta, GA. 

Along with parents, students, partners, and staff, Sondra is leading a revolutionary culture shift in North Minneapolis focused on ending multigenerational poverty through education and family stability. The NAZ Collaborative is working toward a single goal; to prepare low-income North Minneapolis children to graduate from high school, and college, ready for a career. NAZ has scaled up in support of over 1,000 parents and 2,300 students as they turn the social service model on its head and lead the creation of a college-bound culture throughout the community.

Mike Tikkanen, Executive Director, KARA - Kids At Risk Action and Emily Saed, KARA Senior Programing Consultant

Mike Tikkanen served as a Guardian ad Litem for over 20 years before founding KARA. Mike is a current Board Member of CASA MN; the author of the highly rated book "Invisible Children;" and is a national speaker. He is a founding board member of KARA, Kids at Risk Action, a nonprofit supporting the people, policies, and programs that improve the lives of at-risk children. Emily Saed has more than 20 years of leadership in the education and non-profit community. Emily is a certified poverty awareness coach, helping educators and administrators identify and overcome the barriers of poverty in the classroom. 

FinLit is a financial literacy program developed and offered by KARA. FinLit brings at-risk yout ages 17 to 24 together for one year to learn fundamental financial skills. KARA provides grants for participants to save and invest while they learn. KARAs program is unique; it is designed for an audience impacted by agents of despair: childhood trauma, poverty, systemic neglect and abuse. 

With a love for kids and stories, Kaycee and her husband Pete had always planned to adopt. In 2016, while Kaycee was working as a youth pastor, they began dreaming about how to change the narrative around foster care adoption, especially within faith communities. Five months later, The Real Hope Project was born, and they began telling the stories of Minnesota's waiting kids. In 2019, they adopted their son, whom Kaycee met through a Reel Hope video shoot. As Executive Director and Founder, Kaycee leads the organization and her team in the pursuit of The Real Hope Project's mission: A forever family for every child.

The Reel Hope Project's mission is to find a forever family for every child. We do this by making videos of kids in Minnesota who are waiting to be adopted, bringing those videos to different communities, and highlighting these vulnerable kids until every child has a home and a family to call their own. 

Whitney Clark, Executive Director - Friends of the Mississippi River

For more than 35 years Whitney has worked to improve Minnesota's environment as a staff member for several environmental organizations. During his 25-year tenure as executive director, he has led FMR's growth from a start-up group with one full-time employee to one of Minnesota's largest and most effective conservation organizations with a staff of 22. Whitney ha s extensive experience in environmental policy, lobbying, advocacy and education campaigns and partnership building around environmental and social justice issues. He holds a Bachelor's degree in Multidisciplinary Studies from the University of Minnesota. In 2017 Whitney was honored to receive the Minnesota Council of Nonprofits Transformational Leader Award which recognizes an experienced nonprofit leader who has demonstrated success working across boundaries to develop transformational solutions.

The Mississippi River is one of the great rivers of the world and a complex ecosystem of global significance. It's also our hometown river and the heart of cultural landscape that has, for generations, held great meaning for residents of this place from many cultures. Thanks to dedicated advocates, in recent decades the river is healthier and better appreciated but numerous threats remain. Climate change, habitat loss, pollution from agricultural and urban sources and redevelopment that threatens the public values of the river are major challenges. Learn how Friends of the Mississippi River works with public and private partnerships and thousands of volunteers, members, and advocates (aka River Guardians) to meet these challenges head on.