The Ascend Fellowship Impact Fund
Meet the Class of 2022 Awardees
Through the Ascend Fellowship Impact Fund, we offer catalytic capital to accelerate Fellows’ work to build political will, change systems, and drive policy agendas needed to support the prosperity and well-being for all children and families.
Each class of Fellows has the opportunity to apply for flexible resources that could have far-reaching results and meet critical needs, including opportunities to scale new partnerships, invest in critical research, and pilot new approaches.
Past awardees have tested new ways to deliver home visiting services to parents, advanced education efforts in Native communities, and facilitated two-generation (2Gen) learning networks.
The awards to our 2022 Class of Ascend Fellows mark our largest investment to date, with 13 Fellows working on projects – most in partnership with other Fellows – across the United States.
Each of these projects show impressive potential in both their scope and capacity to address timely issues, from preserving Indigenous language to launching public policy innovations to piloting groundbreaking maternal health programs.
Meet the Ascend Fellowship Impact Fund Awardees for the 2022 Class of Fellows:
2022 Fellow Jessica Sanigaq Ullrich, Photo Credit: Dan Bayer for Ascend at the Aspen Institute
2022 Fellow Jessica Sanigaq Ullrich, Photo Credit: Dan Bayer for Ascend at the Aspen Institute
Awardee
Jessica Sanigaq Ullrich
In Partnership with
Kissaq Kingikmiuraguqtuat
This award will be used to hold a language workshop in collaboration with a nonprofit language group called Kissaq Kingikmiuraguqtuat. Jessica, who is an Assistant Professor at Washington State University, will help facilitate the workshop. The collaboration will include discussion time for the ways language can be integrated into the Tribal school, and into the wellbeing curriculum. The language gathering will partner young people with Elders, enabling Elders to communicate with one another in their own community dialects, while continuing to document the living language. Jessica will also take a hands-on approach to language preservation by teaching young people how to create a digital story with Elders that documents and teaches the language. Participants will be encouraged to share their digital stories on the language group’s Instagram and Facebook pages. For younger students and parents of young children, Kissaq will make language kits to create home language nests and create an application online for parents to listen and train themselves on their dialect.
When I saw these two baby boys with their moms at the workshop, it relit my fire to learn the language because I want to do everything I can to be someone that helps pass the language on to them...
I want our babies to hear our language spoken fluently again among everyone in the community. I understand where this love of language comes from, it’s something deep inside us, our language communicates more than words, it communicates a history, culture and relational spirit.
Awardees
Layla Zaidane & Katherine Beckmann
Future Caucus and the Packard Foundation
Layla Zaidane, CEO of Future Caucus, and Katherine Beckmann, child and family program officer for the Children and Families Initiative at the David and Lucile Packard Foundation, are teaming up to officially launch Future Caucus's Innovation Lab. Future Caucus's network of over 1,600 young lawmakers across state legislatures and in Congress will be connected to each other, as well as diverse experts, thought-leaders, and messaging to support bridge-building.
“To make enduring positive change in this country, it’s not enough to have champions for children in my house and your house—we also need them in the People’s House," Katherine said. "We can’t only stand for my family and your family in our daily lives—but we need to stand together through our representatives in state and federal legislatures.”
Early childhood and maternal well-being policies will be one of the initial policy verticals offered to lawmakers.
2022 Ascend Fellow Layla Zaidane; Photo Credit: Ralph Aswang
2022 Ascend Fellow Layla Zaidane; Photo Credit: Ralph Aswang
2022 Ascend Fellow Katherine Beckmann
2022 Ascend Fellow Katherine Beckmann
The Innovation Lab is about getting results in the democracy we have today in order to build the democracy we want tomorrow. It will convene, equip, and catalyze the next generation of lawmakers to transcend our current dysfunction and effect bold, sustainable change.
2022 Ascend Fellow Kimberly Seals Allers; Photo Credit: Dan Bayer for Ascend at the Aspen Institute
2022 Ascend Fellow Kimberly Seals Allers; Photo Credit: Dan Bayer for Ascend at the Aspen Institute
2022 Ascend Fellow Emily Miller; Photo Credit: Dan Bayer, Ascend at the Aspen Institute
2022 Ascend Fellow Emily Miller; Photo Credit: Dan Bayer, Ascend at the Aspen Institute
Awardees
Kimberly Seals Allers & Emily Miller
Narrative Nation and Women & Infants Hospital of Rhode Island
This exciting project is focused on scaling the systems change work Narrative Nation, led by 2022 Fellow Kimberly Seals Allers, is currently conducting toward its mission. Narrative Nation's mission is focused on:
- Eradicating racism and bias in maternal care
- Improving birth outcomes
- Providing unique patient experience data to hospitals, providers, and other key stakeholders.
Irth will complete an 18-month hospital pilot to create and execute a hospital improvement plan based on Irth app feedback from Black and Latinx patients in partnership with Women & Infants Hospital of Rhode Island (WIHRI), under the leadership of Ascend Fellow, Dr. Emily S. Miller, Division Director of Maternal-Fetal Medicine at WIHRI. The project would execute a multi-prong strategy focused on Providence, Rhode Island and surrounding communities.
Whatever the question, the answer is in the community. I think that we have an idea that answers lie in lofty places and academic institutions. But the answers are in the community.
Awardee
Adrián Pedroza
Abriendo Puertas / Opening Doors (AP/OD)
With the award, AP/OD, led by National Executive Director Adrian Pedroza, will catalyze family and caregiver engagement strategy providing opportunities for families to further engage in movement-building and advocacy actions. By engaging with caregivers more directly, these opportunities will help improve confidence, connectedness to their children and community, and access to resources to support whole family needs.
AP/OD will launch a family membership network to make a package of services, benefits, and content valuable to caregivers available, such that individuals are willing to contribute to a nominal recurring membership fee in order to have access to unique benefits that have been negotiated at scale.
2022 Ascend Fellow Adrián A. Pedroza
2022 Ascend Fellow Adrián A. Pedroza
This is an essential step toward building a national advocacy movement with Latino families in the U.S. that creates supportive conditions for all children in the U.S. to have healthy development and long-term well-being.
Awardees
Rashida Brown & Tonja Rucker
National Association of Counties & National League of Cities
With support from the Ascend Fellowship Impact Fund, National League of Cities and the National Association of Counties (NACo) are partnering in a national effort that brings together county and city leaders in finding common sense solutions to local challenges impacting young children and families. Through Vanguard Strong Start for Kids, NLC and NACo will work together with local leaders in 3 cities and their respective counties by providing them with technical support, peer learning opportunities and best practice solutions to help build a well-compensated, highly qualified early care and education workforce.
NLC and NACo will use its expertise on local government structures and authorities, leverage its convening power to help county and city leaders use their unique levers of authority to expand early childhood services in three cities and counites, and share these best practices across the nation.
2022 Ascend Fellows Tonja Rucker and Rashida Brown
2022 Ascend Fellows Tonja Rucker and Rashida Brown
Through this effort, we envision an equitable ecosystem of early learning supports that promotes resilient families, effective programs, and connected communities for young children to be school ready and have a strong start in life.
Awardees
Ciara Garcia & Erin Arango-Escalante
Social Venture Partners Tuscon & All Children Thrive
With support from the Ascend Fellowship Impact Fund, SVP Tucson, led by 2022 Fellow Ciara Garcia, and All Children Thrive (ACT), led by 2022 Fellow Erin Arango Escalante, will partner together to develop a Southern Arizona Family Voices Council. This effort will inform and influence the region’s nonprofit service delivery, philanthropic investments, and policy development. Specifically, the project will influence the:
- vision, priorities, and resource allocation of SVP and its 2Gen Collaboration
- programs, operations, and culture of the eight nonprofit members of the 2Gen Collaboration
- hearts, minds, and funding priorities of regional corporate, foundation, and individual philanthropy
- policy and program development for Pima County and the City of Tucson
"Far too often, the voices of parents have been left out of community decisions. Thanks to support from the Ascend Fellows Impact grant, we have the opportunity to work with Erin Arango-Escalante and All Children Thrive to develop a Southern Arizona Family Voices Council," said Ciara. "Erin’s expertise will guide us in developing this vital piece of work. Southern Arizona is a region with rich Indigenous, Hispanic, and Latinx heritage, and this grant ensures that these voices, values and cultures are at the forefront of conversations around programming, service delivery, and policy."
2022 Ascend Fellows Erin Arango-Escalante and Ciara Garcia
2022 Ascend Fellows Erin Arango-Escalante and Ciara Garcia
The goal of our collective work is to advance equity, economic mobility, education, health, and overall well-being across multiple generations in unimaginable ways. As one parent told me, “Now is the time; I’m ready, and so is the community.”
Awardees
Deana Around Him & Jovanna Archuleta
Child Trends & LANL Foundation
Deana and Jovanna are teaming up to ensure the Ascend Fellowship has a strong, supported contingent of Native American Ascend Fellows.
Deana, Research Scholar at Child Trends, and Jovanna, Early Childhood Community Reach Director at the LANL Foundation, will work together to convene past, present, and incoming Native American Ascend Fellows in a Peer-to-Peer Ascend Fellows Learning Network. Their goal is to identify policy, practice, and research opportunities that will continually impact and transform the systems that support Native American children, families, and communities. The convenings will draw on their big ideas honed in the Ascend Fellowship and learnings, lived experience, professional expertise, and networks. Together, they will dream about ways to individually and collectively support intergenerational healing, health, and educational outcomes of Native American children to foster well-being across generations. The network will also cultivate future Native Ascend Fellows, create a community of learning and be a resource for engaging with Tribal communities.
2022 Ascend Fellows Jovanna Archuleta and Deana Around Him
2022 Ascend Fellows Jovanna Archuleta and Deana Around Him
Native American people often experience environments where the balance of their time and energy is shifted toward reacting and responding to inequities rather than dreaming and enacting plans that will contribute to intergenerational healing and well-being for their children, families, and communities...We are excited to connect the Native American Ascend Fellows across cohorts in a Peer-to-Peer Learning Network that will allow us to leverage lessons from our fellowship, our lived experience navigating invisibility and systemic inequity, and our commitment and responsibility to building transformational change for Native American families
Awardees
Roxana Norouzi
OneAmerica
As executive director of OneAmerica, 2022 Ascend Fellow Roxana Norouzi will use this funding to support her organization's two-pronged plan to implement two milestone legislative wins in the state of Washington.
SB 5225 aims expand Working Connections Child Care eligibility for undocumented children and Fairstart for Kids (SB 5237), will strengthen and expand access to culturally-appropriate, multilingual, high quality child care and early learning opportunities.
Part one of the plan will expand OneAmerica’s base of immigrant/refugee parents, providers and organizations through outreach and organizing. Part two will work with the WA State Department of Children, Youth, & Families (DCYF) and the Office of the Superintendent for Public Instruction to develop robust implementation plans for and ensure there are no unintended barriers to families and schools/organizations in taking up these new policies.
2022 Ascend Fellow Roxana Norouzi
2022 Ascend Fellow Roxana Norouzi
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