After two years of heartfelt service to Circles USA, Chief Integrity Officer Yvette Trujillo will step down to pursue her next great adventure. Yvette’s position will sunset on August 31st; and, in honor of this bittersweet moment, I invite you to reflect with us on Yvette’s time at Circles, her accomplishments, and the many gifts she’s shared with our community of practice.
Reflections
Yvette came aboard as our Chief Learning Officer when I shifted from that role into the Executive Director position in 2022. The CLO “hat” was a messy conglomeration of roles and responsibilities that Yvette helped us to clarify, sharpen, and deploy for maximum impact. In 2023, we launched the National Coach and Curriculum Development Specialist roles, streamlining CUSA’s national support team of contractors to form a new communications team under the leadership of Information Systems and Design Manager Courtney Cowan. With Yvette’s and Courtney’s management, our national office dramatically expanded its capacity and quality.
This pivot led to Yvette’s new title: Chief Integrity Officer. As a “systems thinker,” Yvette’s particular strength has been to assess what elements of our workflow and programming are in integrity with our mission and vision, while recalibrating parts that miss the mark (or are missing altogether). She created the infrastructure to clarify and resource CUSA’s new Regional Coaches—another contribution that has greatly deepened our national capacity to support local chapters. Yvette helped to improve CUSA’s processes for assessing new prospects, onboarding new chapters, coaching chapters, offering support calls by role, and even hiring/onboarding in the national office. She was instrumental to our new marketing plan. This push has delivered our exciting new Big View podcast and will premiere a new, revamped Circles USA website this fall.
Perhaps most crucially, Yvette launched our formal Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) initiative alongside our board members and national staff. Circles USA is committed to full inclusivity; we also know that we have our own obstruction points and knowledge gaps. The board and staff began a focused journey of DEI learning with consultants in Albuquerque who walked alongside us for 6 months of online modules, discussions, and even an in-person retreat. All of this was to explore How do we apply an equity lens to our work here at Circles? and How might we become more accessible and inclusive of diverse peoples living at the intersections of poverty and identity-based oppression? Yvette’s leadership and courage in holding us broadly accountable to those questions has grown our capacity to uphold CUSA’s vision: that all individuals should live in equitable, thriving communities where poverty no longer exists.
Yvette’s legacy has been profound, and we will benefit from her presence: not just throughout her transition in 2024, but for the rest of our organizational history. Because she was our colleague, Circles USA has grown into a more mature nonprofit living more fully into our mission of building community to end poverty.
Yvette, your skills, perspectives, and gifts will be greatly missed but never forgotten. Here are some heartfelt appreciations for what you’ve meant to our community at Circles USA.
Appreciations
“Not only has Yvette created clear, needed and lasting updates to the structure of support that Circles USA offers to our national network; she has also demonstrated a powerful perseverance through adversity that has helped to shift our conversation around Diversity Equity and Inclusion at the national level. Yvette is a force for good in the world and a warm embrace for those who need it. I’m full of gratitude for her leadership and guidance in my own personal and professional life and will dearly miss her presence in my work with Circles USA.”
—Addie Hartnett, National Coach (Orlando, FL)
“From the first time I met Yvette, it was clear how deeply she cares about others and how passionately she thinks about social change. I am particularly grateful for her leadership in our DEI initiative, which helped our board and national staff develop a more meaningful commitment to our mission. Thank you, Yvette, for pouring your heart and soul into Circles USA!”
—Jennifer Pelling, CUSA Board Member (San Diego, CA)
