MaryJane Skjellerup

MaryJane Skjellerup
Policy Analyst, Equity and Access, Fresno Unified School District

MaryJane Skjellerup is Senior Director of Programs, Central Valley at the Youth Leadership Institute where she oversees community programs that engage youth and adult partnerships in action research and advocacy using environmental prevention strategies to promote social justice and encourage healthier choices around substance abuse, nutrition and academic success. Previously, she was Senior Director of Programs, Central Valley at the Youth Leadership Institute where she oversees community programs that engage youth and adult partnerships in action research and advocacy using environmental prevention strategies to promote social justice and encourage healthier choices around substance abuse, nutrition and academic success. She was also previously Regional Director for the Center for Multicultural Cooperation where, addition to overseeing the production of over 150 volunteer produced digital stories featuring the Veteran, Hmong, Latino, Khmer and Laotian communities of Fresno, she worked as Executive Producer for Common Ground, a 30 minute youth-produced broadcast documentary commissioned by the California Council for the Humanities. She also developed and managed FresYES! Productions, a youth run social enterprise that provides media production services to local CBOs. As Associate Director for the Global Information Internship Program at UC Santa Cruz, she taught courses on applying innovative information solutions to prolific CBO challenges and continues to return to campus each year as a Distinguished Visitor in Global Information and Social Enterprise Studies.

Ms. Skjellerup also serves on the Mayor’s Community Advisory Panel and on the Board of Directors at the Community Media Access Collaborative. She graduated Summa Cum Laude from the University of California, Santa Cruz and was a national finalist for Brown University’s Campus Compact Student Humanitarian Award.

[quote]Children and youth have no voice to tell the truth about the real struggles they are facing. We leaders fight hard for healing and supports for children, youth, and families, and yet in our own organizational and political environments we do not have those things in place for ourselves. Over the past two years, I’ve seen a lot of good people leave this work and leave the valley because they were tired of being pushed around. I want us to have a network that nurtures and heals and actually exemplifies the very values we are trying to put into place in our communities.”[/quote]

MaryJane Skjellerup
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