FOUNDATION FOR TACOMA STUDENTS
The Foundation for Tacoma Students is the backbone organization to the Graduate Tacoma community-wide movement.
Our mission is to build and strengthen Tacoma’s community-wide movement to help every child achieve success from cradle to college and career by aligning goals, data, resources, and partners.
We facilitate a sense of belonging and create shared ownership by engaging Tacoma parents, youth and community (indirectly and directly), policymakers, and elected officials across multiple sectors to address equity gaps facing youth — cradle to career.
We provide a trusted source of aggregated, disaggregated, and student-level data for Graduate Tacoma Networks and community partners to best impact, influence, and improve outcomes for youth and families — cradle to career.
We serve as a key intermediary, to help align funding and community resources around strategies that positively impact youth achieving success from cradle to career.
We inform, activate, and elevate the Graduate Tacoma community movement in local, regional, and state policy to affect equitable outcomes and dismantle systems of oppression cradle to career.
We are a resource for community partners to help expand and sustain their capacity and capability to improve measurable outcomes for youth by supporting and facilitating continuous skills sharing.
Equity is an approach. Equity recognizes that we do not all start from the same place because advantages and barriers exist. Equity is a process. By acknowledging these varied starting places, the Foundation seeks to correct the imbalance for the most marginalized and minoritized populations.
Focusing on populations furthest from meaningful opportunities.
Disrupting and dismantling structural and institutional racism and systems that result in oppression.
Aligning and directing resources to populations under-resourced.
Representing the community in which FFTS serves at all levels.
Redress past systemic and institutional practices by partnering and contracting with women-owned businesses and business owned and operated by people of color.
Dr. Tafona Ervin
Chief Executive Officer
Gray Sterling
Deputy Director
Elvin Bucu
Senior Director of Development
MacKenzie Daniels
Finance Director
Shaima Shamdeen
Director of Communications
Ben Mitchell
Director of Advocacy & Policy
Rodney Wolfenbarger
Director of Pierce County Pathways
Alan Foote
Data Analyst
Justin Sharp
Data Analyst
Davianna Stewart
Operations Coordinator
Hannah Hibbs
Strategy Manager
Alexander Vo
Communications Manager
Nikki Torres
Development Manager
President, Tacoma Community College
President/CEO, Workforce Central
Owner/Operator, Windermere Abode
Chief Communications Officer, Tacoma Public Schools
President, Clover Park Technical College
Managing Director, BCRA
Director of Diversity, Equity, & Inclusion, Providence
Mayor, City of Tacoma
Superintendent, Franklin Pierce School District
Chancellor, University of Washington, Tacoma
Chief Operating Officer, Mary Bridge Children's Hospital
Executive Director, Bamford Family Foundation
Secretary Treasurer, Pierce County Central Labor Council
Chief Communications Officer, Metro Parks Tacoma
President, Pierce College Puyallup
