REACH Celebrates Women's History Month

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Written By Lakisha Young • Founder and CEO

Last year, I was fortunate to be honored by KRON 4 as the winner of Remarkable Women of the Bay Area (watch the video here!), and I remember thinking how much I’ve been supported by remarkable women throughout my entire life. You can go back five generations in my family, and in each one, a first-born daughter has led the way for us to follow. So, to be honored in this way truly felt like a full-circle moment for me. 

This Women’s History Month, I’m continuing to reflect on how the women I’m surrounded by have had a profound impact on my life and work. Women like:

  • Our team of Parent Liberators, who are the fuel of The Oakland REACH and who refuse to settle for the status quo. They are hitting the ground in front of schools all month, morning and afternoon, recruiting parents to be change-agents in schools and putting them in the driver’s seat.

  • Our REACH mamas, aunties, grandmas, and caregivers shared their stories in a class-action suit against the state of California and WON a $2+ billion settlement, which includes a groundbreaking provision that recognizes community-based organizations as effective providers of evidence-based programming for children.

We know the work doesn’t end with this win, and we’re grateful neither do our champions — women like:

  • Assemblywoman Blanca Rubio (D-Baldwin Park) who is helping us fight for comprehensive, evidence-based approaches to literacy instruction through the "California Kids Read" bill, Assembly Bill 2222. REACH is proud to endorse her bill — read our letter of support here.

  • Superintendent Kyla Johnson-Trammell, Alicia Arenas, Sondra Aguilera, and Romy Trigg-Smith, whom we sincerely thank for their partnership in building an aligned, cohesive, and results-oriented literacy and math ecosystem for our Oakland students.

  • Nicole Rennie, the founder of FORWARD storystudio, beautifully captured REACH’s story and our vision for the future in a four-part video series you can watch below! 

I can never begin to name everyone, but I’m so grateful for this village of people willing to work together to ensure that women’s history isn’t just looking back on the past but projecting toward a brighter future. 

Lakisha Young • Founder and CEO

Lakisha Young is Founder & CEO of The Oakland REACH, a parent-power organization that launched in 2016. She knows from her own story that winning in education is par for the course when you already have what you need to win in life — and because of that, everything REACH does is about ensuring every family has what they need to win in life.

Lakisha developed a formula that has guided REACH’s work since day one: Ask families questions. Listen to their aspirations. Build the solutions. Liberate our communities. This formula has produced a mix of groundbreaking programming and advocacy work over the last 6 years, including The Opportunity Ticket, which gives the most vulnerable students higher preference for enrolling in quality schools, and the Literacy for All campaign, which is about empowering the whole family around literacy to truly disrupt systemically poor literacy outcomes in underserved communities. 

During the pandemic, Lakisha pioneered one of REACH’s most innovative solutions to date: The Virtual Family Hub, a one-stop shop supporting families’ economic survival and their children’s educational success. The Hub has been featured in local, national, and international media, including Today.com, TIME Magazine, CNN, KQED, BBC News, Univision, The San Francisco Chronicle, and more.

Inspired by the Hub’s success and with families returning to in-person learning, REACH created The Liberator Model to train parents and caregivers in the community to become tutors in some of the lowest-performing Oakland schools. Through this model, REACH is now supporting the training and retention of ~200 tutors, providing high-quality, high-dosage tutoring to 5,500+ students across 38 schools. A study of the model called parents an “untapped pool of talent” and noted they were as effective as teachers in tutoring readers.

Lakisha is a respected national voice on parent power and regularly consults other cities across the country interested in learning more about REACH’s transformative model. She is a Senior Fellow at The Center on Reinventing Public Education and is a regular contributor to their “People in Action” series. In 2023, Lakisha was recognized by KRON4 as the Bay Area’s Remarkable Woman.

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