May 27, 2021
My guest today is Christa Gannon. Christa is the Founder of Fresh Lifelines for Youth, Inc. (“FLY”). As a Stanford Law student in 1995, Christa volunteered with boys who were faced with spending most of their teenage years, and for some their entire lives, behind bars. She asked them what would prevent other youth from ending up like them, and their ideas became the basis for FLY.
In 1998, Christa received the prestigious George Soros Foundation
award, a two-year fellowship, to take the kids’ ideas, bolster them
with best practices in youth development and crime prevention, and
start a pilot program. The pilot was so successful that when the
fellowship ended in 2000, Christa incorporated the project into a
nonprofit.
Today, Fresh Lifelines for Youth is an award-winning Bay Area
nonprofit that each year
serves approximately 2,500 youth ages 11-24 who are involved the
juvenile justice system
in 3 Bay Area counties. FLY educates young people about the
law, supports them to become leaders among their peers, and gives
them positive mentors and role models. Providing services at less
than one tenth the cost of incarceration, FLY helps young people
out of the pipeline to prison and onto a new path toward healthy,
productive lives. FLY also helps local juvenile justice systems
become more just, humane, and equitable.
Christa has received numerous awards – no less than 34! - for her
work at FLY, including the James Irvine Leadership Award, the Human
Rights Award for the City of San Jose, Stanford Law School’s
Inaugural Alumni Public Service Award, the Law Foundation’s Youth
Advocate of the Year Award, a Bay Area Women of Influence Award,
and induction as an Ashoka Fellow, one of the first in the field of
Juvenile Justice in the United States.
After serving as CEO of FLY for its first two decades, Christa now
serves in a formal
Founder role as an advocate and ambassador for FLY, helping with
fundraising and investor
relations, and working on special projects for FLY’s strategic
plan, “Imagine 2030.”
Christa holds a B.S. in sociology and law and society, graduated
with honors from Stanford
Law School, and is a member of the California Bar. Christa is also
a wife, mother of two children, and basketball coach.
Here’s what to expect during the episode:
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You can see Christa on her website https://flyprogram.org/
Check her out on Twitter (https://twitter.com/flyprogram_org) and Facebook (https://www.facebook.com/flyprogram)
Her email is Christa@flyprogram.org and her YouTube is on https://www.youtube.com/user/FLYprogram
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