Veronica joined the Inclusive Communities team as the Programs Manager in September 2022. She grew up in Omaha though lived outside the city for many years. She left for undergraduate studies at Northwestern University in Evanston, IL following high school. After completing her degree in Sociology and African-American Studies, she received a U.S. Fulbright Fellowship to Zambia to study the impacts of Civil Society on Constitutional Revision and lived in Lusaka for a year and half. Her work has taken her to over a dozen countries on three different continents.
Veronica has over 15 years of experience in not-for-profit organizations focusing primarily on youth work. She first began her work with Inclusive Communities as an after-school program director in Omaha Public Schools bringing the IncluCity curriculum to her students to expand their knowledge of diversity, equity, and inclusion. In addition to building a DEI-informed curriculum for her students, she collaborated with colleagues to create a Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion task force in her agency.
Veronica is a trained Askable Adults Matter facilitator through the Women’s Fund and teaches adults who work with young people on best practices in supporting a young person’s decision-making about their sexual and reproductive health. She is a birth doula/assistant and celebrates the space she holds for parents and birthing people as they welcome a new person into the world. She deeply values rites of passage and the need for guardians as guides in the course of profoundly changing one’s identity and understanding of oneself.
Veronica is the mother of two incredible young children who daily teach her about patience and listening. She loves to garden and make plant medicine. You also might find her in a park hula-hooping with her headphones in, blissed out in the sunshine.