Deborah currently serves as CEO/Executive Director of Youth Core Ministries, Inc., a ministry founded in 1995 to reach kids outside of the church.

After becoming Executive Director in 1998, Deborah watched as many of her students moved into adulthood repeating the cycle of poverty. To address this need, YCM launched a community and school-based mentoring program, Core Mentoring, in 2012 and in 2015 an initiative to resolve poverty called Core Community.

YCM has been building a truly trauma-informed organization from the top down since 2017. The organization recognized early on that the science of trauma and resilience is relational and transferable to both their staff and the people they serve. Over the past 4 years, YCM has been actualizing the vision across Kansas to equip families in CORE as trauma-informed parents. The results have been profound.

Deborah and her team are having a significant impact on rural communities in Kansas and beyond. They are passionate about ending poverty and seeing kids and families truly thrive. Deborah, her husband, Tony, and their son, Caleb, live in Greensburg.

Megan is the Site Director of the Reno County Learning Center (RCLC) and is a member of the Essdack Resilience Team. Licensed in Trauma Informed Yoga, she has been practicing yoga and mindfulness for over 15 years. She has been using these skills with students of all ages for the past half-decade.

Prior to coming to Essdack, Megan was leading a mindfulness class with middle school students. Multiple students who identified as disruptive, failing academically, truant and at-risk found their way through referral, both formal and informal to Megan’s classroom. Word spread as she was getting hard to reach students to engage in mindfulness and trauma-informed approaches in the classroom, which led to an increase of school connectivity, attendance and a learned ability to focus deeper in academics.

Since becoming the Director of RCLC, Megan has continued to build yoga practices, mindfulness and trauma-informed course work into her students' daily practice. Students who have struggled academically for years are blooming in the environment Megan creates for success. Megan is leading the way on figuring out how to integrate trauma- and resilience-based approaches with secondary students in engaging and meaningful ways.

Megan also balances her time with her family which includes her supportive husband Marcus and a brilliant and beautiful daughter, Bella. Megan and her family enjoy being outdoors and exploring nature.

Sherrie is the Lead Coach for Steps to End Poverty in McPherson County, also known as STEPMC. STEPMC is a non-profit organization that engages families experiencing poverty in a longitudinal approach geared to help people overcome poverty.

Sherrie found STEPMC in 2013 as a single mom, on the brink of homelessness with two young children. She is no stranger to adversity, and life had taught her one theme: fight to stay alive. Upon joining STEPMC, she describes the suspicion she held for the middle-class presence coupled with deep fear about these “helping” people potentially doing more damage to her family than good.

Trust and mutual respect were built over the next year and Sherrie began to dig into claiming her story and her future. She got back into college, became an AmeriCorp Vista, and was ultimately hired by the organization in 2018. Sherrie’s lived experience includes 10 Adverse Childhood Experiences, removal from her home, foster care, juvenile detention, running away, and emancipation into a future of survival and single parenting.

Since joining STEPMC, she has brought her family out of poverty, built a Habitat Home, and is now a homeowner.

She serves the organization as a full-time life coach, and works quarter time for a Methodist Church as the Outreach Coordinator, administering food boxes, emergency financial assistance, and diapers to people in need.

Sherrie is a dynamic speaker who captivates audiences with her ability to bring people into the experience of building resilience for any human at any age.