Dominicca Washington
SHE Chicago
United States
Dominicca Troi Washington, M.Ed is a Chicago native born and raised on the city’s South Side. She is the founder and executive director of The SHE Society Incorporated: SHE Chicago, a young women’s after school program that provides social emotional learning, community service opportunities, and college and career exploration for inner city teen girls and girl identifying students. Dominicca has long been an advocate for young women and education, focusing on low-socioeconomic and minority communities. Her personal and professional experience, particularly in large public school systems, serves as a catalyst to her passionate approach to meeting the needs of inner city youth and advocating for change that responds to the needs of marginalized groups. At SHE Chicago, Dominicca supports a student driven initiative created by SHE Sisters called Urban Girls Against Violence, which serves as the activism arm of SHE Chicago where they seek to amplify the voices of marginalized teen girls in response to community and domestic violence.
Dominicca worked for 10 years as a teacher in the Chicago Public Schools. During her tenure as a teacher she dedicated herself to advocacy for equitable education and teacher leadership through work with Educators 4 Excellence, CTU Policy Fellows and TeachPlus Teaching Policy Fellows where she wrote policy recommendations that informed current statewide practice regarding recruitment and retention of teachers of color. Dominicca's equity advocacy extended into work with CPS's inaugural equity office where she was a part of the Instructional Equity Work Group informing and supporting the development of CPS's Equity Framework. Furthering her passion for DEIA, Dominicca was an inaugural member of AMPT Anti-Racist Restorative Practice cohort for nonprofit leaders. Dominicca utilizes her love for education and writing to spread awareness of the education system through several published articles featured on Education Post, and in The Chicago Sun-Times. Dominicca is also a self published children's book author and Continuous Improvement Coach for CPS Schools. Dominicca was selected as one of Chicago Scholar’s 35 Under 35, an honor that celebrates the impact of young professionals on Chicago’s youth, for her work with SHE Chicago. Dominicca is also an Inaugural Obama Leaders USA 2023 Cohort member where rising leaders learn to conceptualize their organizations as assets to the global community.
About
Me.
What is your story?
What drives your work?
The mission of SHE Society, Inc. is to use social emotional learning, community service, and college and career planning to transform inner-city teen girls into influential community and industry leaders of the future. At SHE, we envision Strong, Humble, and Empowered young women who lead their families and communities with compassion, discernment, and integrity.
Altogether, we provide minority teen girls a voice for advocacy and a means to bridge gender, racial, educational and economic gaps.
The SHE Society, Inc. was founded by teachers at a high school in Chicago's South Shore Community. Doing business as SHE Chicago, the organization launched at EPIC Academy on September 4, 2017. Our first cohort consisted of 80 SHE Sisters. Due to our unique character education curriculum, in the first year, we saw a 62% reduction in disciplinary referrals. Additionally, SHE Sisters ended the year with a cumulative SHE P.A. (GPA) of 3.75 largely as a result of our college and career planning strand. Over the course of 3 years we expanded to Washington Heights and North Lawndale. All three communities that we serve have the potential to blossom through the leadership of their children.
SHE Chicago is an after school organization designed to support teen girls in social and self-awareness, community activism, college, and career preparation. We are committed to serving high-performing, under-resourced girls and girl-identifying youth between the ages of 12 and 19. SHE Chicago partners with high schools, parents, and community organizations to provide opportunities that are typically untapped in high-risk impoverished communities. Our program provides unparalleled, multi-purpose mentorship to participants.
SHE Chicago’s curriculum is based on our 3-9-3 model, which combines our 3 pillars, 9 virtues and 3 focus strands, each of which are tied to MHA (Means and Measures of Human Achievement) research based competencies. Our curricular objective is to provide 360-degree support in service to the whole young woman. Our program is proven successful producing positive results based on aggregate data collected annually by survey using school disciplinary records, parent reviews, and participant feedback in partnership with the Community Programs Accelerator at the University of Chicago.
What drives our work is our ongoing commitment to education and the advancement of black and brown female youth. Each of our founders are products of the same communities and circumstances that our girls are facing. We have all played an active role in leading change and empowering our youth over the courses of our lives. We see ourselves in our girls and we believe that given relevant and actionable tools to our girls, they can begin to see themselves as assets to the global community and beyond.
Describe your biggest strength as a leader
I am a visionary and I am proactive. I can see several dimensions of an issue or situation and see pathways and opportunities for solutions and growth. I am empathetic. If I know the steps to becoming successful, I will follow them exactly to reach the intended outcome. I can step out of myself and into another person's lens to get an accurate understanding of who they are and their strengths and opportunities for growth. I am authentic. I bring my truth to the work that I do and I encourage others to do the same. We can't maximize our potential if we don't start with our reality.
Describe your biggest challenge as a leader
My biggest challenge as a leader is communicating my vision to others and trusting them to do work that will lead to the outcomes that we are aiming for. I am working to develop a more distributive mindset when it comes to designing and building for SHE and I think that it would be helpful to start mapping my vision and steps to achieving our goals more clearly, so that I can articulate my vision and support people who work for us without stepping in and doing the work for them.
About the
Organization
and the Project.
Sector
Not-for-profit
Website
Vision & Mission
The mission of SHE Society, Inc. is to use social emotional learning, community service, and college and career planning to transform inner-city teen girls into influential community and industry leaders of the future. At SHE, we envision Strong, Humble, and Empowered young women who lead their families and communities with compassion, discernment, and integrity. Altogether, we provide minority teen girls a voice for advocacy and a means to bridge gender, racial, educational and economic gaps.
Year Founded
2017
No. of Employees
3
Years in the Organization
7 years
Annual Budget (USD)
$208,000
Geographical Area Served
Chicago, IL
Organizational /
Project Description
Strategic Plan for Scaling and Growth/Fundraising Plan
The goal of this project is to revise our strategic plan to address the changes that have taken place in our work while developing a clear path forward that is inclusive of the relationships and partnerships that we have gained over the years.
I would like for our strategic plan to be clarified with phases of planning and implementation to serve as a guidebook for moving our work forward.
Why is this project important and timely?
What is the target population of your project?
Our target population is minority teen girls between the ages of 12 and 19. Our current membership, not including alumni and new members, is approximate 120 girls citywide.
How will you know that you have achieved that impact? What data will you use to assess your impact?
How do you anticipate this unique leadership education impacting you personally? What new skills are you hoping too develop & grow through this experience?
I anticipate this opportunity impacting me by educating me on how to scale for growth while expanding my network of supportive women who believe in the power of young women and understand the importance of investing in their growth.
I am hoping to develop skill around strategic planning, planning for fundraising and honestly to grow my confidence in my leadership and sharing my vision with others and potential funders. I am hoping that the part of the coaching that focuses on personal things will have some work around self reflection that can help me to discover the root of my imposter syndrome tendencies so that I can work to dismantle it and come into my voice as a leader.
Where would you like to see yourself professionally in the next 3 years?
In the next 3 years I see myself as a full time Executive Director for SHE Chicago without the demand of a "regular job" that is not entirely aligned with the work that I am trying to do with SHE.