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Welcome Dr. Sarah Nuñez!

Submitted by Elisabeth on Mon, 03/18/2024 - 1:27pm

 

We are excited to announce that Dr. Sarah Nuñez has joined our team as Senior Director of United for Youth. 

Dr. Nuñez comes to us with a deep commitment to equity in education and a strong history of building community relationships, student success initiatives, and community organizing. In addition to being an entrepreneur, she has worked across nonprofit, education, and public sectors for more than 20 years and has degrees from AB Tech (AA), UNCA (BA), and WCU (MPA).  

Sarah has lived in Asheville since 1997 and spent 7 years in Louisville, Kentucky where she completed her doctoral work and research. Among her many accomplishments, she was the former Associate Director for the University of Louisville Cultural Center’s Hispanic/Latinx Initiatives and founded the Louisville Latino Education Outreach Project and Latinx Oral History Project which are steeped in the collective impact strategy that United for Youth is utilizing.

Additional roles held by Dr. Nuñez in WNC include Executive Director for Asheville Buncombe Community Relations Council (2012-2013), Regional Assistant Director for Western Carolina University based at A-B Tech (2007-2012), and adjunct faculty, UNC-Chapel Hill and UNC-Asheville, School of Gillings Masters in Public Health (2024). She moved back to Asheville in 2021 and is excited to return to the town that shaped and molded her into the leader she is today.  

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Dr. Sarah Nuñez

Dr. Nuñez shares,

“This position offers the opportunity to bring institutions, grassroots organizations, and communities together to create the change we want to see for our youth and families. This is complex and strategic work and I look forward to digging into this with all the partners. But what I’m most excited about is getting to work creatively with our community, especially our youth and families, to make our dreams a reality and connect the theory to action.” 

As she assumes her role as Senior Director of United for Youth, Sarah will begin getting to know the partners, launch the new community-led Leadership Team that guides this work, and explore the data that will help us measure our progress toward the Bold Community Goal.
 

About United for Youth

United for Youth is a multi-generational, cross-sector cradle-to-career partnership built on the principle that "Equity and Educational Excellence are Inseparable."  This growing partnership is working to ensure we achieve a Bold Community Goal: By 2035, ALL Asheville City and Buncombe County students graduate from high school ready and fully prepared to pursue their goals and dreams. 

By listening to, and centering the voices of youth and families, this group is dedicated to working together to identify and remove barriers to opportunity and create solutions that support youth success. United Way’s role in this work is to serve as a “backbone of support” to ensure long-term success.