Sarah Wilkinson
VMP VISTA Leader
vistaleader@vamentoring.org
In her second year of national service, Sarah is serving as VISTA Leader for Virginia Mentoring Partnership, where she supports 9 VISTAs who are developing/enhancing mentoring programs across Virginia. Prior to this role, she served as an AmeriCorps VISTA through VMP with Southside Transformation Opportunities for Residents and Youth (STORY), a nonprofit in Hopewell focused on increasing the academic achievement of youths living in low-income communities. While serving with STORY, Sarah developed a one-to-one site-based mentoring program and implemented a successful four-month pilot launch.
Sarah graduated from Champlain College in 2017 with a Bachelors of Science in Professional Writing. While in college, Sarah completed internships with Lewis Ginter Botanical Garden, Brandylane Publishers, Senator Bernie Sanders, among others. In Spring 2016, Sarah studied abroad in Dublin, Ireland, where she was fortunate to volunteer as a tutor with an after school program serving low-income youth. In 2017, Sarah completed her first book, “The Political Is Personal”, a collection of short stories, essays, journalism, and history that explored the ways in which political, economic, and cultural systems shape and impact the formation of identity and access to opportunity.
Sarah is passionate about equity and devours books on topics related to poverty, identity formation, and systemic prejudice, most recently Beverly Daniel Tatum’s Why Are All the Black Kids Sitting Together in the Cafeteria?. A lifelong learner, Sarah hopes to get one (or several) graduate degrees and continue doing work that builds empathy through relationships, expands awareness of privilege and the realities of inequity, and promotes the development/enhancement of effective trauma-informed systems and services.
Kelsey Veldhuizen
Hope Davis
Dylan Fox
Joy Gilchrist
Katelyn Chau
Steve Decker