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VillageYING™ Philly
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We kicked off our monthly series, VillageYING™, in the City of Brotherly Love last month. We gathered mission-driven leaders, creators, and business owners in the community to gather, exchange skills and establish collaborative relationships. Weren't able to make it to the first one? No worries... This intentionally curated experience will happen again on November 2nd in Kismet Cowork at Manayunk.
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Meet the Speakers
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Karla Ballard is the founder and CEO of YING, a platform that helps members within groups and communities facilitate real time task requests between members. The platform has a B2B enterprise engagement for enterprises, NGO's and government with Web3 integrations.
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Karla most recently ran on the Independent ticket as a VP candidate alongside fintech blockchain mogul and philanthropist Brock Pierce for the 2020 Presidential election. The campaign's mission was fueled with a message of love, unity, and innovation. She is a current advisory board member of Blue Star Families, Philadelphia 250, VSchool, Ethtrust Blockchain, and USC’s Next Gen Council for Stephen Spielberg’s SHOAH Foundation. She's been a visiting speaker at Harvard, UCLA and Georgetown University. Karla is also the co-founder of the first Urban League in the state of Delaware, The Metropolitan Wilmington Urban League, and served as the first female national president of the National Urban League Young Professionals.
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Dr. Esther HioTong Castillo a scholar/educator and social justice advocate with expertise in justice, equity, diversity and inclusion (JEDI) matters. She has over a decade of experience serving BIPOC and immigrant communities, including teaching ESL classes, leading after-school programs, engaging in community health outreach efforts, and organizing and implementing educational programs. Dr. Castillo has a MA in Humanities and Social Thoughts from NYU and a PhD in Sociology from Temple University.
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Currently, Dr. Castillo is the Director of Racial Equity Storytelling and Community Impact of the Office of Empowerment and Opportunity (CEO) at the City of Philadelphia. Prior to joining CEO, she served as the Programs Manager at the Philadelphia Chinatown Development Corporation (PCDC) where she initiated and implemented the COVID-19 Vaccine Equity Project funded by the CDC Foundation and the National COVID-19 Resiliency Network. Under her leadership, PCDC successfully vaccinated over 5,000 Philadelphia residents with limited English proficiency. In 2020, she founded the Chinese Immigrant Families Wellness Initiative (CIFWI), a program that helps the 22,100 Chinese immigrants in Philadelphia with mental health and wellness.
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Dr. Castillo is a proud biracial queer woman, first-generation college student and 1.5 generation immigrant. Her intersectional identity and life story has strengthened her dedication to improving mental wellness and equities for BIPOC and immigrant communities. She's also a proud mother and stepmother. Dr. Castillo strongly believes that advancing racial equity will help make communities healthier for everyone.
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Carlos is a lifelong Philadelphian who traces his culture to the Island of Puerto Rico. Carlos’ background is in Secondary Education with a concentration in African American and American History. After close to a decade inside of the classroom, Carlos realized the shortcomings of traditional education. With the help of his students, Carlos decided to create his own 501c3 non-profit organization, We Love Philly.
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We Love Philly teaches volunteerism, entrepreneurship, meditation, ownership, and content creation to youth left behind by mainstream institutions. After completion of the program students earn credits towards their high school diploma. We Love Philly is currently scaling their curriculum to be implemented in schools across the Philadelphia area as a state recognized pre apprenticeship and apprenticeship sponsor. Carlos also sits on the board at The Penn Treaty Museum, which is located at 324 Richmond Street, in Philadelphia PA.
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Amanda is currently a Cybersecurity Engineer at CSC with a focus on web application security. Some of her knowledge areas include Vulnerability Management, DevSecOps, Microsoft Azure, and Incident Response.
In addition to her full-time employment, she is an advocate for helping small business owners improve their security posture and exposing youth in urban communities to cybersecurity career pathways. She is also an experienced public speaker in various settings and enjoys sharing knowledge to an array of audiences.
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Tuomi Forrest has over two decades of accomplishments collaborating with a broad range of community organizations, arts and culture groups, congregations and denominational bodies, universities, non-profit, philanthropic and government organizations across the country. His expertise in non-profit management and in creating innovative programs, consulting, training and directing research projects has resulted in the strengthening of local grassroots organizations while facilitating resident driven, place-based change.
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Currently he serves as the Executive Director of Historic Germantown, where for the past four years he has led a consortium of 18 cultural, natural and historic sites in Northwest Philadelphia. In this role he provides and creates opportunities for collaborative marketing, programming, education and funding for these sites, while connecting them to community planning and development initiatives. Prior to this position, he worked at Partners for Sacred Places for 21 years, and was Executive Vice President for 14 of those years. Prior to Partners, he conducted grant research and program planning for the Preservation Alliance for Greater Philadelphia. He holds a Master of Arts Degree in English and American Studies from the University of Virginia. His BA is from Haverford College.
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Heart Opening Cacao Ceremony
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Wondering what Cacao is? Essentially, it is chocolate in its raw, purest form derived from the Cacao bean. A Cacao Ceremony is conducted at VillageYING facilitated by Men Kai Ra Ma’at Tu to set a personal and communal intention for connection and to open up your heart chakra through the sipping of Cacao (participation is optional but highly encouraged!).
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YING 3.0 Launch
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We have taken the past few months to listen to our current users and we are proud to announce the launch of YING 3.0. New features include peer to peer gig opportunities, personalized recommendations, and Web3 integrations.
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Shop YING
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We're excited to share some fun new items in our shop. Stock up on YING swag for you and a friend this fall!
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Michael Lavelle Wine
Special thanks to our libations sponsor. A small business based out of DC.
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