Photo by Kurt Rogers, Chronicle
As a young teenager Lateefah Simon seemed to be going nowhere. She dropped out of school and worked full-time at a Taco Bell. She was on probation for shoplifting. Then someone offered her a different path. She changed directions and has ever since been paying off her indebtedness for this opportunity with hugh INTEREST.
Lateefah’s walk down the road is an all too familiar story especially in America’s urban areas. Her change in direction is a testiment to what can happen if there are knowledgeable people available to help other’s rewrite their story. In Lateefah Simon’s case she was recruited for a program for at-risk girls. There Lateefah found the tools she needed to lead. It was here too she found her passion.
At 15, she began a job in San Francisco as an outreach worker for the Center for Young Women’s Development. Lateefah could relate to the women the organization served. These were women on the streets surviving as drug dealers, prostitutes, and juvenile offenders. Simon knew them through shared experience, but Lateefah also knew she had the talent, tools, and motivation to help the women find not just a place in the world but a way to transform themselves. She, after all, was proof.
Passion and purpose can transform a person. At 19, Lateefah didn’t think it unusual for her to step into a leadership position. She took over the women’s center. For more than a decade Lateefah Simon grew the organization. By the time she moved on the Center served nearly 3,500 women annually, employed 250 women, and had an operating budget over a million dollars.
Lateefah left the Center to take on a leadership role in the District Attorney’s Office. Her new role was to oversee a citywide public/private partnership. Her job was to create and implement new programs to help former offenders avoid returning to crime.
Lateefah’s remarkable growth as a woman and a leader has earned her much recognition. Among them is a feature in Oprah Magazine, and recognition as a MacArthur “Genus Fellow”. But of all her awards what has been more important to her even more than criminal justice reform is the knowledge she is helping women transform themselves into leaders.
To read more inspirational stories about women you may wish to buy my book Living in the Heartland: Three Extraordinary Women’s Stories on Amazon.com.
http://www.lccr.com/LateefahSimon-bio.pdf used as resource.
