A Message From Nneka

Community,

2025 was a lot.

And if I’m being honest, it didn’t leave me tired. It left me ready.

This year asked more of me, more of our staff, more of our community, more of our young people. It asked for discipline. The kind that doesn’t always look impressive from the outside. The kind that requires slowing down when everything around feels like it’s falling apart and is pulling for a reaction, performance, or any type of immediate response.

This year was also my second full year leading CHOOSE 180, and it was the first year of our Five-Year Plan, Laying the Foundation.

That combination mattered.

What 2025 taught me is that leadership, at least the kind this moment calls for, had to resist the urge to react. The urge to respond to everything. The urge to be visible everywhere. The urge to confuse ‘doing something’ with actual progress. Our communities were hurting and the violence and pressure young people were navigating showed up every day, and honestly, they still do. Respecting that reality did not mean letting it disrupt my focus. Instead, it taught me to sit with it. To be comfortable with the uncomfortable. To have discipline with holding things without rushing. That kind of discipline is what actually lets you build and respond well, not just respond.

This year also revealed to me how much the external environment can shape what happens internally if we’re not paying attention. Noise, urgency, and expectation have a way of slipping into infrastructure, culture, and decision-making. And well, 2025 required me to notice that and step in to pull things back into focus. To protect the work, the people doing it, and the young people and communities we serve. To double down on infrastructure, clarity, and pace so that when we do move, we move with intention. The reality was we didn’t need to be the loudest voice in the room this year. We needed to be steady. And for those of you who have been on this journey with us over the last two years, well, you’ve seen what the steadiness required. You’ve watched CHOOSE 180 build, and at times repair, what was needed to carry this work forward.

So, that brings us to 2026.

Deepen and align is our focus, and it’s practical on purpose. It reflects the shift we are making in how we’re moving more coordinated, intentional and grounded in what young people and communities are actually navigating. We are tightening how our programs connect, how our partnerships function, and how accountability and responsibility is shared. Less doing more for the sake of activity, and more in doing work that holds together schools, systems, and community. This kind of alignment allows us to go deeper.

Deeper into understanding how young people enter our programs. Deeper into responding earlier, especially within schools before discipline turns into pushout and pushout turns into system involvement. Deeper into staying with young people, especially as their needs change, for however long they need us. Deeper into systems offering real, and sustainable alternatives to courtrooms. But depth also requires clarity. And as we go deeper into this work, it’s time to be clearer about what works, and where we need to adjust.

Clarity around how we do the work matters. Case management, evidence-based approaches, lived experience, youth voice, and community knowledge all matter here. Every. Single. One. Matters. None of them work in isolation. They only hold when they are working together and in fact, when they are aligned the work moves like it should, with each part supporting the others instead of carrying the whole load.

So, while I've been leading CHOOSE 180 over the last two years, in many ways it feels like it's just beginning. 

2024: We were getting ready.

2025: We got set.

2026: We go.