MEET OUR SENIOR OPERATIONS MANAGER, DENISE QUIJADA (she/her)

Here at Sadie Nash Leadership Project, we are so lucky to have an incredible team that allows us to become the organization of our dreams. For our next installment of our staff interview series we were lucky enough to sit and chat with Senior Operations Manager, Denise Quijada.

Denise Quijada (she/her) is the current Senior Operations Manager at Sadie Nash Leadership Project. Denise’s professional career has been focused on supporting underserved communities in the New Jersey/NYC area. Denise has over 15 years of experience in providing emergency medical services to urban communities. Additionally, she has dedicated time to providing mental health treatment and crisis response in non-profit healthcare settings that serve predominantly low-income communities. Denise holds both a BA in Psychology and Women & Gender Studies and an MSW, including a certification in Human Services Management, with a concentration in Global Social Work and Public Policy from Rutgers University, NJ. During her time with Sadie Nash, she developed programming centered on healing justice and wellness and has created structures to support wellness practices that are embedded across the organization for both participants and staff. She is deeply passionate about advocating for community members and those that directly provide services to them.

“I saw how harmful the systems were, and part of me just knew that I didn’t want to be complicit in that”

Tell us a bit about yourself?

I am a 34-year-old daughter of Salvadoran immigrants. I grew up in Northern Jersey, though technically, I was born in Long Island. I'm like the parentified oldest daughter! I am also a social worker. I've been working in the mental health field since about 2013, and I became a social worker about four or five years ago.

I'm a Libra, and I play a bunch of instruments! I grew up really connected to music, which I still hold very dear to me. I started out playing clarinet, and then l slowly learned sax because it's the same kind of woodwind instrument. Then, I learned guitar. The clarinet is closest to me, as my first instrument. For me, playing an instrument is about doing hard work and seeing it pay off. I didn’t have to be an amazing clarinet player, but if I practiced, I got better. 

“But, on the other hand, with the right tools and the right resources and support, Sadie Nash just really pushes you to do what YOU think you are capable of doing. ”

What brought you to Sadie Nash Leadership Project?

My social work graduate program brought me to Sadie Nash. I knew when I went into social work school that I didn’t want a heavy emphasis on clinical practice. I didn’t have an intention of becoming a therapist or a licensed clinician. I wanted to do more community work because I had already had experience in the mental health field as a crisis worker. I worked in the same community that I grew up in. And so, I saw how harmful the systems were, and part of me just knew that I didn’t want to be complicit in that. I really wanted to return to school to learn more about how to do more of that community based work.

Through that, I ended up in an internship with Sadie Nash in the fall of 2018. 

After I finished my internship that year I went into Summer Institute planning for 2019. I was doing a lot of the admin Nasher outreach type of work, which still felt very community oriented. Then I took some time off, my mom was sick around that time. I lost my mom later that Fall. Ultimately, I would come back in January of 2020 as a full-time programs team member. I started out as a partnerships coordinator and census manager. I loved the idea of being able to support educators who are supporting our Nashers who are in the partnership program. At the time, Sadie Nash had received funding from the New York City census to do deeper outreach as an organization who already held deeper trust in communities to help complete the census.

We ended up holding a Camp Census in the spring of 2020 where we had Nasher Alums who were looking at what it meant to organize and how the census itself is a form of organizing. It was the first program I created from scratch and ran by myself. My role was really interesting because I didn’t want to be a traditional program coordinator in terms of direct facilitation. I think the older I’ve gotten the more and more I’ve realized I have a passion for supporting direct service staff. 
One of the beautiful things about Sadie Nash is that there are some high expectations because they know the capacity for what staff can accomplish. On the one hand, you can look at it and think “Oh that seems really stressful to be put in a position where you’ve never done this before.” But, on the other hand, with the right tools and the right resources and support, Sadie Nash just really pushes you to do what YOU think you are capable of doing.

“It was so nice to see that something that was so near and dear to me, ended up informing other people in our field about the capacity to be able to incorporate youth programming and wellness together.”

What has been the most memorable part of your experience so far?

Sibling Circles was an initiative that Jess Fei and I started, in the summer of 2020 and is our wellness-based program. It started out from a social work perspective, knowing that the pandemic and quarantine were challenging. We wanted to create a safe space for young people to discuss those challenges. It just expanded into this great program. 

Rupal Patel, our former social work intern, recently sent me an email after her presentation at a conference about the positive feedback and accolades she received from other social workers wanting resources on how to create a youth-based wellness program. It was so nice to see that something that was so near and dear to me, ended up informing other people in our field about the capacity to be able to incorporate youth programming and wellness together. It was beautiful to see that as I transitioned out of programs and into the operations department. 

“With operations, I get the opportunity to create these systems and structures for staff to make it easier for the team to streamline things.”

What does it mean to be an operations manager?

I think the simple way that I understand operations is that it is just managing all the logistics needed to run programming and all of the things you don’t think about. Operations is the support that an organization needs to function and do the things that they want to do. For instance, making sure all the supplies are ready for staff, HR, payroll, and more. We want to make sure we are all sorted legally and the organization is functioning in a healthy way.

I am currently really focused on how to support our staff and our team. We’ve already started a bit of that process by hosting our community socials and holding conversations on topics that feel really important to us. It called out to me because one of the things I really enjoyed in programming was developing programs, which I didn’t realize as I was doing them. But looking back now, I really loved the brain strategy around them, like what are the goals, what are the takeaways, and  how do we create a structured program that will meet the needs of the young people we want to serve. With operations, I get the opportunity to create these systems and structures for staff to make it easier for the team to streamline things. If it’s one less thing you have to worry about so you can focus on what is really the core of your job responsibility then that feels like a good day for operations. 

“A sense of home doesn’t exist in a binary, it exists in this beautiful world of gray and it can look however you need it to.”

What do you think young people need to thrive?

The immediate word that I think of is safety. And now that I’m thinking about it, I would even go further than that. I recently started reading this book by Dr. Jennifer Mullan called “Decolonizing Therapy,” and it’s been really insightful. There is this one part in the beginning of the book where she writes about this feeling of home, and how this feeling of home can mean so many different things to so many young people. Sometimes, it’s the physical space and the childhood home that you grew up in, and sometimes, home is the feeling of being surrounded by your chosen family where you can be your most authentic self. 

I think what young people really need is a sense of home and a sense of safety, where they can really explore and ask all the questions and be inquisitive, and spaces where they can be critical thinkers. Young people need to understand that because the world looks one way while they are growing up, doesn’t mean that that’s ultimately the same world that they have to live in when they’re older. They can dream big! They can imagine for themselves a world that is different from what they grew up with or something that is authentic to the way they grew up, with all the wonders of being an adult. I think the idea and concept of home can be hard to achieve because sometimes generational trauma prevents young people from expressing themselves in the way they want to at home, because of parental beliefs. A sense of home doesn’t exist in a binary, it exists in this beautiful world of gray and it can look however you need it to.

“If you want to look for it, you can find joy, no matter what space you are in at Sadie Nash.”

When you think about our Sadie Nash community, what comes to mind?

Joy! For me the Sadie Nash community is just JOY! Being with the team that we're in and being able to be joyful is so important. There are some days where I feel like I'm just like lost or I'm dealing with the political climate, and coming into Sadie Nash and hearing us laugh centers me. The reality of responding “It’s rough,” to being asked “How are you?” and the shared laughter of us all experiencing that and knowing you’re not alone is joy. Hearing the sound of Nashers laughing in programming is what makes Sadie Nash a joyful space, even in the moments of frustration. 

If you want to look for it, you can find joy, no matter what space you are in at Sadie Nash. I think some people misunderstand joy as you have to be elated and laugh at all times, but for me, joy is the sense of happiness and peace. You can just authentically show up, you don’t have to spend all of this extra energy trying to be something that you’re not. Your energy can go to - this is where I’m at and I want to share space with the community. That alone brings laughter because we all have so many wonderful connections with each other. 

“If oppressed communities can heal individually, and then lean on each other as a collective to continue their healing process, then there is nothing we can’t accomplish! ”

Do you have a message for Nashers?

There is always a reason why we come into social justice equity-based work. My message to Nashers is to spend some time figuring out what that reason is, and ask themselves whether they feel it’s coming from a place that will serve them later on while they're doing this work because this work is hard. This work can be really challenging on the soul, on the body, on the mind. I think when we do it for a reason that isn’t serving us, that’s where people of color, gender-expansive and women of color, start to feel a lot of that burnout. There is something so important about bringing it back to the start. And what is that starting point for you? 

I think of myself, and there is a lot of investigative work, with my parents passing, about their story and their migration history. And it feels like a very important first step to really explore that as a pathway to healing. I love the framework of Shawn Ginwright, who coined the term “healing centered engagement” and one of the things he mentioned in that framework is that adults who work with young people are also in their own healing process. There is something about giving back to the community that helps with our own healing.

And sometimes, the real answer to that is that you might not be able to heal while you’re simultaneously doing that work. That’s something to question in a world where we all want to be involved, we all want to stand up, we all want to fight for liberation. It might be that right now, the most important thing you can do is break generational trauma and heal yourself so that we can stop the cycle that could affect generations after you. That alone is powerful within one family, being the one person who breaks that trauma. And that’s not easy either; it’s an extremely challenging role. You’re doing liberation work by doing that. Caring for ourselves and our souls does feel like the first act toward liberation. If oppressed communities can heal individually, and then lean on each other as a collective to continue their healing process, then there is nothing we can’t accomplish!