Arielle Clancy Pascascio

I would attribute my success to my husband, Brandon. We've been together for a total of 15 years, since college. Being the oldest of 5 siblings, I was essentially a part-time parent, and I was typically in charge of dinner and those kinds of things. When we started dating, he would come over once a week for 4 years while I was in college and cook meals for my siblings so I could take that time to do homework or study. He would make enough for leftovers too, because having two brothers, you had to make leftovers otherwise they would be starving to death, apparently. Being able to have that support system so I could actually graduate was huge, because I'm a first-generation college grad. Both of my parents don't have degrees, so it was a big deal for me to graduate college and get my bachelor's. Him being able to be that consistent support system throughout and help me get that degree was huge. I could not have probably gotten through college without that kind of support. It wasn't just that he came over one time, it was every week on Mondays, this was his thing. He would come and cook dinner.

The best career advice I've received was: You need to know you're capable, and that you'll figure it out. Being able to not have to plan everything in your head and figure out every scenario, but know that, okay, the next step, you are capable and you'll figure it out. Just being able to live in that confidence of capability rather than doubts has been huge for me. When I first started out trying to raise the money, the first quarter, January, February, March, I think we maybe had $1,000 raised toward our $175,000 goal, and I was like, I am capable and I will figure it out. And we did. But you get really challenged in that when you're pressed up against what feels like you have to climb this mountain. Being able to just live in that confidence was huge for me.

When there's a lot of challenges that come that I've had to face, what's helped me is to remember my why. Why I stepped into a field to serve children and families has helped me face a lot of the challenges and build resilience. Really just remember your why, because you will hit a wall at some point of why am I putting myself in this kind of situation? Why am I serving a population of kids that is really hard sometimes? You have to remember your why in order to push through that wall that you will face at some point. You're gonna face a challenge. You need to remember your why, and that will build your resilience to be able to persevere. Some days are easier and some days are harder, and that's okay. I've told everybody that has worked with me, at some point you're gonna hit a wall. At some point you're gonna hit a wall of why you do this, and the only way you move past it or challenge it is you remember why you did it.

The biggest challenge in the foster care and child welfare industry is that it's unpredictable, and we are under four different state contracts that we have to follow. The challenge comes with how to navigate serving families well with all of the requirements that we have to follow, and then navigating creating operations and processes and policies that align with these four different state requirements and contracts that we're under. Things can change at a drop of the hat if the state requirements change, and then you're having to navigate that change as an organization. Being able to navigate that amount of change and external change while you're still trying to navigate internal change as well is a big challenge. The four different state contracts sometimes don't always talk to each other either, like four separate entities that are in charge of this, so it's trying to navigate all of their policies and processes and implementing it into how we serve kids and families. It's like untangling a huge knot. As for opportunities, there's a harder population of kids that have gone through very severe trauma and abuse. Those kids typically are harder to put in a foster home or find a home that's willing to take them. An opportunity for us as an organization, because of how we're set up and how we support our families well with wraparound care services, is to actually serve a harder population of kids that typically people don't think they can handle. There's what's called the CWOP, Children Without Placement, and there's these kids that are harder to place in a home because of how difficult they are, and they're just living in hotels in Houston. We want to be able to serve those kids well, and we know that we have the services to do that because of how we're set up. We want to make an impact in a very high-need area.

Excellence is one of my core values that I live by. Being able to do things with excellence is huge. I think that, especially as a leader, excellence is contagious. I get to set that standard of excellence, and being able to see that ripple effect to my team that I have under me is huge. It helps not just me, but it helps serve the families better, it helps serve the kids better, and all of our clients that we serve, it helps serve them better because of holding that standard of excellence. That would be my main core value, being able to live and do things with excellence.