Chanae T. Romain

I would say I have a very supportive family. My husband, he is amazing. I come up with these great ideas - I do my best thinking in the shower, as he always says - and I'll run out with this great idea, and he never says, oh, babe, like, we already have so much on our plate, we can't do it. He's like, you want to do it? Let's do it. My parents, they're always very supportive. My siblings, like, I have a very, very supportive village within my immediate family that just - I have these ideas, and they're just like, well, let's do it. I'll take on this task, you take on this task, this is what we need, I researched this, so definitely my village, my village, my village.

Grace. Give people grace. Working at the MBTA is forward-facing customer service. Working with the young people is also forward-facing customer service, and you have to give people grace. You don't know what people are battling every day, and you just have to give them the grace that you would want. And it goes far. You get more bees with honey. That has been my mantra that I kind of live by, the way I manage. I treat everyone with respect, and it's worked for me. You definitely get more bees with honey.

Keep the faith. You know, what we do is needed, but it's tiring. You definitely get burned out, and you know, keep the faith in - keep the faith, and also self-care is very important. Do whatever you need to do to keep your own mental aligned, so you can continue to do the work that we do for young people, because it's hard as a mentor when you see mentees going through adversities, you kind of take on their problems. You want to fix everything. And if you can't fix it, you feel like, what am I doing wrong? And then sometimes you just - it's burdens. You take on their burdens, because you want to be their protector, you want to be their provider. But, just keep the faith. Know that as long as you try, you did good, and take care of yourself, because if you keep yourself at 100%, or even - I say I keep myself at 110%, so that if I have to give up 10% of me, I'm still at 100%. But the only way I have to do that is still by remember to put myself first, take care of me so I can take care of others.

Challenges is, you know, being a nonprofit organization, it's always hard just getting the funding to continue to do what we do. Like I said, I have over 60 young ladies in my program, and the funding is quite minimal, so we have to do a lot of the groundwork and the hustle ourselves, and we also don't have our own brick and mortar, so I'm borrowing spaces from, like, the Boys and Girls Club. I have a partnership with them. We're able to use their space, but it's limited to, you know, when they're open, and when we can be there, so definitely the financial hardship of just getting more money for programming, getting more awareness to what we do here in the city, and getting that funding and then getting a home for us. I would love a permanent home for my young people to go and be there - a safe space for these young people.

Respect and good communication, to me, is the foundation for every - I always joke and say it's the foundation for every ship, whether it's a relationship, a friendship, or mentorship. If you have good respect and you have even better communication, all else can be fixed. So I really stand by, you know, really just treating people the way I want to be treated, talking to whether I'm speaking to the janitor or I'm speaking to a young person, just giving everyone that respect and making everyone feel heard, because that's where the breakdown comes. People feel like they're not heard, they're not seen, they're not able to communicate their feelings because of where they are. If they're a young person, they feel like, oh, because I'm a child and you're an adult, you're not listening to me. Or, you know, if me being the superintendent and I'm speaking to everyone I see, it just gives them that value. Let them be seen, let them be heard. So just definitely respect and communication.