Jasmyne Bass

I attribute much of my success to being willing to keep showing up, stay curious, and say yes to opportunities that stretch me. Along the way, I’ve also learned to trust what I see. When I notice a gap, whether in survivor services, community engagement, workplace culture, or representation, my instinct is not just to point it out. I start asking what I can do, who I can bring together, or what I can build to help address it. That combination of lived experience, curiosity, relationship-building, and a willingness to create what does not yet exist has shaped so much of the leader I am becoming.

But more than anything, I attribute my success to people. People who saw something in me before I fully saw it in myself. Professors who advocated for me. Mentors and colleagues who believed in my work, made introductions, helped me build connections, vouched for me, and spoke my name in rooms I wasn’t in yet. There have also been people who knew where I came from, from growing up in foster care to experiencing homelessness to starting over in a new state, and took the time to remind me just how far I had come.

Every national stage, classroom, community space, and new opportunity represents someone deciding that what I have to say is worth hearing. I have worked incredibly hard to get here, and I’m proud of that work, but I also know that none of us succeeds entirely on our own. My success has been built through relationships, community, and people who kept opening doors while trusting me to do something meaningful once I walked through them.

Do not wait until you feel completely ready, and do not be afraid when the path changes.

Some of the opportunities that have shaped my career came before I felt fully prepared for them, and many were never part of the plan I originally had for myself. I was certain I was going to become a social worker and that my career would follow a very specific path. Instead, life led me into anti-violence work, advocacy, community engagement, national speaking, and eventually entrepreneurship. And somehow, even the work I thought I was leaving behind found its way back to me, including my connection to foster youth, just in a different and beautifully full-circle way.

I've learned that it's good to have plans for ourselves, but we also have to leave room for life to surprise us. Prepare, learn, seek mentorship, and work toward the things you want, but stay flexible enough to recognize opportunities you never thought to ask for. Sometimes the path looks completely different from what you imagined, and you have to trust that you can still end up exactly where you need to be.

Do not confuse being new with having nothing to contribute. Learn from the people who came before you, ask questions, find mentors, and become excellent at your craft, but do not shrink your ideas simply because you have not been doing the work as long as someone else. Especially in advocacy and nonprofit spaces, your perspective can reveal something an organization has stopped noticing. Protect your compassion, learn your boundaries early, and remember that caring deeply about the work does not require sacrificing yourself to prove that you belong in it.

One of our greatest challenges is sustainability. In advocacy, nonprofit, and community-based work, we often build systems around the expectation that deeply committed people will continue giving more of themselves to compensate for limited resources, staffing shortages, and systemic gaps. Eventually, that costs us talented people.

I also see tremendous opportunity. Organizations are beginning to understand that workplace culture, community trust, equity, communication, and staff well-being are not separate from the mission. They are part of how the mission gets accomplished. We have an opportunity to rethink what sustainable leadership looks like and build organizations where both the communities being served and the people doing the serving can thrive.

Integrity, community, curiosity, courage, compassion, and authenticity.

I want the way I lead privately to match the way I speak publicly. Community matters to me because very little meaningful change happens alone. Curiosity keeps me willing to listen and reconsider what I think I know. Courage allows me to name difficult things, and compassion reminds me that how we create change matters just as much as the change itself.

Above all, I value authenticity. I never want success to require becoming disconnected from the people, experiences, and communities that shaped me. I want to keep growing without forgetting my roots.