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Learn practical ways to engage youth in behavioral health conversations, build authentic partnerships that value youth voices, and collaborate with other adults for sustainable youth-adult leadership models.

Learning Objectives:
Participants will:

1. Identify effective approaches for engaging youth in conversations about behavioral health that foster trust and respect;
2. Describe strategies to initiate authentic partnerships with youth, ensuring their voices are valued in decision-making;
3. Explore methods for collaborating with other adults to create sustainable youth-adult partnerships within behavioral health initiatives.

Jill Wright, MPH
ISTEP Program Manager & Community Health Consultant, Iowa Health and Human Services

Bio: Jill Wright, MPH, is the ISTEP Youth Coordinator and Community Health Consultant within the Division of Behavioral Health in the Iowa Department of Health and Human Services. Jill has over 8 years of working alongside young people. Her passions lie in youth-adult partnerships and youth leadership development. She finds joy in coaching and mentoring young people to gain the skills and confidence in becoming young leaders. Outside of work, you can find Jill loving on her family, volunteering at church and enjoying the smalltown life of farmer’s markets and community events.

Kayla Powell
Office of Youth and Family Engagement Coordinator, Iowa Health and Human Services

Bio: Kayla Powell is a nationally recognized systems leader and advocate who builds bridges between public systems and the youth and families they serve. Drawing from her own experience growing up in foster care, she now leads the Office of Youth and Family Engagement at the Iowa Department of Health and Human Services where she advances statewide strategies to integrate lived experience, healing-centered practices and authentic partnership into public systems. Over the past decade, she has launched youth-led initiatives, shaped national policy reforms, and become a trusted voice on how systems can center the people they serve. Her leadership has been recognized by the Annie E. Casey Foundation, FosterClub, the Treehouse Foundation, the National Association of Counsel for Children and her hometown of Ottumwa. She is also the proud mother of Kniko and Kyro, who ground her work in both purpose and possibility.