2024 Community Celebration Highlights
We are still buzzing with excitement from our 2024 Community Celebration. Toasting all of you while surrounded by our community is special, energizing, and uplifting. This year, we had an incredible turnout, with nearly 300 people joining us at Bloomhouse in East Palo Alto!
Thank you to our speakers—Jennifer Mineer, Executive Director of My Digital TAT2, Olatunde Sobomehin, Executive Director of StreetCode Academy, and Lisa Blanchard, Executive Director of The Grateful Garment—for sharing their stories, experiences, and the motivation behind their work.
We were fortunate enough to also able to celebrate the work of outgoing Board President Sigrid Pinksy, who has stewarded PACF over the last nine years, as well as outgoing Executive Director Lisa Van Dusen for her exceptional leadership.
Thank you to our grantees who brought their mobile service vehicles to share, and to our caterer Nosh and the JobTrain culinary students for the delightful food and service.
We were grateful to share another special evening with you all, bringing together grantees, donors, and community members who care about investing in a vibrant Palo Alto, East Palo Alto, and Menlo Park. Thank you for working together to make our community blossom.
We are grateful for amazing community support such as that from the Palo Alto Community Fund, which enables us to build honest dialog around our relationships with tech. These conversations are not just a pathway to improve the mental health of young people – it is a crucial part of the solution.
The US Surgeon General, Dr. Vivek Murthy, said that we have an epidemic of loneliness and isolation and that one of his six points is to create a culture of connection. We need that in technology, we need that in innovation, and we need that in Menlo Park, Palo Alto, and East Palo Alto.