Karen Youngblood
She could have gotten down about having spent time in foster care as a child, but Karen uses that experience to help craft policy to help the most vulnerable youth in the state find a path to a productive life.
What’s the single biggest problem you’d like to solve in your community?
Continue to re-think and solve issues related to juvenile justice. The kids in our system are frequently just the next in line in their family with undiagnosed or unaddressed issues related to mental health, crime, poverty and other factors that leave them hopeless and with no advocates for a reversal in that direction.
What’s the best advice you’ve ever received?
Fail. Fail often, fail forward, fail in a way that you learn how not to do things and never, ever see failure as the final answer. It is not a path to walk on but a door to walk through to a successful future.
“Fail. Fail often, fail forward, fail in a way that you learn how not to do things and never, ever see failure as the final answer.”
What makes you feel proud?
That by God’s grace I have overcome a challenging and violent upbringing to bring good to our world. I am proud that I have made a positive difference in the Oklahoma Juvenile Affairs system and the individual lives of which it is made; that I have served every board or committee I have been on with integrity, no matter the personal cost; that I have developed an expertise in the training and management of human resources that seeks out and develops the best in each individual.
karen is one of 100 women we have featured in the inaugural issue of Hundred Magazine. To learn more about her and the other 99 women, buy the issue.
