Sarah-Michael Gaston ’16 has been committed to making a difference in the world since she graduated from Linfield with a degree in psychology. She has primarily worked in the nonprofit sector, even cofounding her own in 2017. This year, Gaston earned a Master of Public Health from Johns Hopkins University and returned to Sacramento, California, to serve as deputy director of Youth Forward, a nonprofit focused on improving the health, education and well-being of young people in the region.
Gaston started working at Youth Forward in 2019 in a policy-advocacy role. She helped leverage more than $100 million in grants tied to revenue from Proposition 64 – the 2016 bill that legalized marijuana in California – to support youth programs in communities of color impacted by the war on drugs.
She took a sabbatical from Youth Forward after being awarded a full-tuition fellowship for Johns Hopkins’ 11-month master’s program focusing on adolescent health. The Fellows Program provides public health training to people in organizations attempting to address critical challenges in the United States with the expectation that they return to implement what they’ve learned.
On June 15, Gaston returned to Youth Forward to focus on youth mental health policy. Her time at Johns Hopkins reinforced her desire to help and empower marginalized communities.
“A big thing in public health is making sure the people affected by a policy or program are involved in how it’s carried out (as opposed to) telling them what they need,” she said. “That is what I focus on at Youth Forward.”
