Where Care Meets Power: Transforming Systems Through Early Childhood Leadership
Join us October 23rd, for our next virtual gathering, Where Care Meets Power: Transforming Systems Through Early Childhood Leadership with Vernica Goei, hosted by Durell Coleman.
What does it take to transform systems from the ground up while holding the hearts and futures of young children and families at the center? In this candid and catalyzing conversation, Durell Coleman (Founder, DC Design) joins Veronica Goei (Executive Director, Grail Family Services) to explore a leadership journey rooted in lived experience, cultural identity and decades of community-grounded strategy.
As a Latina leader, early childhood advocate and systems thinker, Veronica has spent over 20 years building trusted spaces for families in San Jose’s Alum Rock community. Together, she and Durell will trace the frameworks, innovation, pivots and personal reckonings that shaped her approach to leading with both empathy and precision from curriculum design and fundraising to policy shifts and parent power.
This session invites participants to challenge their assumptions about what leadership looks like, what counts as impact, and how transformation really happens. Expect stories that defy the script, strategies born from deep listening, and insights forged in the daily work of care and complexity.
Veronica Goei is an innovative and visionary leader who is passionate about promoting equity and opportunities for underserved families with young children. She has been the Executive Director of GFS for 21 years. Under her leadership, GFS has grown from a single-site Family Resource Center serving 125 families to a multi-site center serving more than 3000 families annually through a comprehensive range of high-quality programs, services, and initiatives. Veronica is a highly respected influencer among early childhood educators and has been instrumental in the design and quality of local, state, and national initiatives related to families with young children. She has volunteered on numerous Boards of Directors and is currently an officer on the Board of the Silicon Valley Council of Nonprofits (SVCN).
She has also been invited to speak to early care and education professionals at both state and national conferences. Throughout her tenure at GFS, Veronica has taken a collaborative approach in leading the organization and in the development of solutions. The model she created ensures that programs are high-quality, research-informed, and incorporate community input and feedback. Veronica is a founding member of the Si Se Puede Collective (SSPC). Veronica holds a bachelor’s degree in Early Childhood Education from the University of Chile and is a graduate of the Harvard University Strategic Perspective in Nonprofit Management Program, and the HOPE (Hispanas Organized for Political Equality) Leadership Institute.
Durell Coleman is the founder of DC Design, a social impact design firm that uses the design thinking process to address the world’s biggest problems. In his journey as a designer, Durell has collaborated with international non-profits, large tech companies, and small businesses to create products and services that solve the problems they face. Trained in mechanical engineering (B.S) and sustainable design (M.S.), he is a two-time alumnus of Stanford University and its famous Institute of Design (the Stanford d.school).
He partners with diverse clients to help them successfully overcome challenges and capitalize on the opportunities before them. His clients include governments, foundations and nonprofits working to address challenges in the criminal justice and foster care systems, Syrian refugees designing solutions to challenges in refugee camps, students at Stanford University designing a more inclusive campus, and corporate executives from Sony, Oracle, and Santander. He is an expert in multi-stakeholder, human-centered design and is one of the subjects of the PBS documentary: “Extreme by Design,” which is used as a design thinking teaching aid all over the world.