WOMAN2KNOW
2022 ATHENA LEADERSHIP AWARD RECIPIENT
Christi Terefenko CO-FOUNDER & EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR, VOICEUP BERKS
T
he ATHENA Leadership Award celebrates leaders who demonstrate excellence, creativity and initiative in their business or profession; provide valuable service to improve the quality of life for others in their community; and actively assist women in achieving their full leadership potential. Since 1993, 38 distinguished women in the Berks community have received the ATHENA and we proudly present 2022 ATHENA Leadership Award recipient Christi Sychterz Terefenko as our Woman2Know!
What path led you to where you are today? I was born and raised right here in Reading. I attended Lehigh University where I received a bachelor’s degree in mechanical engineering and then Johns Hopkins University where I received a master’s degree in biomedical engineering. After graduate school I moved to Virginia where I began a 20-year career in the medical research field. I moved back to Berks in 2001, continued to work as a research consultant and began to become involved in nonprofit work locally. I not only volunteered but I sat on numerous non-profit boards including BEACON House, the Gilmore | Henne Community Fund, Wood-to-Wonderful and the Junior League of Reading (JLR). As part of JLR, where I also served as President, I helped launch successful programs like JLR’s “Youth Empowered” initiative and its “Young Women’s Summit,” a two-weekend long program for Reading and Muhlenberg middle-school girls to learn leadership skills through education and service learning. After spending several years working with my colleagues, Rachel Kuhn and Christie Botterbusch, implementing service clubs in local school districts, we turned our passion for empowering
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youth into a career by co-founding the nonprofit organization VOiCEup Berks. VOiCEup Berks and its Youth Volunteer Corps of Reading programs give youth the opportunity to advocate for issues they are most passionate about and take initiative by developing service projects to affect change in those issue areas.
Is there an “a-ha” moment or experience that defines who you are today?
In my early work with local nonprofits, I began to feel something missing. I saw there were not many available opportunities for youth to engage in meaningful community projects, at least not in ways that make them understand the “why” behind the actions. I realized there was a need to give youth a platform from which they can speak out and help on issues they decide are important; a platform youth can use to create sustainable change by engaging in the community in meaningful ways.
What is “service learning"? Service learning is a teaching and learning strategy that combines education and reflection with meaningful community service to enhance students’ learning. It’s important to teach youth the “why” behind what they are doing and that every volunteer task, even the non-glamourous ones, serves a purpose when working to make community impact. For example, several years ago we did a YVC project with Family Promise where they needed help stuffing envelopes to support their work fighting homelessness. Not exactly something middleschool or junior high kids get excited about, right? Well, we started out the project by asking each student to draw a picture of what they thought a homeless person looked like. Many
