The Centralia Community Foundation (CCF) is dreaming big.
Its mission is to create a better future for all Centralians through a focus on education, better schools and career opportunities. To do it, the foundation needs connections, donors and experienced leaders: That’s why the board hired Kat Santana as its first executive director.
Born in Centralia, Santana grew up and began her career in the area. She has worked as the Washington human resources advocate for T-Mobile and worked for Pacific Mountain Workforce Development Council, a regional nonprofit. There, she focused on assisting priority populations and brought training to Centralia.
Though she’s only been working with the foundation since August and as director for a few weeks, Santana first heard of the CCF and its “Together for a Better Future” tagline two years ago. It was originally formed in 2016.
“The board itself — having known some of them or heard of them or worked with folks who worked for them — I knew they were amazing people,” she said. “They were leaders of this community. They have a wide variety of experience with industry.”
Later, asked what she believes is the biggest success of the foundation so far, she said: “I think the best, biggest success is creating the foundation.”
Santana was most drawn to its education initiatives: the Schools of Excellence Initiative and Career Pathways Initiative. The former aims to remedy Centralia School District’s underfunding, the latter to connect students with locally relevant career opportunities.
One of the steps the CCF has taken after diagnosing and researching these issues is the funding of a career counselor at Centralia Middle School.
“It's about how you build that pathway. Which is the investigation and exploration of ‘what do you want to be when you grow up?’” she said.
And, on Oct. 26, the CCF held a cybersecurity summit at the Centralia Train Station as the first in a series of career awareness and exploration events. This kind of event, she says, is a priority for the foundation in the coming year.
The three main fields those events will highlight, Santana said, are IT, clean energy and health care.
“Those things, regardless of how the world is, are going to be in demand. And not only that, they provide wages. Not just individually sustaining, but (for) families,” she said.
Santana felt her first step toward success in her role would be to get “boots on the ground” and create genuine connections in the community.
“This is an invitation,” she said. “If there is an organization or business in this community that wants to know more about what we're doing, and I certainly want to know more about what they're doing, (we) would love to invite them to join in with us.”
To learn more about the CCF initiatives and board members, or to donate, visit centraliacf.org. Keep an eye out for future career events in the community calendar.
