Breathe Intern Highlight: Kayla Willis

Mayor Darrell Steinberg’s Thousand Strong initiative is a city-wide approach to work experience development that begins with our local youth. Thousand Strong is a community effort to prepare Sacramento youth for success in careers by offering youth paid internships and the opportunity to learn valuable work skills in real work environments. The program highlights personal, social and educational development to encourage students to utilize their full potential.  

This year, Breathe California had the opportunity to partner with Thousand Strong by offering a youth candidate a position on our Tobacco Control Programs team. In July 2019 we welcomed Kayla Willis, an Inderkum High School senior, to our team, and we have been so fortunate to have worked with her this past year.

• 

• 

• 

This year, Kayla has been working alongside our Youth Programs Manager Danielle Driscoll, to learn about Breathe’s mission and the tobacco control projects that make a positive impact in local communities and around the world. During her time at Breathe Kayla has strengthened important clerical skills, received data analysis training, and collected data for a national level project. She was also essential in building tobacco education curriculum for high school students and created presentations for that curriculum she helped develop.  

Breathe provides programs that are heavily focused on youth and education, and by working with Kayla and having her incorporate her youth perspective, it has helped our work remain fresh, engaging and relevant to the young people we aim to protect from tobacco and nicotine. 

Kayla is not only hardworking and eager to learn, but she always shows up to work with a smile on her face, ready to help in any way that she can. Kayla is passionate and confident in the work that she produces and always ready to take on new tasks. She is the true embodiment of a positive attitude and always lifts up others around her. She has been a great asset to our team and a pleasure to work with over this past year. We are so proud of how far Kayla has come in her time working at Breathe.  

We would like to thank Kayla for her time, commitment and dedication to Breathe, and for bringing her youth perspective to the work that we do. Kayla’s input helps us reach and make a lasting impact on the youth in our local community. We would also like to thank the Thousand Strong initiative for providing us with the opportunity to work with Kayla. 

Congratulations Kayla on an excellent year at Breathe and on graduating with the Inderkum High School Class of 2020! We cannot wait to see what Kayla accomplishes next and where her future career takes her. Keep up the great work, Kayla! 

• Facebook
• Twitter
• Instagram