A letter from Yaz Mendez Nuñez, Co-Executive Director, to their Soulforce family:
Dearest Soulforcers,
You all welcomed me so warmly into my Soulforce, and now, eight years later, I am transitioning out of my role as Co-Executive Director.
I joined our team in 2014 as a baby-faced 21-year-old community organizer seeking answers to a million questions about faith, spiritual healing, and collective dignity. Soulforce has taught me so much in nearly a decade: I have found our work to be the antidote to hopelessness and despair that permeated many communities after the election of 2016. I have reveled in how I saw our workshops, resources, and community spaces save lives, transform hearts, and change worlds. In return, I have poured my soul into our work — particularly, lending my writing and aesthetics to become the “voice” of the organization alongside Rev. Alba.
Like any coming-of-age story, I am being beckoned by fate to begin a new season of my life and explore different aspects of my call to service our liberation movements. But I will always draw close to Soulforce. In fact, don’t be surprised to find me working alongside our team on special projects in the future!
I am so proud of what we have grown together. In my time at Soulforce, we have shepherded the organization into a new generation of our mission, focused squarely on the intersections of race, class, gender, sexuality, and religion-based violence. We have written a new generation of Soulforce print resources that address Bible-based violence, and we’ve shared them with activists and people of faith in all 50 states and 48 countries. We have developed a fully bilingual English-Spanish organization — a dream that Rev. Alba and I shared when we started at Soulforce more than eight years ago. We have more than doubled the size of our budget and our team through a global pandemic and an economic depression.
It is the exact right time for a change in our leadership. Rev. Alba has recommitted themself to the role of Executive Director, and our whole team is so talented and passionate in what we do. So I feel really confident in leaving my role at the end of this year. Between those brilliant humans and all of you, our Soulforce community…well, the organization could not be in better hands.
If you’ve read my letter in full, I imagine you love Soulforce like I do. So, I have two asks for you:
1. Send me a message at yaz@soulforce.org with your fondest memory from the last decade of Soulforce. I would love to hear your highlights and reminisce with you.
2. Cheer on our team with a donation. Today is my 30th birthday: can you give $30 (or $60 or $90) as a vote of confidence in Soulforce as we move through this leadership transition?
Thank you, Soulforcers, for trusting me with stewarding this organization that has fought for the rights and dignity of LGBTQI people around the world for nearly 25 years. It means the world to me.
With hearts ablaze and spirits unyielding,
Yaz Mendez Nuñez
Outgoing Co-Executive Director
