She notices the person at the edge of the room.
Misti knows what it feels like to grow up without feeling fully seen, safe, or valued.
She does not share that history to invite pity or turn pain into a performance. She
shares it because it shaped the way she sees people.
She notices the young person who has gone quiet. The one making everyone laugh so
nobody asks what is wrong. The one testing whether another adult will eventually
become frustrated and leave.
That awareness became more than empathy. It became a way of working.
She built the kinds of spaces she once needed.
Long before Misti stepped onto a stage, she was building places where young people
could explore, create, laugh, make mistakes, and discover that an adult genuinely
wanted them there.
Her work has included schools, camps, community programs, science activities, Lego
engineering, team-building experiences, youth organizations, and direct work with young
people in the juvenile justice system.
She has taught pirate science, helped children build impossible things out of Lego,
worked with young people navigating serious choices, and learned that trust rarely
arrives on an adult’s preferred schedule.
Different settings required different tools, but the purpose stayed remarkably
consistent: help people feel seen without lowering expectations for what they can
become.
The stage came later. The message did not.
Public speaking did not create Misti’s work. It gave the work a microphone.
After years of helping young people and building community programs, Misti was invited
to speak to a local JROTC group. The response confirmed something she had already
begun to understand: the stories and language she had used one-on-one could also reach
an entire room.
Students connected with her honesty. Adults recognized the guarded young people she
described. People stayed afterward to talk.
That experience helped Misti see a larger path for the work she had already been
doing—one built around resilience, responsible choices, trust, leadership, and
the belief that a difficult beginning does not get to dictate the ending.
