Pasadena native Juliana Serrano and the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) Pasadena Branch are among this year’s YWCA Glendale and Pasadena Women for Racial Justice honorees.
Serrano and NAACP Pasadena, along with U.S. Rep. Karen Bass, D-Los Angeles and immigration attorney Angeline Chen, will be honored during a celebration at the upcoming YWCA’s Women for Racial Justice Breakfast on Oct. 20.
Emmy Award-winning news anchor Cher Calvin will be hosting the virtual event, with the theme, “Truth, Healing and Transformation.”
World-renowned poet Nikki Giovanni is this year’s keynote speaker.
Serrano is currently vice president of advocacy and equity at Planned Parenthood Pasadena and San Gabriel Valley, and a member of the Pasadena Police Chief’s Community Advisory Committee.
“I’m really excited to be amongst Karen Bass and Angelina Ten who’s just an incredible local leader,” Serrano said. “To be awarded by an organization that I’ve done a lot of work within recent years and have so much respect for the Pasadena branch of the NAACP – that’s very exciting. I will say the fact that Nikki Giovanni is going to be the keynote speaker is huge.”
Serrano said there remain many pressing racial justice issues.
“Our country is still very much struggling with racism and its impact on a variety of aspects of our life, including but not limited to healthcare,” she continues. “So, as I transitioned to work with a healthcare provider, I know part of what I will be doing is working with a team of incredible leaders to make sure that we continue to provide equitable healthcare to members of our community that need it and do that healthcare provision in a way that is respectful and acknowledges people’s cultural differences as they come into health centers. Not enough medicine is doing that these days and that’s what we aim to do at Planned Parenthood.”
Another issue she considers very important is law enforcement and its relationship to the community.
“Our nation, as a whole, has been able to shift the conversation around policing and what we expect to demand of our police departments throughout the country, as a result of what happened to Mr. George Floyd,” Serrano said. “There have been so many others before him and since him as well, but we are shifting this conversation and it’s something that we can’t let our guard down with. I’m really excited that Pasadena has started its first community police oversight commission. And having been appointed to that commission, we will be able to get started on that really critical work soon.”
This year, Pasadena-Foothill Valley YWCA merged with Glendale YWCA after more than a year of planning, said Tara Peterson, CEO of YWCA Glendale and Pasadena. In September, the organization plans to reopen the Pasadena office at the Western Justice Center at 55 S. Grand Ave.
“The YWCA Pasadena board has been pretty much running the former organization there without a chief executive officer for a couple of years,” Peterson said. “Those board members are now part of our Pasadena fundraising committee and their purpose is to help us continue raising funds to support the programs that we plan to run in Pasadena. So, they’re basically charged with putting together this continuing the legacy of the YWCA Pasadena, and helping us to develop the agenda and select the honorees for the breakfast every year.”
For more information and to reserve tickets for the annual breakfast, visit www.glendaleywca.org.
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