YOLO Spotlight - Tessa Smith of Yolo County Health and Human Services (HHSA)

Tessa is one busy woman with her job at Yolo County HHSA as an outreach specialist in the mental heath unit, chair of the District Attorney’s Multi-Cultural Community Council, being part of Resilient Yolo, and being an on-going advocate and tireless worker for youth.

The Multi-Cultural Community Council is made up of Yolo County residents that act as an advisory committee to the District Attorney. Their mission is to “seek fair and equal justice, facilitate understanding, ensure open communication, and promote community participation, education and diversity within the criminal justice system”.

Resilient Yolo is a cooperative venture of many local non-profits and county organizations such as HHSA, Yolo Conflict Resolution Center, Empower Yolo, and CASA as well as local youth and families. Their mission is to work together to create a community which is resilient enough to allow everyone to thrive. They also put on the Youth Empowerment Summit every year.

And this is on top of her career with Yolo County and being a suicide prevention trainer and her work in racial equity.

Whew!! As we said, Tessa is quite busy.

FUN FACT #1

Tessa is actually Terresa, but there was another Theresa Smith working for the county so she opted to become Tessa to avoid confusion. She was a military “brat” growing up so she says she is from all over, but at the age of 16 Tessa’s family settled down in Shreveport, Louisiana. Twenty years ago she moved to Sacramento, then ended up in Woodland ten years later. The biggest driving force for her move to Sacramento was access to Alta Regional Center for her son who is on the autism spectrum. Tessa is proud of her son and how well he is doing, receiving AA degrees from Woodland Community College and Sac City College. He is currently working for Amazon.

FUN FACT #2

Tessa is also raising her two granddaughters and says that seeing how the schools work with our young people has been an evolution for her. The more she advocated for her grandkids, the more other people began asking her for help to do the same, cementing her interest is assisting youth and allowing her to focus her efforts. In fact, Tessa loves what she does so much she thinks that even if she had a “bunch of money” she would still do what she’s doing. She believes she received a message that everything she has been through and accomplished in her life was so that she can do what she does now to help people.

FUN FACT #3

Tessa believes that one of the reasons she is so successful at what she does is that she is the same with everyone. She regularly engages with the County Board of Supervisors, the District Attorney, city mayors, citizens, migrant camp habitants- a whole range of people from all walks of life. Knowing the lingo of the mental health and criminal justice systems allows her to get to the point and learn the truth about whatever issue she is digging deep on.

WHAT’S GOING ON IN YOLO COUNTY?

1. Of course, pre-COVID, Tessa found her work, though never easy, was easier to do. Post-COVID, she finds everything is trickier and there is a need to be more creative. As she says, “It is hard to outreach if you can’t reach out”. She has learned the ins and outs of Zoom so she can still hold her suicide prevention trainings online. Before, her work helped inform her how to parent her own kids and when to give herself grace. It is more of a struggle to share coping strategies with parents, but that work is even more important now with the isolation and various struggles for parents and youth brought on by the pandemic.

2. Tessa is optimistic about the changes she sees in Yolo County for child welfare and racial equity, though much more still needs to be done. Many children are being placed outside of the county, making it harder for chances for parent-child reunification. More than half of the children in the foster care system are children of color and more resources are needed. Foster families are always sorely needed.

3. Tessa would eventually appreciate the opportunity to provide input to these issues on a national level and the trend is in that direction. The travel when she was young, personal experience raising children with unique challenges, and her efforts locally working for youth who need that little extra support would make Tessa a powerful advocate for youth nationwide.

And yet with all the important work she has done, and will do in the future, when asked what she wants to be when she grows up, Tessa let us know that she wants to enter (and win!) the famous Best of the West Rib Cookoff in Sparks, Nevada some day. We offered our rib taste testing skills, but we never actually heard Tessa say she would take us up on the offer. That’s okay, we leave the offer on the table just in case!