As the culmination ceremony for the 5th Arctic Youth Ambassador (AYA) cohort began, ambassadors gathered in a classroom at the Sitka Fine Arts Camp. Louise Brady opened the day by grounding the group in place, sharing the history of Sitka and its people. Louise spoke to the history of the land the cohort stood on and her decades of work protecting herring, knowledge carried through relationship and ceremony, passed down through generations. For many of the ambassadors, it was a familiar practice, the kind of knowledge transfer between Elders and youth that has always shaped their communities.
Louise Brady, Kh’asheech Tláa, was born and raised in Sitka. She’s a Sitka Tribe council member and the founder and director of the Herring Protectors, a grassroots movement led by Indigenous women using ceremony and collective organizing to protect the yaaw (herring). It’s that depth of leadership, in ceremony and in tribal governance alike, that she brought into the room to open the cohort’s culmination.
That grounding set the stage for a deeper conversation about the future the cohort wanted to see for the Arctic. After 18 months of finding their voices and their own leadership styles, and stepping into internships meant to help build the future they hoped to see, one thread kept surfacing. Reflecting together in Sitka, the ambassadors named intergenerational leadership as central to the future they wanted for the Arctic.
That wasn’t a new idea to the cohort so much as a new angle. Over the past 18 months, ambassadors had done a version of that same grounding work themselves, sitting on panels and speaking in rooms full of strangers and policymakers, bringing the knowledge and traditions of their home communities into the conversation. Ambassadors came to that work from different starting points and different relationships to land and tradition, but shared a habit already built into how they moved through the world, receiving knowledge, wherever it came from, and finding ways to carry it forward into their work and advocacy. While the AYA program didn’t introduce that instinct, it gave ambassadors a new way of communicating their ideas on a bigger stage.
Ambassadors were clear, though, that being invited to share that knowledge isn’t the same as being given real influence over what happens with it. Some organizations have created youth board seats, a meaningful gesture on its face, but those seats frequently come without voting power. A seat at the table isn’t the same as a voice that counts in the decision made there.
What meaningful engagement looked like, in the cohort’s own experience, started with feeling safe enough to show up fully. Alexis Rexford described feeling “more comfortable and confident in owning my space and taking up space” over her time in AYA, and credited AYA staff and her fellow ambassadors with building “a big supportive safety net” she and her peers could lean on. That safety wasn’t incidental. Ambassadors described a program that made room for real limitations and boundaries. One ambassador reflected that there was no capacity for burnout because of the space that staff gave them to say, “I’ve reached my limit”. Being able to say that, and be met without judgment, is what allows ambassadors to engage honestly instead of performing confidence they didn’t yet feel or participate in events they weren’t passionate about.
That same care extended to removing barriers. For some ambassadors, like Hope Uele, one of the first obstacles wasn’t a lack of confidence or skill, but something as basic as not yet having a passport, a barrier that could have kept them out of international spaces before they ever got the chance to speak in them. Pooled funding the cohort drew on throughout the program, including support from WWF, helped cover costs like that and clear the path. Once that barrier was cleared, the harder work of building the skills to use that access could begin.
For Averon Katcheak, that work meant learning to represent a community he’d always been part of but hadn’t yet learned to speak for. “I just couldn’t public speak, and didn’t know how to network or follow up,” he explained. “I felt like I was part of my community, I just didn’t know how to present for them.” Kellie Miller described a similar arc, naming networking and public speaking as goals she’d hoped to grow into. “I got to say yes to a lot of opportunities that I didn’t think I would have,” she reflected, adding that the support of AYA and Alaska Conservation Foundation staff helped her narrow in on the issues she cared most about. “Being able to hone my interests and the things that I wanted to bring to light as an AYA was something that helped me become more confident in my abilities.”
Building that kind of voice took practice, and the culmination itself offered one more chance for it. Shelly Wade of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service led the cohort through a creative writing exercise, asking ambassadors to put themselves and their communities into story and poem form and share what they’d written with the group. For Mic Isham, also of USFWS, it was his first time meeting AYA ambassadors in person, and he came away struck by how openly and confidently they spoke about their own experiences.
That growing confidence showed up in rooms ambassadors hadn’t expected to enter at all. Kellie recalled being surprised simply by the access itself, sitting across from people who shape Arctic policy and advocacy, and realizing “how much people really can listen and be engaged with youth in a meaningful way.” One moment stood out in particular. During a conversation with then Secretary of the Interior Deb Haaland about the future of the Arctic, Kellie ended up exchanging contact information with her, a small but telling example of what it looks like when a seat at the table comes with an actual, ongoing line of communication rather than a single, symbolic appearance.
That same spirit carried into how the cohort was welcomed into its next chapter as alumni. During the culmination, ambassadors sat down with several AYA alumni, who offered guidance on what comes next, how to stay engaged, where to plug in, and how to keep the relationships and momentum from the program alive once the formal cohort ends. Averon credited alumni for that same support throughout his time in the program. “I feel more confident being in those spaces, especially because the alumni help with us speaking and try to support us in any way they could.” Ambassadors also thanked Reth Duir and Macy Kenworthy, both members of the program’s very first cohort who now serve as the program’s coordinators, for staying present as guides rather than stepping back once their own cohort ended. Several ambassadors also pointed to Ann, who helped shape the direction of the program from its earliest days and was pivotal in making sure staff and partners actually listened to ambassadors rather than just inviting them into the room. She’s less involved in day-to-day coordination now, but her support for the AYAs, and for Reth and Macy as staff, hasn’t gone anywhere.
That sense of community showed up in smaller, quieter ways too. During the culmination, Macy found herself texting back and forth with an alum from the program’s fourth cohort, who was attending the World Eskimo-Indian Olympics (WEIO) at the time, asking him to send updates so she could share them with the group. It was a small moment, but it captured something the cohort had spent 18 months building, a network that keeps reaching back for the next person, even in passing.
Some of the most meaningful moments of the culmination happened away from formal programming entirely. One evening, the cohort gathered at the Halibut Point Recreation Site to decompress together, grilling food, walking the beach, and watching the sunset, with a few ambassadors braving a polar plunge into the cold water. On their final night, ambassadors cooked dinner together at the house they rented. Averon taught Reth how to make pizza dough from scratch, and the two of them fed the group pizza while everyone watched the WEIO livestream, cheering on friends and siblings competing.
Ambassadors were quick to celebrate how far the program has come, but just as quick to name what’s still unfinished. Real decision making power for youth, not just a seat in the room, is still the piece they’re pushing for going forward. That, cohort members made clear, is the real measure of intergenerational leadership. Not whether youth are invited, but whether their voice carries weight once they arrive.
Louise Brady had shown them what that looks like in practice before the celebration even properly began. As Cohort 5 closed this chapter in Sitka, they stepped into their role as alumni carrying forward the very thing they described wanting to build, a leadership chain with no missing links, one that equips youth to carry it forward, and insists that a seat at the table come with a voice that counts.
