About Us
Youth voice is not an add-on. It is a powerful force for insight, accountability, and change.
Across systems, organizations are increasingly recognizing the importance of including young people in decisions that affect their lives. Yet too often, youth voice is invited without the structures, support, or authority needed for it to truly matter. Youth are asked to share their experiences, but those insights are rarely translated into action. This disconnect leads to frustration, burnout, and missed opportunities for real impact. Youth governance does not require a standalone youth program or advisory board to be meaningful or impactful.
At Virtue Visionary LLC, we exist to change that.
We serve as the bridge between youth voice and action—helping organizations translate youth insight into decisions, strategies, and systems that respond. We believe youth voice is most powerful when it is respected, protected, and acted upon. Our role is to ensure that what youth share does not stop at being heard, but moves forward into implementation and accountability.
Incorporating youth voice is not simple. Organizations face real challenges: unclear roles, fear of risk, limited capacity, competing priorities, and uncertainty about how to share power without losing structure. At the same time, youth—especially those with lived experience—are often asked to be vulnerable without seeing change follow. We understand these tensions because we have lived them.
That is why our approach is grounded in strategy, consistency, and care. We help organizations build the frameworks, expectations, and decision-making pathways needed to move youth voice into action— within the systems they already have. Through training, consulting, and ongoing partnership, we support youth-leadership practices, prepare adult allies, and strengthen systems so they are ready to respond.
This work requires intention—and follow-through. We partner with organizations that are ready to move beyond listening and into action.
Youth governance is not a program to add — it is a practice to embed.
Youth voice holds the insight. We help turn it into change.
Leadership
Jaleshia “Jay” Brown | Founder
Youth-Led Systems Change Consultant
Jaleshia “Jay” Brown grew up in foster care and understands firsthand what it means to navigate systems that were meant to protect, but often fail the very young people they serve. This experience sparked a lifelong commitment to changing those systems from the inside out through real youth power.
That commitment led Jaleshia to design and launch a youth-led advisory board built entirely from the ground up. What began as a vision became a fully youth-led body designed to do more than collect input. Under her leadership, youth were equipped with leadership development, professional development, and life skills, while also engaging in community service projects, team-building experiences, and opportunities for joy and connection. These experiences were not extras — they were essential to building trust, consistency, and sustainability.
This lived experience, paired with years of designing and sustaining a functioning youth-led advisory body, informed a model that organizations can actually implement. This was not a symbolic board. It was a youth-led system of shared decision-making that produced measurable impact across multiple issue areas, including housing stability, K–12 education, postsecondary access, support for youth with incarcerated parents, workforce readiness, and system accountability. Youth were not only consulted — they influenced decisions, shaped initiatives, and saw their voices translated into action.
Through this work, Jaleshia also encountered the real challenges of sustaining youth leadership within institutions: resistance to shared power, unclear authority, risk aversion, burnout, and systems that value youth voice in theory but struggle to respond in practice. Rather than walking away, she documented what worked — and what didn’t.
That learning became the foundation for Virtue Visionary LLC.
Today, Jaleshia supports organizations across sectors in embedding ethical, effective, and replicable youth leadership practices into their existing systems. While her work is informed by successfully building a youth-led advisory board, her approach does not require organizations to create one. Instead, she helps organizations integrate youth voice into real decision-making pathways with clarity, accountability, and care — moving from listening to lasting systems change.
Contact us
Ready to turn youth voice into action?
We’d love to connect with organizations that are committed to meaningful youth partnership and real change.
Whether you’re just beginning to think about incorporating youth voice or you’re looking to strengthen an existing initiative, we’re here to help you move forward with clarity, care and accountability.