providing comprehensive sexuality education and promoting healthy relationships and support of connections bill has a very interesting background and so before we talk about high taps i want you to know about bill as i said before bill was recently appointed as chief executive officer at high tops in february and prior to that for seven years he had his own group called scofield group which provided nonprofit services to in the greater princeton area in the air is a fund raising  marketing governance board development and prior to that he was also president and c e o of the united way a bucks county the regional vice president of the american cancer society eastern division the director of development at syracuse university where he graduated from and he worked also at united way of new york city and xerox corporation so quite a quite a great background thank you good organizational background to draw from and more importantly i see that syracuse university background which is always a great thing i see you're on the on the crew him there too so i did yeah i said it wasn't as my my physical makeup doesn't quite make me the star of the crew team but i definitely was on it and it was a great experience there a few years ago on the lake carnegie and i haven't  for the support for coming on and the want to talk a little about high tops congratulations on your appointment think you are executive officer it's a great organization and we'll be talking a little bit about that so i know the bit about high tops close having you know having worked with organization and we're our sole focus is on adolescents and you're right yes we're very active in the schools and so not just here in princeton but certainly regionally within maybe a twenty five or thirty mile halo around princeton we have kind of a two tier educational approach one is that we have adult educators who provide age appropriate edge information for adolescents in schools and so like a school like princeton or in trenton or in robbinsville or or where have you would have our educators come in and teach age appropriate information ranging from when you were you know in elementary school and bullying how to be a good neighbor how to be friends hygiene seems pretty basic but it's nice to have those things in school to support the parents at home who saying you've got to take a bath i don't want to take my bad days so as to have that from a trusted adult is a good thing and it would be great if you'd just stop there but unfortunately it doesn't and so we start moving through more kind of heavy issues we get into body issues and you know when the fifth and sixth grade start getting into puberty and then as they move through the grades we just keep ratcheting up in a good way the the level of information that the kids need when they need appreciating differences what are all these l g b t q letters what do they mean how do they fit in the context of my life how am i supposed to appreciate the differences in others and then bowling time to take a different level obviously is as you know as an educator  in the middle school years and so all along the path we are going further and further pregnancy prevention so in high school we're still talking about not only pregnancy prevention but unsexy transmitted diseases hiv aids and ways to do that avoid pregnancies have healthy relationships dating violence actually becomes a thing unfortunately and so we need to be able to work through those issues and  on the adult track we're working with in schools we also work at the peer level and so we have a group called the teen council here in princeton and so i think you're familiar with the young people locally we grab we pull students from regional schools princeton west windsor the private schools and they learn age appropriate information and go out to other schools and teach those kind of skits and workshops to people their own age and they respond to it and they understand and they they receive the information kind of in a different way that sometimes can go more deeply than if an adult was teaching a class supplements the adult the adult model and then just we also expand that model statewide through a teen program called teen pap we do in partnership with the center for supportive schools and that program basically takes our local model of the teen peer education and makes it statewide so in over forty over forty schools throughout the state we teach educators in those schools to teach the content that we have and they work with local students to just do that right in their own very school so we're kind of teaching the teacher and going to getting it out into the public square so i know that you've done done a lot of work and you know in this area i know it's something that's a great challenge and you have a very good staff over there and a lot of well good initiatives but i guess my question really is as the new leader at the high tops you know what attracted you you know to want to be the c e o of high thoughts honestly i up until about maybe three or four months ago i was certainly attracted to high tops i've been a volunteer for high tops for a number of years i've been in the community my kids have gone through the school system so i of course very connected to the mission and separately also as you mentioned earlier with my bio i'm rooted in human service and working with non profits and communities and community building and so running a nonprofit is kind of what i do and what i enjoy but not up until after three months ago did it relate to the lightbulb just went off it oh my gosh this is the job for me and the reason is because  you know i've worked in large organizations and small organizations and had way more resources than we currently have but there's something really wonderful and magical about when you start connecting passion drive and energy and when you talk about our staff we dream we have a really top notch staff that has a ton of passion drive and energy we have committed volunteers we have a community of donors and friends that are connected to what we're doing and then connecting all of that with the best i guess any organization could say we have we have that but then when you see these young people firsthand that are their lives are actually changing is it because of the relationship that they have with each other in the community that we're creating for them and also the information if they're getting so they can make positive life choices you know that's something that's really special and i don't know i just it's just for me i became invested for i was in the interim and executive director for a number it's coming at a very challenging time you know a lot of teens worrying about you know body image the l g b t q you know issue the gender the gender identification issues and i guess my next question is now as a parent i think back to i think when i bring up my kids i have a son now he's a software prince in high school my daughters recently graduated and as a parent just coming up and saying you know past think seem to be happening three four five years faster when i was this age i was playing with g i joes or i was playing tag in the streets and started selling my parents and things are happening more rapidly and so in a macro sense what keeps us up at night is that we feel  burning platform in a lot of ways to keep ahead of that that pace to make sure that parents are educators and trusted adults that are interacting with young people and then of course the young people have the information the tools and the skills that they need to be able to make healthy decisions and be successful adults and so big picture that's always kind of simmering the background but then we have these acute things that pop up that are really  that are that are just kind of hello hench the attention lights go out of and so for example l g b t k l b t g q area so depending on whether you're going to be in the community or not in the community is your permeate the consciousness and so now we've got to try and bridge we have to provide comprehensive services for people that need them and then we also have to do broad education for those that are kind of just learning and getting acclimated to the issues at the end of the day one out of every four young people who are l g b t q identified and in particular if you're transgender youth you're more one out of four are you're one of four more likely times to commit suicide  one there's so many kids out there even just questioning it with all of the now with it in the public awareness young kids are seeing it and they're saying is that me even though they may not be identify as you know gay or lesbian or transgender there's certain to wonder if they're kids and they're all they're trying on different things and so if they're being also bullied or they are not the star of a soccer team or they might be a little bit marginalized they need something and that's what keeps us up night and that's what we're trying to do you find that you get a lot of people call in high tops are coming more now than in the past a lot of parents being more concerned you know about about their kids i would say there's always a steady drumbeat of people that are searching that they want information whether it's parents who need resources and saying i just don't know how i don't know how  you answer these questions or young people where do i go for these resources and so that happens but it is definitely happening more where we're we're hearing critically and we're seeing it our web site hits are going up we're seeing more activity when they when they call directly from parents i have a you know my son or daughter is in the son or daughter anymore they identify these they're saying a transgender i don't understand it i can't get my head around that and so what we have here in princeton is we have to support groups they've actually been a place for a long time and they're called first and third in our trans youth support group and both of those they are they operate on the first and third saturdays of each month right here on weekend street corner within str and young people can come and it's an affirming open atmosphere for them to just talk and it's open ended structures qualify people there to help facilitate the conversation but it's just a way of creating community for young people but also there's there's an existing group called the flag here in town which is parents and friends of gays and lesbians and so that's that's a way for parents to get additional information but also more intensively the parents of young people and also those that are near them that are coming to our groups and also those that may not be can also come and get parental kind of support and guidance if any community and if we can help them find community you can  dead and they don't know what to do and high tops is a resource you know to go to and so the feeling can be if i just access this it may make all difference in my life because then i will feel so marginalize so isolated well here's an interesting thing so in this popped up just this last summer your conversation and so we were talking with some folks in p s e and g in their diversity area and they were exploring how do we kind of have a more direct connection with l g b t q organizations in the issue and and because they're it's coming up in their workplace and it's happening workplaces all over the place and so they were just doing a listening tour and so when they came to our stop and we were they were listening actually we were listening and then we started talking we started realizing hey wait a minute you have employees that identify as  or you have employees whose children identify that way and so they're looking for resource in connection with in their own atmosphere and our interest of course is to make sure young people have an environment that's positive and healthy for their development so initially we started working with them on how we could help in that area and then we said he wait a minute we've got a lot of youth and it's building on what you've said you have hope and place to go sometimes for some kids the template is this is my life it's never going to get better i'm always going to be different i don't i won't be able to get a job high tops work together to create a pilot program that's in operation now called pride to pride and it's a mentoring program and we're connecting their employees and some other professionals with young people some of them are going to support groups and some are not  with mentors that meet on a monthly basis and talk about the future and talk about oh i identify this way and i have a job and i'm a mother or i'm a father or i'm an uncle and so you start to see oh there's light at the end of the tunnel and it's not about of course teenagers it is all about me in the being the center but it isn't all about that because there is a future future so those who are going out of high tops you know you talked a little bit about it so basically i know you have some events coming up and maybe you could talk a little bit about what's what's next the house very excited on may twentieth of this year we have our fourth annual transgender youth forum so we work with glisson which is another important to keep your organization here in the state and we're working closely together on two forms g s a in the fall and trans youth in the spring and in the trans youth for coming up this man is specifically geared towards changing under youth allies and also educators and trusted adults in their circles and we expect almost five hundred people here hundred young people and adults coming this year we have incredible keynote speakers we have workshops so they're going to get intensive full day experience of connection and hope and learning but then also go through have workshops where they can get a political tools that they can take back to their home communities we draw people from all over the state for this and it's really it's been growing every single year and we're really excited about it and so and we actually have a separate website for the trans if a young person can afford it a it's a twenty dollars ticket for a youth we have we work with a number of organizations and donors so if you can afford to go they can come and we have a sponsor scholarships available for them as well  marathon the high tops half marathon is was there's been a person have that marathon years ago and took a long hiatus and it wasn't our event and so we revived it because there is a yes it's a fundraiser and so we rely very heavily on the funds raised for it so it's very much a community based charitable event and it connects the idea of healthy lifestyles and community engagement and kind of in a broad way so it's a good fit for us  last year we had over eight hundred runners we unqualified success in terms of feedback e g goes to all the historic areas of princeton we were very closely with the princeton police department they're absolutely amazing the university and others the clergy association because it also happens to happen on a sunday and so for us working early with all of these entities and people they're all invested in this event and we work positively together to make sure it's a success for the for the community and so as much as can university which is coming up we're also going to there as well could have got about thirty of the area around the corner of nassau street and palmer square will have a very good food there with some fun and games but like that's a community event for the spring they have a marathon in the different ways a massive community event in the fall and for us we're actively looking for volunteers you don't have to be a runner to get involved in there's a lot of great things to do sponsors yes definitely  of the screening on the twenty and this goes into we're talking about what we can get really deep with the support groups and have direct one on one and you know just comprehensive work with individuals but we also have to do what i call the thirty thousand foot activity go a little bit more thinly but more broadly and so we we formed a partnership with the filmmakers for a documentary film called real boy and real boy is a story about it the transformation o boy and and also a transformative experience for his mother and it's not one of those you know everything's pretty and nice and it was a few shots of it was it was hard at the beginning and now we're all great and you know it's a real documentary about the ups and downs in that trauma in a lot of ways of a family that is working through a transition and the people around them and so we thought about doing it locally maybe at the prison garden or at the at the at the high school but then we started thinking just needs to be something that's way bigger and can't we do it virtually and so we went to the filmmakers and i said you know that's a great idea and partnership where we're going to virtually i may twenty third by p m have a virtual screening that's perfectly free of real boy and then following there's going to be a skype panel discussion of experts and the director from the film to talk about the issues that came up and people have an opportunity to ask questions and get involved in a virtual way and so our hope we're going to promote obviously heavily in new jersey and our field of  so i know when you talk about funding you know we always talk about you know individual sponsoring and picking up the check books and writing checks because most of your funding comes from individual funding we have we actually have a good balance  it's about a third a third a third so we we get it a portion of our money from the state government so i talked earlier about our peer education program in teen patti and working with her for support of schools state funding through the department of health helps us with that curriculum development and paying for educators to be able to go out and train folks throughout the state and so we get some state funding for that and other projects but that's kind of the core focus of a lot of our public funding and then we get a substantial amount of support from private foundations everything ranging from you know a lot of generous support from the princeton area community foundation and a number of different organizations and foundations here not only locally but statewide that are while it is diversified and to some extent we feel a real pressure to continue to evolve one of the challenges on the personal side for individual contributions is that you know i guess we all react to things when they're right in front of us and so as a young parent when i'm a parent so i have a child in high school or i have these questions and i'm looking for resources you're more likely to support an organization like high tops because you're actively meeting and wanting and utilizing their services and so for us we've got to constantly be making sure that we keep connected to the folks that they're there were i guess you call the aging out so they you know they've they've been giving to house for a number of years and now they're kind of moving on to other things that we still get their support but not quite at the level we used to and so that's understandable that happens acquisitions so we constantly are looking to kind of fill the pipeline on the bottom end with with new people that are engaged when they have young people and and one of my key areas of focus for this next year and moving forward is kind of knitting it all together to ensure we are connecting the folks that are aging out with the people that are in the sweet spot with the people that are just coming in and not just money actually volunteers them we very much need help on specific things like a prince and half marathon we have a ton of volunteer opportunities for that but even on going you know whether you're a  therapist or a social worker or from a former life and we want to help out with our support groups or you know there's a number of different things that you can do and you know so we're willing and able and even leadership so people that have on a board before birth and they have experience and they know about running an organization and they buy and what we're sal and then that might be an opportunity for them to kind of actualize in a different way and where we're open and ready for all of that with that's great well bill you know i know a lot of people say how can i get involved or know you always except a lot of volunteers yeah and know that that there is always open and hopefully individuals whether they be young adults or old take advantage of  high tops and work with you and you know make changes from people's lives which is a great thing that you're doing and i wish you well thank you and i know it's a challenge but you have a very good staff there and they do a lot of good things and if anybody has not been over the edition of focus on with another newsmaker in today's headlines have a good night