Marina Mendoza, Children’s Funding Project: To begin, tell us about your journey supporting Best Starts for Kids, from campaigning for the levy to becoming a government employee and eventually being the senior-most leader for the initiative.

Sheila Ater Capestany, King County Department of Community and Human Services: I’ve spent most of my career working in the nonprofit sector. Right before I came to the county, I founded a nonprofit that provided doula services to low-income women, which I was the director of for a few years.

It really wasn’t until the spring of 2015—after I had gone to Washington, DC, and spoken at the White House around the Early Learning Summit—that I really connected with the county staff and said I would be interested in working for Best Starts for Kids. And they said they would be really interested in potentially having me lead the effort. I joined in May of 2015; the levy passed in August of 2015.

Going out into the community, we spoke with thousands of people. We had community meetings all over the entire county, asking, “If we had a children’s levy, what do you think we should do? What are your hopes and dreams for your children? How should we form this to meet your needs? Rural, urban, suburban, whatever your ethnic group is—what is it that you want?” By the time it actually went to vote and passed, we were super clear that we had created a levy that was reflective of what the people in our county wanted. And from there, it was a run to put an implementation plan together and make sure that got passed by both our executive and our county council.

Marina Mendoza: I know a core principle for Best Starts for Kids is that you are community-driven. What do you mean by “community-driven,” and how has that contributed to the success of Best Starts for Kids?

Sheila Ater Capestany: I’ve always believed, particularly with government initiatives and levies, that they need to reflect what the actual needs are. And the best people to tell you that are the folks who are living the lives. That includes all of us. I believe all of us are a part of communities. We bring that knowledge when we work for the government, but we also want to go back out and ask people.

For us, at Best Starts, “community-driven” meant that at all points, we checked with the community about what we should be doing. We had gone out that summer before the levy passed and asked, “What should we do?” We took the time, once the levy passed, to put an implementation plan together, and we worked with a lot of people within the county. And then once we had an implementation draft, we actually took it back to the community. We spoke to thousands of people again, and we said, “This is what we thought we heard. Did we get it right?” After every meeting, we came back to the office and said, “Okay, was there anything we learned that we need to shift or change?” So, by the time we were done with the plan, and it was ready to be vetted by our political leaders, we knew that it was completely responsive to what the community had told us.

So to me, “community-driven” means asking the community what they need, using your own expertise to try and pull all that together, and then double-checking to make sure you got it right and you know what you’re doing.

Marina Mendoza: What do you think was a defining moment for Best Starts for Kids and how did that affect its path and success?

Sheila Ater Capestany: I think there were probably several defining moments. The first was having an executive who was absolutely committed to this work. At the time, King County had done an analysis and realized that about 75% of their budget was going to support young people. It was going to the last minute; to the deep end of when intervention needed to happen through our criminal legal system, through our behavioral health system. We had an executive who was really visionary about saying, “We want to get [there] sooner, and we want to get more upstream.” That was a defining moment to launch this levy.

At the same time, we had a lot of community activism happening around youth development; around our youth detention center with our #NoNewYouthJail movement. And then there were folks like me who were very active in organizing around birth outcomes. Those were also defining moments of community—saying to government, “We need you to step up to the plate.”

So we had an executive who was ready to do it, a community saying we need to do this, and a county council that was ready to do it, because they were also developing a youth action plan. All those things came together really beautifully.

“Community-driven means asking the community what they need, using your own expertise to try and pull all that together, and then double-checking to make sure you got it right and you know what you’re doing.”— Sheila Ater Capestany

Marina Mendoza: What personal philosophies drive your work and keep community, youth, young adults, and families at the core of what you do every day?

Sheila Ater Capestany: The first one would be about my involvement doing this work through a local government. Having spent most of my time in the not-for-profit world, there’s a lot of beautiful work being done, and people working hard every single day. But I started, after all those years, to really understand the need for system-level work and system-level investment. I truly believe in “of the people, by the people, for the people.” I don’t make a big difference between community and government. They’re one and the same, because government needs to reflect community. Government needs to be of and by and for the community. That’s one of the things that really drove me to want to do this through our local government and to stick with King County for as long as I did.

The other thing is something I call “the big-L Love.” I don’t mean “We all love each other, we’re going to hold hands, I’m going to invite you over to dinner.” I mean the kind of love that keeps us in it even as there is conflict happening. Even as we appear to be opposed to one another. It is a deep, abiding love that motivates me to say, “I want everyone’s children to do okay.” It doesn’t matter how I feel about the politics, or the policies, or the way they live their lives. I want all children to be okay, and I want all families to feel supported as they’re raising their kids. That’s the big-L Love. That is what children’s initiatives are. They’re working at a policy and system level, but deeply grounded in the kind of love that says, “We want all of our kids to be OK.” That’s what motivates me.

The big-L Love also led us to talk not just about prevention and intervention in our levy, but the promotion of well-being. Governments will always be funding prevention and intervention; that’s the “safety net” idea. But what does it look like to have a children’s levy that invests in well-being, not just the absence of harm? It really shifted the way that levy came through, and what the community had been telling us about their hopes and dreams.

“Government needs to be of and by and for the community.”— Sheila Ater Capestany

Marina Mendoza: What advice do you have for other voter-approved children’s funds that are in their early years of implementation or maybe even one that is gearing up for a reauthorization campaign?

Sheila Ater Capestany: For folks who are just starting or might be close to a vote, what I’d really love to see is the hard work to put well-being in place. Oftentimes, when we put forward children’s initiatives, or we frame issues that are going on for our young people, we talk about the negative. It’s really easy to talk about how much harm people have had and how much you want to undo that. I would challenge people to do the deep work of also trying to get folks to understand how important it is to be putting the good stuff in. Take the time, if you can, to really talk about well-being and not just the negative. That, I think, is what’s given Best Starts its legs over time. I think people were really excited about seeing the investment in well-being and promotion.

That’s the thing with reauthorization: Don’t lose track of why you were passed in the first place. Because it’s really easy to slip back and [focus on] prevention. The other thing is to make sure that you’ve got outcomes to show. I’m all about the love, but I’m also about making sure that you have an infrastructure that supports what you need to be doing, that you’re using public dollars wisely and that you’re showing outcomes for the investment. Build an evaluation plan into your levy from the very beginning so that it’s not an afterthought. That way, you’re ready when you implement, and when it comes time for reauthorization, you’ve got the data to show that this worked.

Marina Mendoza: I’m also a data nerd, so I agree—measure whatever you can measure and make sure you’re telling the story that what you’re doing is really important.

Sheila Ater Capestany: The one thing I would say about evaluation, too, is that it also can be community-driven. We did a lot of work with Best Starts to make sure that we were reflecting our communities. Within the first two years, we received national recognition for being able to collect data in a way that was respectful of the community and then hand the data back to the community and say, “This is what we got. What do you think it means?” So again, we had community design and community involvement, even in the evaluation of the initiative.

Marina Mendoza: Thank you, Sheila, for joining me today. I know you are retiring from this position, and I’m honored that you took the time to talk with me today and share your wisdom and expertise with us. On behalf of many, I’m sure, I want to thank you for your persistent and relentless, and, dare I say, loving leadership to make sure that children, youth, young adults and their families in King County are happy, healthy, safe and thriving.