Empowering The Next Generation: Director Thennie Freeman On Leadership, Inclusion, And Community Impact

[MUSIC] Welcome to the One Humanity Lab Podcast, into an ecology of wholeness, where we explore ways in which individuals and organizations can grow, heal, and improve to return to grounded connectivity to people, communities, and the planet. In our podcast, you'll hear from a variety of voices in the fields of coaching and wholeness on topics like dreaming, intuition, and creativity, and how to develop inner capacities in order to expand outwards in our service to others. From the George Washington University Center for Excellence in Public Leadership, please join your hosts, Ena Jikandi, and Bonnie Buckner. Welcome. This is Ena and Bonnie, and with us today we have Theney Freeman. Theney is the Director of the DC Department of Parks and Recreation. Mrs. Freeman joined DPR as Deputy Director of Recreation Services overseeing the direction and management of the agency's Recreation Program portfolio and operations of all Rec Center's Parks and Aquatic Facilities. Director Freeman, who is known for her leadership and engagements to enhance the district's Marion Berry Summer Youth Employment Program, was recognized in 2020 for her exemplary service to district residents and was honored with the K-Fords Awards. The award highlights outstanding DC government leaders and innovative teams, whose commitment and professionalism demonstrate the best in public service. Mrs. Freeman has developed innovative programs and directly supported the effort to turn around high-risk programs which are instrumental in helping our district's youth find employment. Through various workforce programs and leading the charge in developing their work skills, Mrs. Freeman has helped thousands of districts youth accomplish their personal and professional goals. Her work led to DC earning the title of Number One Place for a Summer Job in Forbes Magazine in 2016. In 2017, Mrs. Freeman helped launch and oversee the mayor's opportunity scholarship. And in 2024, she helped launch the youth development professional certification in partnership with the George Washington University Center for Excellence in Public Leadership. Mrs. Freeman earned her Masters of Arts in Teaching from University of the District of Columbia and is a member of Delta Sigma Theta Sorority where she leads and supports fundraising activities for educational scholarships. Welcome, Theney. Well, Theney, Bonnie and I are super excited to have you here today. For many reasons, one of which is the launch of the new Youth Development Professional Certification Program, which has been your baby and would love to learn more about that. But also, we know that you're in a very special place today on your office and I know I can see snow from outside because it's been snowing in this area. Really pretty. So you can also tell us about that. So I'll just invite you to bring your toe in to come in. Yes, I will bring my toe into this space that just stepped out of the snow. It is beautiful. The snow is beautiful. This view was beautiful. This is our very new just opened December of 2024. And it's the Joy Evans, their Putek Recreation Center. It is special for several reasons. Joy Evans was in 18, well, at the time that she transitioned from Earth. She was 18 years of age and she was born with developmental disabilities and she was relegated to a place called Forest Haven, which is where they would send children who had needs beyond their parents' ability to care for them. And it was later learned that children in that space were not treated well at all. And so her fight continued and her parents, you know, fought throughout their life just trying to advocate for children of different abilities. And of course, the district today takes great pride in servicing young people who may not have the same needs. Think that the district does differently is we try to keep families together. Our goal is to keep families together and to provide the families with the support and the resources. And this therapeutic Joy Evans, therapeutic recreation facility is one where you can do that. We have a therapy room where you can have outpatient therapy here on site. We have a sensory room for different abilities where if noise is too much, you can take some time, dim the lights, quiet, there's art on the walls that's designed to feel that's another sensation. There's a pool here, also 92 degree therapeutic pool, not designed for laps, women be too hot for swimmer, but designed for someone recovering or dealing with aching muscles or even for our seniors as I like to call them who are very active and their normal temperatures will be really harsh on their bodies. Tell us about the design of the Joy Evans Center. This is a biophilic design. I love that because biophilic speaks to the healing powers of nature. So the cool is to come there. Oh, it's open to the public. All of our facilities are open to the public. It's beautiful. I was there when you lounge, you guys open the center and the experience of being in the space, it's really open. There's so much openness. You just enter inside, Bonnie, and there is this beautiful wall designed with plants and it's all wood and spacious and tall and there's lamps that are coming down look like little dandelions to me. That's how it felt like little twinkles and lights and I remember a thingy actually talking to some of the people in the community and how excited they are because this was closed for a while because it was in building mode, but they're so excited. It was just so much joy and I did not know Joy Evans' story. I heard it that day and then I hear it again from you today, but all I kept thinking was the joy. Her name also, the quality of joy. I was just going to tell you really quickly, we opened with a song called Joy. I put together a DPR choir and the program started with staff singing the song Joy and the lyrics to the song is Joy. Joy. God's great joy. Joy. Joy. Beautiful. Joy. It was really really special. It's so moving and I don't want us to move from this topic until you explain the design of the space. Absolutely. So it is designed with every aspect from the playgrounds. We have the playground that is designed to serve children who may need a wheelchair. So there's is that aspect. It's a two to five-year-old playground and then there's a upper playground that's designed for the older children, but they all are designed with adaptive modalities in mind. And so that's the playground. We also have a splash pad, which is like a spray park. So in the summertime, you will be able to use the splash pad and it will serve as an outdoor, water, waterfall to keep you cool. There's also field space. So there's like a mile trail that goes over a mile and in between the trail, there are benches, there are workout stations. There's also an open field for concerts or movie nights or other family gatherings that can happen. That's just outside. When you come into the facility, the vestibule has lounging seats. So before you even fully come in, similar to a hotel, you can take a seat. Brush yourself. We have a senior room and then we have a caregiver's room. Now the thought behind the caregiver's room is because we do have seniors who have AIDS. And so instead of the AIDS always programming with them, the AIDS can go in the caregiver room and the seniors have their space. We have a community room and a demonstration kitchen, a fully functional kitchen. It's a demonstration kitchen because you can teach. You can also use it for catering. That's how large the kitchen is. There's a weight room. There's an art room. There's a dance room. There's a play room where we have like ping pong tables and a couple of things. There's a trainer's room where you can, there's a room that looks like a doctor's office where you can come in and again, that's to have services in the community. There's a technology lounge. And so that's the computer lab. And so anyone can come in and have access to the computer lab, the gym of course, and then the pool. And I think I've covered it. Yeah. That's such a beautiful honoring of joy and her family. There's a mural on the wall of the story of pictures of joy in her family. And so it is, and I'm glad you felt it, although I didn't articulate it, it's here. We should get the picture of that to make sure we feature it in as part of the podcast. So, see, I want to stay in this, in the energy of this space, which is also serving children and, you know, joy herself as a child and the center honoring her life and her work that could bring a lot more joy to other children. And I know that matters to you in particular, the work you're doing with young people as the director of Department of Parks and Rec in the city. But also, prior to that, you've worked with young people almost all your life, and which then brought you to this new program that we started recently. Can you say more about your work with young people? My very first job out of college, I worked at Job Corps, which is a education and training facility for youth ages 16 and 24. And young people who attend Job Corps all have varying paths. Some of them come to Job Corps because they feel that there's no other way, there's no other hope. Some of them faced homelessness, some of them were court mandated. Of course, you could attend on your own, but there was a high population of young people who had been disconnected from education and workforce at a very young age. It's a overnight, it's a residential facility job core. And so, I actually am a productive job core. You know, my story and my path to get the job core after I graduated high school, I had a friend who was facing homelessness. I grew up in a very religious home, and I was sneaking my friend and my home at night. I did not want my family to know that I was sneaking her in because the last time I brought somebody homeless home, I got in trouble. So, I had been strategic about when I would allow Melanie to come inside. We had it all planned out. And I knew that that wasn't sustainable. So, I personally took her to the Job Corps office. She was 16, and still in school, I had already graduated high school. She did not want to go alone, and she was terrified because there was no job core in the area. So, she would have had to go to a different location. And the counselor asked, "Well, why don't you go with her? We have a buddy system where you two can go together." And I said, "Okay, why not?" I was scheduled to go to college, but at the time, I really didn't want to go. And so, that gave me an out for not having to go, but then an end to do something. And so, Melanie and I left Roanoke, Virginia, and went to Charleston Job Corps Center. Of course, I left her like three months later and went to an advanced training program here at Potomac, in DC. I completed the advanced training program, and then I entered the college program at Job Corps. And so, ended up leaving graduating college, and I really wanted to give back. Because in my mind, it was the best kept secret. I didn't believe that people valued or really understood the power and the transformation that Job Corps presented to families or young people, such as myself. Very first job out of college. Actually, wasn't first job. My very, very first job after I graduated was at a funeral home. And I tell me that I would be selling plots. And so, I worked there for all the five days. And I said, "No." I was like, "I'll work with you." It was not going to work. My very first job, real job, was at Job Corps. And I was so excited. I also knew that I looked like I could be a participant because of my age and some of the participants were older than me. So, I knew that I could not disclose my age to anyone. But my very first day on the job, they gave me the keys to the dorm and said, "Here you go. You're assigned to Holly dorm." And I said, "What is that mean?" And they said, "Tonight is Monday and they're working on their chores, so you should be assigning them to do chores and they send it third." And I said, "Well, it's coming with me." And they were like, "You got it." And that was my very first experience. And you can imagine all of the things that were happening in my mind, me having to walk into space, exert authority, demonstrate authority, and not be eaten alive, not show any fear, hesitation, or reservation, and not having any tools. Now, one tool was provided, the only tool that was provided to me was a set of keys. And so, transformed today, fast forward today, when in working in the space with the young people, I've always had a desire to ensure that people understood, "You just don't give keys." You just don't give. And so metaphorically, when I say, "Keys," as I've, you know, recall that day, every time, right, the keys to the kingdom, there were 60 young women in this dorm that I now was responsible for, with no training. So, Danny, you learned tools on the fly. Apparently. And so now, in this new program, it's about teaching those tools so people walk in with more than a set of keys. Can you articulate for everybody, like two or three of the really good tools that you picked up that you think are essential? The first tool is to be open. I think the most important thing that I've learned along the way, people unload their trauma on young people, and it manifests in different ways. You know, some people are overzealous because of their mis-treatment as a child. So they want to, some people reproduce or redemonstrate what was demonstrated to them in the form of tough love. Now, I'll come back to tough love because I'm a tough lover, but I think sometimes people believe that tough love means lack of connection, right? And so, one tool is openness. You have to have a blank canvas. You have to approach young people with the blank canvas. That means leave all your inhibitions, all your preconceived notions. That's the first thing. If a young person walks up to you and tells me that they want to be a giraffe, instead of you saying you can't be a giraffe, you should start questioning what is driving the desire to be a giraffe. So, what does the giraffe look like? What does the giraffe do? What does the giraffe want to do next? Yes, right? So, that's the one I think open. Number two, shut up. Shut up. And that's because adults are always talking, but with young people, you have to listen. Right? You have to listen. The third thing is forgiveness, because when working with young people, that inner child comes out all the time. It's like natural, right? When you see something or if there's I can I cannot tell you how many times a young person has come up to me and they're crying. And I'm like, "Why are you crying? Well, I can't go on the field trip." And now I'm crying. I'm like, "Why am I crying?" The inner child always comes out. So, just understanding those three things. So, forgiveness, because you may encounter a situation, you may hear something that may be retraumatizing. You can internalize that. I'm talking about retraumatizing to something that you've experienced. You cannot internalize it. You have to listen with an open mind. And then you resort to your toolbox as to how you can help them move forward. And by doing that, you also move forward. And, Thini, I know that even symbolically, when we did the lounge, all the participants in the new program were provided with a toolbox. And part of the idea is just to start thinking about some of these tools. What are your hopes and what's your invitation for the people who are joining or who've joined the program now? Again, to approach youth work differently. You know, the world sees youth work as a value profession. Right? And you have to have a certification to work on computers. And then there's multi-level steps to it. You have to serve food in DC Bonnie. You have to have what's called a serve safe certificate. You have to have a food handler's license to serve food. The same thing for, you know, our pool operators, our life guards, they're all certified. They all have to complete a certification. But when you're working with children, oftentimes people just want a warm body. And so, I want people to start to think differently about putting people in front of young people. And what does that mean? Yeah. Sini, is there an example maybe that you've encountered when you've seen the work with young people and how perhaps, well, the importance of the work with how the adult shows up and works with them and how it changes and transforms them. And it could be a personal story. I think about my time, you know, at DOES, workforce and young people working and their funds impact the entire family, right? So having young people who began to reject the idea of work because they don't have access to the funds, right? Because they work their summer job, they get paid. But mom needs those funds for the light bill so that it doesn't become a choice. It becomes what I've done with the funds because mom had access to the bank card. So then we started non-custodial bank accounts. So young people could get accounts and have agency over their own funds and didn't have to have a parent sign. It doesn't mean that a young person was no longer helping mom with the light bill. It just meant that there was a different approach to how they were helping, right? It was now that you had to have permission from the young person. The young person had to make the withdrawal or to complete the transaction. And it wasn't done and then them being told. And so I just saw there's a different sense of pride when I feel like I'm helping my family. Then I'm being taken advantage of. Quite the shift in that sense of agency, as you say, so important. I'm also wondering, Thini, in your own life as a leader because you're working with young people, but you're also director of very large agency in the city. I wonder about some of the things that you do to support you as a leader in your own work. So I spent a lot of time at the pool. And let me tell you something. Prior to me coming to this job, I remember dropping my son off at school and craving the pool. Craving a desire to go swimming. And this was in the winter about three years ago. I remember having a conversation with someone at the school saying, I really need to go swimming. I need to find a pool. But of course, because it was winter, all the hair, thingamajigs, all of that, they were, you know, it just never matriculated. It just never happened. Fast forward. I started working for the DC Department of Arts and Recreation. And voila, we have 31 pools. Oh my gosh. And 14 indoor pool facilities. So I found myself going just to exercise. And then of course, the community started to realize, okay, as she's here, you know, and this was, but the thing about being in the pool that I've realized, you don't have your phone. You can't talk to you. It's really you alone. The sound of the water is very therapeutic. The stillness of the water, because it doesn't matter what you're doing in the water. The water will always come back to being steep. The water will adjust the fluid. If you're swimming laps, the water will adjust when you stop. If you stop to rest and drink some water, the water becomes still again. When you're swimming, there's a flow, a natural flow. When you're playing, there's a different flow. And you can see like the water begins to tell its own story based on what's happening. If nothing happens, the water is still moving, yet the water is still still. I found myself here even last night, in the pool last night, while we were determining whether we were going to close or not, because of this no storm. And it was, you know, kind of stressful. So I was like, you know, well, let me just jump in the pool. So I did. I got a good little 30 minutes in. And yeah. I'm just thinking on your logistics. You're always carrying like clothes with you, swimming, suit with you and everything. So that's part of your package. It's wonderful. It has definitely become part of, you know, and it really feels good. That's the one thing. And I think I can, because I hate exercising, but I know it's necessary, but I'm really not a fan. But I can get in the pool for hours. You have to put me out. And I love how you had the vision and wanting or this, this inkling. And then boom, you become the director of a place that actually now gets you more in touch with the pools. And maybe you have extra reason. This is part of my community outreach being here also with the community. Exactly. It's not in my relationship with the, especially the seniors, because normally I was doing six o'clock a.m. at a particular pool, Berry Farms. And the same crew, Gloria, a share, and the same crew was there. And when I wasn't there, because you know, things just got really busy, they were like, "What you been? You better, you need a get back here." So now I've switched my location. But when I see them out in the community, they say, "We even miss you when you coming back." So Amy, I have another question for you. One of the things that I really so appreciate about you that really inspires me is I feel like you are this exciting box that opens out with like a lot of things flying out of it in a lot of different directions, nonstop ideas. And so this big launch has just happened. This big beautiful new facility has just opened. What's Stene dreaming up next? Oh, great question, because we do have some things we just had a, so the same James is a beautiful facility. Have you? Yeah. Virginia. Yeah. It's a world-class facility with everything all the accoutrements. As we begin to professionalize play, we also the managers retreat there last Friday, because I want the staff to develop an appetite for what that looks like, what that feels like, right? Because my goal is to professionalize play and to do so through the guest experience and the individual staff experience. So we have a women's workshop, a women's series of trainings for a staff. We're doing a recreation university to build the staff. This launch was one component. However, we're sending staff to the Maryland Recreation and Parks Association. We're sending staff to the National Recreation and Parks Association convening that'll be in Orlando later this year. So the idea is a bound. We started a junior lifeguard program so that our young people could already begin to learn what it could be to be a lifeguard. Our lifeguards made good money and their district government employees. So if you're a college student, you're a district government employee as a lifeguard. Your lifeguard salary is $50,000, $57,000 and you're in college. That's great money, right? You can kind of work your own schedule because the pool's open from 6 a.m. to 9 a.m. So if you're in college all day and even if you can't work for eight hours, right? If you have four hours, you're still a district government employee. So those things, those are some of the things and it's so funny you say because my team, they always say to me, "Stop thinking." Every time-- No, please don't stop thinking. No, I'm stop thinking. No, they say it funny in a way because every time I say, "Oh, I have an idea." Okay, you guys, let's do this. So I'm looking at-- I'm telling you, we're going to take about 50 young people. The thing that I want to do now, but I just spoke with-- I'll wait on that. But we're going to take about 50 young people and I want to begin to follow them. We're going to identify 50 young people and I want to see how they're being supported with the whole system of services in the district from school to after school to extracurricular activities. How's the family being supported? So that's my goal and I've also spoke with a chancellor about that, spoke with him and he and I are supposed to meet because to Europe about being proactive where we see schools may not have the best testing data. But we know that those young people spend a lot of time, they walk to school and then they walk to the recreation after school, right? What educational experiential learning programs can we have at those locations where they're learning and it's increasing their literacy and numeracy skills without them being in a literacy and numeracy program? And that sounds so interesting. I even wonder-- we can talk about this some later, but if there is a way to link it with the current program with the youth program and see participants who being trained and going through the program perhaps could be also supporting them and serve maybe as mentors or guides or coaches to them. Well, that's just something to think about. But I love the professionalizing play tagline. That's just-- that is really fun and it's important because play keeps us moving as you thought about as you were talking about the water, the movement, the flow. Play gets us moving, get us in the flow and Bonnie did this outward when she talked about you like expanded her hand out of her chest because of all the ideas and the openings. But since I know you, Theney, you've always had that and you-- I meant you, I think, 10, 12 years ago when you were in Certified Public Manager program at that time. Every time you would speak, I knew you had something cooking, you had something going on. Even remember one of your parties that you hosted at that time and it was like always thought creatively. You always wear colors too. That's the other thing. Today you have like a little nice red top with a shirt underneath, but there's always color. There's always some movement around you and so I wish you all the best as you continue to do the work that you're doing and as Bonnie said, don't-- yeah, don't stop thinking and I know sometimes it's a lot of ideas take time to seed, but I think that's those ideas that keep us moving. So do you have any last words you want to leave our listeners with? I do. As I sit in this new office, this is what's on my desk. Okay, so Theney's showing us several stuffies, some bears, some-- Mama bear, you know, and the many ones and I intentionally put these here for several reasons and as you can see, Ena, they're all different colors and I've chosen for that reason. But you never know when you encounter a child that just needs a pigmia and so I have these so that if there's ever someone who walks into space and just needs a little token of joy, I can give them a token of joy. And so as I close, I just want us to remember that the power is-- because we're talking about leadership, power is not in the title, power is not in the role, power is really giving away power. It's really empowering others to be them, their authentic selves, which is one of the reasons why I fell in love with Ena and Jim and GW because I am an orthodox and everything that I do and it was always welcomed, always, you know, as we are in an ever-changing world, just remember to the power that you give is the joy that you give to others by just allowing them to lead authentically. Beautiful. Thank you. Thank you, Theney. Thank you so much for joining us in our podcast. For more conversations like this one, please visit us at leadershipcoaching.cepl.gwu.edu/podcast and subscribe to the show. We would love to hear from you and we look forward to connecting with you on our next podcast. [MUSIC]