On March 9, 2022, SAGE hosted an eye-opening presentation and stimulating conversation with Dr. S. Renee Mitchell, visionary founder of the nationally award-winning, youth-development organization I Am M.O.R.E. (Making Ourselves Resilient Everyday). 

I Am M.O.R.E. is the only Oregon-based, youth-development organization with a triple seal of approval: research-based, evidence-based and theory based. Adults in the organization serve as master gardeners in the lives of youth, tilling and nurturing their soil so their resilience, brilliance and creativity can emerge in spite of trauma, low-self esteem and community violence.

Dr. Mitchell is an exceptional leader and a SAGE Legacy Fellow. She is an expert in culturally relevant social-emotional learning and healing-centered programming, and the visionary founder and executive director of I Am M.O.R.E. She obtained her Doctor of Education (2021) from the University of Oregon, in Educational Leadership. She is a longtime youth advocate, training facilitator, educator, creative writer, performer, multimedia artist, project manager and award-winning former newspaper journalist, who was nominated twice for the prestigious Pulitzer Prize.