>> working with kids, they keep you young. they keep you on your tones -- on your toes. >> teaching them, at the same time, us learning from them, everything is fulfilling. >> ready? go. [♪♪♪] >> we really wanted to find a way to support women entrepreneurs in particular in san francisco. it was very important for the mayor, as well as the safety support the dreams that people want to realize, and provide them with an opportunity to

receive funding to support improvements for their business so they could grow and thrive in their neighborhoods and in their industry. >> three, two, one! >> because i am one of the consultants for two nonprofits here for entrepreneurship, i knew about the grand through the renaissance entrepreneur center, and through the small business development center. i thought they were going to be perfect candidate because of their strong values in the community. they really give back to the neighborhood. they are from this neighborhood, and they care about the kids in the community here. >> when molly -- molly first told us about the grant because she works with small businesses. she has been a tremendous help for us here. she brought us to the attention of the grand just because a lot of things here were outdated, and need to be up-to-date and redone totally. >> hands in front.

recite the creed. >> my oldest is jt, he is seven, and my youngest is ryan, he is almost six. it instills discipline and the boys, but they show a lot of care. we think it is great. the moves are fantastic. the women both are great teachers. >> what is the next one? >> my son goes to fd k. he has been attending for about two years now. they also have a summer program, and last summer was our first year participating in it. they took the kids everywhere around san francisco. this year, owner talking about placing them in summer camps, all he wanted to do was spend the entire summer with them. >> he has strong women in his life, so he really appreciates it. i think that carries through and i appreciate the fact that there are more strong women in the world like that.

>> i met d'andrea 25 years ago, and we met through our interest in karate. our professor started on cortland years ago, so we grew up here at this location, we out -- he outgrew the space and he moved ten years later. he decided to reopen this location after he moved. initially, i came back to say, hey, because it might have been 15 years since i even put on a uniform. my business partner was here basically by herself, and the person she was supposed to run the studio with said great, you are here, i started new -- nursing school so you can take over. and she said wait, that is not what i am here for i was by myself before -- for a month before she came through. she was technically here as a secretary, but we insisted, just put on the uniform, and help her teach. i was struggling a little bit. and she has been here. one thing led to another and now

we are co-owners. you think a lot more about safety after having children and i wanted to not live in fear so much, and so i just took advantage of the opportunity, and i found it very powerful to hit something, to get some relief, but also having the knowledge one you might be in a situation of how to take care of yourself. >> the self-defence class is a new thing that we are doing. we started with a group of women last year as a trial run to see how it felt. there's a difference between self-defence and doing a karate class. we didn't want them to do an actual karate class. we wanted to learn the fundamentals of how to defend yourself versus, you know, going through all the forms and techniques that we teaching a karate class and how to break that down. then i was approached by my old high school.

one -- once a semester, the kids get to pick an extra curricular activity to take outside of the school walls. my old biology teacher is now the principle. she approached us into doing a self-defence class. the girls have been really proactive and really sweet. they step out of of the comfort zone, but they have been willing to step out and that hasn't been any pushback. it is really great. >> it is respect. you have to learn it. when we first came in, they knew us as those girls. they didn't know who we were. finally, we came enough for them to realize, okay, they are in the business now. it took a while for us to gain that respect from our peers, our male peers. >> since receiving the grant, it has ignited us even more, and put a fire underneath our butts even more. >> we were doing our summer camp and we are in a movie theatre, and we just finished watching a film and she stepped out to receive a phone call.

she came in and she screamed, hey, we got the grant. and i said what? >> martial arts is a passion for us. it is passion driven. there are days where we are dead tired and the kids come and they have the biggest smiles on their faces and it is contagious. >> we have been operating this program for a little over a year all women entrepreneurs. it is an extraordinary benefit for us. we have had the mayor's office investing in our program so we can continue doing this work. it has been so impactful across a diversity of communities throughout the city. >> we hope that we are making some type of impact in these kids' lives outside of just learning karate. having self-confidence, having discipline, learning to know when it's okay to stand up for yourself versus you just being a bully in school. these are the values we want the kids to take away from this. not just, i learned how to kick and i learned how to punch.

we want the kids to have more values when they walk outside of these doors. [♪♪♪]

>> [inaudible] i'm a illustrator by day and a [inaudible] composition teacher. right now i'm practice by transscribing [inaudible] that is what i have been doing the past couple years, teaching myself. california college of

the arts, illustration there has really great teachers. robert hunt, vance story taught me a lot. what i'm working on is a portfolio [inaudible] riding a donkey unicorn in the process. >> my name is dawn richardson and musician, drummer and drum teacher. i guess i would say i started my professional path quh i started playing in bands and teaching drum lesson when i was in college. they were definitely not that many women that would do what is doing. in 198 8 i graduated from cal state los ang and studied mostly classical percussion and music education but at the same time i was in hollywood so played at night in rock bands so was doing two

different things. >> the reason i'm [inaudible] the people. there is a extremely vibrant art community especially arounds the red poppy art house [inaudible] as a artist in the past 2 or 3 years there is a event called the [inaudible] every 3 months a free art music festival that i usually play at and just met so many people. >> i was teaching a little bit and doing odd jobs like waitressing and going at night and playing in bands and meeting a lot of people. i chss in ban that had cool break jz get parts on tv shows or things like that. a friend of mine, we had mutual friends that got signed to a record deal in san francisco called 4 nonblaunds

and i addition frd the bands and moved to the bay area. i think things are different now than 30 years ago, the world evolved a lot. it could be a challenge but have to know how to negotiate everything and sometimeatize is [inaudible] it was great to get to a point where i was just treated like another one of the people, a musician not a female musician and that is always what [inaudible] >> you don't hear stuff on the radio [inaudible] i need to write music [inaudible] be more conscious in their decisions and somehow make that poetic so they will be convinced. i think i will do that. [singing in backgrounds] drawing and writing music since i was a really little kid and fortunate

enough to have a good education in art and parentss who supported me. i hope my life will continue to allow me to do both. >> for me now having all male, female girls, boys students it shows the world has changed a lot and people areope toon open to a lot more than they were in the past. you can get a deep satisfaction from responding a lot of year practicing in one thing and becoming really good at something. sometimes i think that it is better to get lost. you have to practice and become good at what you do, so if you have everything together then go out in the world and do what you do and then i think people weal accept that.

>> >> >>

my name is jean alexander. i'm an attorney in the san francisco city attorney's office. i supervise the tax team, giving tax advice to the treasurer, tax collect or, drafting tax legislation. the thing i remember my mother telling me as a child is that you need to be prepared to take care of yourself and i knew that i wanted to be able to do something that i enjoyed. i didn't expect anybody to give me anything because nobody ever gave her anything and i also i always saw her fighting for the things that she wanted in life for herself and for her children.

>> my name is jasmine flores. i am working as an admin assistant in the city attorney's office. i have always enjoyed the tasks that i have been given. on the days i show up and work on my own is empowering. for me, happiness in being more involved in a person-to-person interaction. my dream jobs includes being a physician, paramedic, firefighter, working with animals with the public. on a personal level with self improvement. my sister is the biggest influence in my life because she taught me to go forward with what makes you happy rather that what makes you the most money. >> i graduated from law school

in 1972 at a time when there was a beginning to be an influx of women in the legal profession and tried criminal cases for about 10 years, treatment for delinquent operating programs, government budgets, analyzed fiscal legislation. i came to the san francisco city attorney's office and i have been here for about 12 years advising on tax matters. i did just about anything you can think of. some things that lawyers do and some things that lawyers don't do. >> i'm from the mission in san francisco. i have grown up there and i have lived there pretty much my whole life. living there, i do see other women, some of them older, some of them look just like me like my age and a lot of them work nanny jobs, child

care jobs, retail jobs. i don't know, it seems kind of like a reminder that you are kind of lucky to be where you are, i guess. just when you haven't gone so far at all. i want them to go on maybe go on an interview that's more challenging that they think that they can't get that job. you know, just to kind of challenge and surprise themselves when they get that job and feel better. >> there had been women practicing law for many years, but there were so few of them that a lot of the issues hadn't really come into play and some of them worked out and some are still

being resolved like equal pay and women in lawfirms and making sure women get fair assignments and in the decision making and working with law firms. i consider myself more of a beneficiary of all the women that fought really difficult battles along the way. >> >>

>> i try to start every day not looking at my phone by doing

something that is grounding. that is usually meditation. i have a gym set up in my garage, and that is usually breathing and movement and putting my mind towards something else. surfing is my absolute favorite thing to do. it is the most cleansing thing that i'm able to do. i live near the beach, so whenever i can get out, i do. unfortunately, surfing isn't a daily practice for me, but i've been able to get out weekly, and it's something that i've been incredibly grateful for. [♪♪♪] >> i started working for the city in 2005. at the time, my kids were

pretty young but i think had started school. i was offered a temporarily position as an analyst to work on some of the programs that were funded through homeland security. i ultimately spent almost five years at the health department coordinating emergency programs. it was something that i really enjoyed and turned out i was pretty good at. thinking about glass ceiling, some of that is really related to being a mother and self-supposed in some ways that i did not feel that i could allow myself to pursue responsibility; that i accepted treading water in my career when my kids were young. and as they got older, i felt more comfortable, i suppose, moving forward. in my career, i have been asked to step forward. i wish that i had earlier stepped forward myself, and i

feel really strongly, like i am 100% the right person for this job. i cannot imagine a harder time to be in this role. i'm humbled and privileged but also very confident. so here at moscone center, this is the covid command center, or the c.c.c. here is what we calledun -- call unified command. this is where we have physically been since march, and then, in july, we developed this unified structure. so it's the department of emergency management, the department of public health, and our human services hughesing partners, so primarily the department of homelessness and supportive housing and human services agency. so it's sort of a three-headed command in which we are coordinating and operating everything related to covid response.

and now, of course, in this final phase, it's mass vaccination. the first year was before the pandemic was extremely busy. the fires, obviously, that both we were able to provide mutual support but also the impact of air quality. we had, in 2018, the worst air quality ten or 11 days here in the city. i'm sure you all remember it, and then, finally, the day the sun didn't come out in san francisco, which was in october. the orange skies, it felt apocalyptic, super scary for people. you know, all of those things, people depend on government to say what's happening. are we safe? what do i do? and that's a lot of what department of emergency management's role is.

public service is truly that. it is such an incredible and effective way that we can make change for the most vulnerable. i spend a lot of my day in problem solving mode, so there's a lot of conversations with people making connections, identifying gaps in resources or whatever it might be, and trying to adjust that. the pace of the pandemic has been nonstop for 11 months. it is unrelenting, long days, more than what we're used to, most of us. honestly, i'm not sure how we're getting through it. this is beyond what any of us ever expected to experience in our lifetime. what we discover is how strong we are, and really, the depth of our resilience, and i say that for every single city employee that has been working around the clock for the last

11 months, and i also speak about myself. every day, i have to sort of have that moment of, like, okay, i'm really tired, i'm weary, but we've got to keep going. it is, i would say, the biggest challenge that i have had personally and professionally to be the best mom that i can be but also the best public certify chant in whatever role i'm in. i just wish that i, as my younger self, could have had someone tell me you can give it and to give a little more nudge. so indirectly, people have helped me because they have seen something in me that i did not see in myself. there's clear data that women have lost their jobs and their income because they had to take care of their safety nets.

all of those things that we depend on, schools and daycare and sharing, you know, being together with other kids isn't available. i've often thought oh, if my kids were younger, i couldn't do this job, but that's unacceptable. a person that's younger than me that has three children, we want them in leadership positions, so it shouldn't be limiting. women need to assume that they're more capable than they think they are. men will go for a job whether they're qualified or not. we tend to want to be 110% qualified before we tend to step forward. i think we need to be a little more brave, a little more exploratory in stepping up for positions. the other thing is, when given an opportunity, really think twice before you put in front of you the reasons why you should not take that leadership

position. we all need to step up so that we can show the person behind us that it's doable and so that we have the power to make the changes for other women that is going to make the possibility for their paths easier than ours. other women see me in it, and i hope that they see me, and they understand, like, if i can do it, they can do it because the higher you get, the more leadership you have, and power. the more power and leadership we have that we can put out the tenderloin is home to families, immigrants, seniors,

merchants, workers and the housed and unhoused who all deserve a thriving neighborhood to call home. the tenderloin initiative was launched to improve safety, reduce crime, connect people to services and increase investments in the neighborhood. as city and community-based partners, we work daily to make these changes a reality. we invite you to the tenderloin history, inclusivity make this neighborhood special. >> we're all citizens of san francisco and we deserve food, water, shelter, all of those things that any system would. >> what i find the most fulfilling about being in the tenderloin is that it's really basically a big family here and i love working and living here. >> [speaking foreign language]

>> my hopes and dreams for the tenderloin are what any other community organizer would want for their community, safe, clean streets for everyone and good operating conditions for small businesses. >> everything in the tenderloin is very good. the food is very good. if you go to any restaurant in san francisco, you will feel like oh, wow, the food is great. the people are nice. >> it is a place where it embraces all walks of life and different cultures. so this is the soul of the tenderloin. it's really welcoming. the. >> the tenderloin is so full of color and so full of people. so with all of us being together and making it feel very safe is challenging, but we are working on it and we are getting there.

>> it is so awesome to see so many young people out here with adults supporting them. i am the executive director of an organization called hip-hop congress. and i am here because i'm going to introduce a very special guest who is going to start off the day for us. start off this rally and get us super hyped, all right. he's a local from san francisco and he comes from the day before hip-hop in northern california. representing the hunters point community and phil more district, he's an incredible dancer and he's an incredible cultural educator, and historian, and archivist, and he's going to be coming to this stage in just a second. but i want to