Meet our Founder
Naketa Ross
Founder and Executive Director, ResilientMe
Naketa Ross is the Founder and Executive Director of ResilientMe. Her work is shaped by lived experience in foster care, years of service with young people, public leadership, and a deep commitment to resilience. She has served as a Phoenix Union High School District Governing Board member, including service as Board President, and as a Community Fellow with Arizona State University’s Knowledge Exchange for Resilience. Her work brings together lived experience, research, public service, and practical resilience programming to help young people build stronger futures.
Her Story
From Foster Care to the Forefront.
Naketa knows firsthand what it means to enter adulthood without the built in support many young people rely on. Her experience in foster care shaped how she understands resilience, not as an abstract idea, but as something developed through experience, support, opportunity, and practice.
Years later, while working with marginalized youth as a social worker, she saw the same gap from the other side. Young people were preparing to leave foster care without enough practical support for the transition into adult life. That gap became the foundation for ResilientMe.
Naketa created ResilientMe to help young people build the skills, confidence, and self trust that make adulthood more navigable. Her work brings together lived experience, research, public service, and years spent working alongside young people and the systems that shape their lives.
I built ResilientMe to give young people access to the support, tools, and knowledge I had to learn to build for myself.
Naketa, Founder of ResilientMe
Where Lived Experience Meets Leadership
Resilience Research and Practice
Naketa served as a Community Fellow with Arizona State University’s Knowledge Exchange for Resilience. During the fellowship, she focused on strengthening resilience within the foster care system and exploring ways to reduce homelessness and incarceration among young adults who have experienced foster care.
Public Service and Policy Leadership
Naketa served on the Phoenix Union High School District Governing Board, including service as Board President. Her public service has centered on education, equity, youth wellbeing, and the systems that shape opportunities for young people and families.
Public Voice and Opinion Writing
Naketa has contributed opinion writing to The Arizona Republic, using her voice to speak about issues affecting young people, families, resilience, and public systems.
Speaker and Facilitator
Naketa has spoken publicly on resilience, foster care, youth development, and lived experience, bringing research, practical tools, and personal perspective into conversations with communities, organizations, and young people.
Public Leadership and Systems Change
Naketa has brought lived experience into public leadership and policy work affecting young people and families. Her service has included elected leadership in public education and work focused on improving how systems respond to people whose needs are too often overlooked.
Her Vision
Every young person who has experienced foster care deserves access to the tools, relationships, and community that make resilience possible. That is not a luxury. That is the baseline.
Naketa, Founder of ResilientMe
Naketa’s vision extends beyond individual transformation. She has built an organization, and a movement, that changes what it means to age out of foster care in Arizona, and eventually, across the country.
Join Naketa’s vision.
Whether you give, volunteer, or partner with us, you become part of the resilience ResilientMe is building every day.
ResilientMe 