Note from Awana Digital: In July 2025, Jen Castro transitioned from her CoDirector position, which she held for 2.5 years, in order to return to working more closely with Awana Digital’s Indigenous partners as Program Lead. During her tenure as CoDirector, she and fellow CoDirector Emily Jacobi oversaw the development of a 3-year strategic plan, and an organizational rebrand. Emily remains in place as Executive Director; Jen and Emily continue to work closely together on the leadership team.
Personal letter from Jen:
These last few years have been truly remarkable. When I accepted a new role as CoDirector of Digital Democracy, it was with the transparent understanding that there would be a lot of learning happening for me personally and professionally because it was my first time in an Executive Director role. What I didn’t realize at the time was how much learning would happen as an organization along the way. With Emily, there was a consistent and intentional effort to talk through priorities, collaborative processes, and spaciousness to get to the heart of who we are and articulate the whys behind the choices being made. I leaned on my experiences and learnings from different community projects and organizations where participation and meaningful engagement were foundational to keep my bearings, and was blessed by truly supportive colleagues and friends along the way. I am so proud of the work we have done together.
One major change we made happen was the renaming of our organization to Awana Digital, which far better represents our story along with the past, present and future of thoughtful innovation of digital technologies in collaboration with Earth defenders and communities protecting their human rights. And as our new name solidified our identity, we dove into a beautiful process of articulating our updated vision and strategic plan with new-found clarity and support from some of our trusted partners. We also managed to build some internal systems to support better documentation, tracking higher volume of accompaniment, and transparency for a growing team (which may not sound exciting, but I know is deeply appreciated by the project managers and directors out there.)
It has been amazing to hold such responsibility and steward a transition for this organization that more closely aligned us not only where our hearts lie, but with where we hear calls for concrete solidarity from the stewards of our remaining healthy ecosystems on earth. However, now that so much of our work is in motion in the trusted hand of our dedicated team I’m eager to return to the work I love most and am most personally driven by, stewarding programs that will make meaningful impact. Bringing an enriched perspective with me, I have decided to step into the more focused role of Program Lead giving me the spaciousness to concentrate on putting our strategic plan into action and ensure that we maintain integrity and relevance along the way. This change also opens up more possibilities for me to work directly with Indigenous land defenders to support building capacity and autonomy. This brings me closer to continuing a personal commitment I started over twelve years ago to make tangible contributions to the Indigenous global movement for sovereignty, autonomy and futures. It is nothing short of a blessing to do this alongside my beloved teammates at Awana Digital, and I look forward to sharing more stories and learnings from the frontlines.
With deep gratitude and resolve,
Jen Castro
