DBT40 Honoree: Anesha Truesdale

Title: Director of Youth Operations

Workplace: Walnut Street YMCA 

Age: 32

As the Walnut Street YMCA Director of Youth Operations, Anesha Truesdale knows the value of each child’s potential – and it takes a village to raise a child.

For the past decade, she has worked as a youth coach and educator in many different roles before successfully working her way up to the Wilmington YMCA. With her background in nonprofit management, Truesdale first worked in Georgia with the Emerge Project in First Team America, mentoring foster care children. At later positions, she worked to develop a life skills curriculum and guided the programming at a teen-led café program in other Georgia-based organizations.

When Truesdale started working at the Walnut Street YMCA as a teen program director in 2017, she made it her goal to have a positive impact on children when possible. With each day a new opportunity, she oversaw many teen programs and youth sports and art programs. She also testified before the Congressional Black Caucus about mentorship of Black boys at Capitol Hill.

When Truesdale became the Walnut Street YMCA’s director of youth operations, she became responsible for daily operations of childcare, school-age childcare and camps departments as well as overseeing statewide programs like Youth in Government, Workforce Development and Black Achievers. She and her team never stopped working during the COVID-19 pandemic, offering childcare for the workforce as well as a space for students for remote learning.

In 2020, Truesdale was accepted into the National YMCA Emerging Global Leaders Institute, allowing her to play a role in shaping the diversity inclusion and global programs in the YMCAs nationally and locally.

In her spare time, she loves to travel and is a licensed travel agent, which has also helped develop the YMCA of Delaware Global Teems programs which provides opportunities for teens to travel to different countries. Her personal favorite countries she’s traveled to are Thailand, United Arab Emirates, Mexico, Jamaica and Saint-Martin in Canada.