Kristen Birtwhistle: Power in Listening, Power in Advocating

Change never happens in a bubble. It’s always driven by people–individuals or communities–who use their voices to advocate for unmet needs. When one person speaks up, others will join them. It just takes that initial spark to light the fuse and bring people together to make the world a better place.

Kristen Spracher-Birtwhistle, the president and CEO of United Way of San Joaquin, has long been one of the county’s fiercest advocates, using her voice to bring people together. Her life’s work has been to champion equality and equity, from her administrative work in healthcare to her relentless fight for women’s rights and making resources available to low-income families. But most of all, she has worked to mobilize the community around her for the greater good, driven by her love of San Joaquin County and its people.

Beginnings
Kristen’s love for this community is more than surface level; it’s wound like a vine around her family tree. “I’m a multigenerational Stocktonian,” she said with pride. “I just love the environment here. I’m a product of Stockton schools, Stockton parents, and my grandparents were both from this area.” Her childhood heroes helped shape her life’s trajectory. Taking inspiration from figures such as Jane Goodall, Margaret Mead and Diane Sawyer, Kristen grew up aspiring to be a teacher or an anthropologist, driven by an insatiable curiosity about humanity and the desire to help those around her. In sixth grade, she began playing tennis with her best friend at their local park and found an outlet and inspiration in the sport. “Tennis changed me entirely,” Kristen said. “Tennis gave me the opportunity to explore who I needed to become.” She became one of the first girls to play on the boys’ teams in high school after Title IX passed, another opportunity that helped spark her passion for women’s rights.

When Kristen began attending Chico State University, she initially pursued journalism while playing tennis and working at the school paper as a sports editor. However, an injury put her tennis playing on pause and introduced her to the athletic training room and the field of sports medicine. She was no stranger to medicine; her father was a physician who also loved sports medicine and served as the team physician for Lincoln High school for 17 years. Inspired by her father’s example and driven by a secret ambition to become the first female trainer for the NFL, Kristen transferred to the University of the Pacific on scholarship for tennis and changed her major to sports medicine.

Career
When she graduated with her degree she began working in corporate fitness and soon found herself working at Kaiser Permanente as a health educator. “I was fascinated by hospital administration, not just the patients, but how it’s like a small city,” she said. For 30 years, Kristen worked at Kaiser Permanente and rose through the ranks, taking over more management responsibilities as she grew, including administration of entire regional offices and instituting a child abuse prevention program that helped restructure their systems to recognize signs of abuse. “The whole notion of healing and helping, whether it was a system or a patient, has always been fascinating to me,” Kristen said. “I like to clean up messy things!”

When the opportunity to work with United Way of San Joaquin became available, she knew it was the right path for her to take. It was a perfect marriage of her love of helping others and her administrative skills. “Our role is the great convener; we bring people together to collectively address big problems,” Kristen explained. Whether investing in essential nonprofit organizations, founding prevention-based programs to address systemic issues or simply raising awareness, United Way acts as a hub to bring together resources and community to make the world a better place on a local, national and global scale. The second-largest philanthropic organization in the world, their mission is “to improve the lives of people by mobilizing the caring power of communities.”
Under Kristen’s management for the past eight years, United Way of San Joaquin has grown into an irreplaceable pillar of the local community. They’ve created programs such as the flagship Nonprofit Capacity Building Program, which focuses on educating and training nonprofits in essential skills such as board governance, finance, marketing and fund development and management. In the past four years alone, they’ve assisted over 60 nonprofits, and the program has spread throughout United Way Worldwide. Another program they’ve championed is Alliance for Wellness, which works to connect noprofit organizations and their resources with Medi-Cal and the populations they serve. Alliance for Wellness helps reduce bureaucratic barriers; they provide training for community health workers and handle things such as contracts, billing, payments and paperwork, allowing the nonprofits to focus on caring for community members. “When people come together, things happen,” Kristen said. “We want to make people understand there is hope; there are safety nets.”

Eleanor by Women United
One of Kristen’s favorite programs that United Way began is Eleanor by Women United. Named for the indomitable Eleanor Roosevelt, the program began in 2016 as a way to connect women in the community with both the resources they need and each other. Under Kristen’s direction, in 2020 the Eleanor Project merged with Women United, an affinity group of United Way, to become Eleanor by Women United. “The one area I’m very committed to is the advancement of women in this community,” Kristen said. “Women need to elevate women.”

Eleanor by Women United provides mentorship and connection to women in our community as well as offering resources and education to help address systemic issues and disparities that particularly affect women. Kristen particularly emphasizes the need for diverse mentorship and inspiration for young women professionals. “Mentorship doesn’t have to be formal,” she said. “Watch what women leaders do, how they act.” As an avid lover and player of tennis who also volunteers as an assistant tennis coach at Lincoln High School, she cites Billie Jean King as someone who inspired her both personally and professionally. “Her legacy was based on the coordination and competing of like women who were equally invested in equal pay for the game of tennis, which has now spilled over into all areas, not just tennis,” Kristen said. But above all, she encourages women to learn from those who came before and be unafraid to follow in their footsteps. “We still have a long way to go,” Kristen said. “If we understand our history, we understand our future.”

Having seen firsthand the monumental impact non-profits make on a community, Kristen is a fierce advocate for their continued existence. “Our nonprofits are essential services,” she said. “They’re the best way to strengthen the city’s infrastructure.” The numbers confirm their critical role in the community. There are 2,000 noprofits in San Joaquin County alone, and among them they employ approximately 21,000 full-time or part-time employees, pouring millions back into the local economy and making up at least 5 percent of the county’s GDP. “What brings the beauty out in community is our nonprofits in a lot of ways,” Kristen said. But recent budget changes on both the state and the federal level have led to many nonprofits cutting back their offerings or closing completely.

Managing Changes
“It’s the best of times and the worst of times. The best of times is that we see it, we know can manage it, and we’re coming together,” she said. “The worst of times is that funding sources, especially in the state of California, have been severely depleted.” When these programs are restricted, it is often the most vulnerable populations that suffer the most. “The balance of a city is based on the strength of its nonprofits,” she said. As United Way continues to work with local organizations to do essential work such as expanding the food bank and increasing hospital and shelter bed capacity, Kristen encourages people to use their time and their voices to advocate for the continued funding for nonprofit organizations, whether through volunteer work, donations, voting or simply raising awareness about their importance. “The voices need to continue to be loud,” Kristen said emphatically. “We need to kick and scream for what we need and be unapologetic about it.”
Kristen’s love of Stockton is surpassed only by her love for her family. She remains close to her sisters and mother, who still live locally. She had two children with her late husband, Steve; both live close enough to visit often. “Honestly, my greatest achievements have been as a mother,” she said. “My children are my inspiration.” She is also delighted to be a grandmother to her grandson. She credits her parents for instilling in her a strong sense of justice and the desire to help others, helping set her on her life’s trajectory. “That’s how I was raised,” she said, recounting her father’s tireless work as a physician and her mother’s labor as a stay-at-home mom. Through their examples, she learned the importance of hard work, sacrifice, and caregiving. And although the list of her accolades is long, she is quick to admit her own flaws. “I’ve failed a lot,” Kristen said frankly. “I think we need to give ourselves grace and permission to fail. The best lessons for us are in our failures.”

Power of Community
Like United Way itself, Kristen continues to shine the spotlight back on the power of local community coming together to make a change, giving credit where credit is due. “There’s a long list of things that I’m incredibly proud of, but they didn’t happen independently,” she said. As the organization celebrates its centennial anniversary this year, she looks back on her past decade with United Way of San Joaquin with pride in all they have accomplished, particularly in empowering their local community to advocate for itself. “We need to tell a lot more stories about each other,” she said with a smile. “If we lead with curiosity and wonder, I think we’re going to be a better community as a result.”
There is power in listening to our neighbor’s story with an open mind and curiosity and there is power in the vulnerability of sharing our own story. And that power only grows when those voices are united.