Kathy Mack has a heart for serving young people. 

She was Director of the YWCA Phyllis Wheatley Center for more than six years before coming to the City’s Community Empowerment department as Community Engagement Manager in 2020. 

She is a fierce advocate for young people and their potential to succeed, which makes her the ideal person to lead the Empower Knox initiative. 

The goal of Empower Knox is to build successful life outcomes for Knoxville's youth. This involves partnerships with a variety of youth-serving organizations. 

What does success for Knoxville’s young people look like? 

Access to job training, employment and mentoring; increased engagement with their community; safety at home and school and in between; and opportunities to speak out and participate in the making of decisions that affect them. 

That last part is where the City’s first-ever Youth Council comes in. 

Establishing a Youth Council has been one of Mack’s priorities since Day 1. The inaugural 17-member council is made up of students from a variety of high schools located within city limits. They will begin meeting in May. 

Mack says their first order of business will be to establish a strong foundation through team-building exercises and an introduction on the mechanisms of city government. She will provide guidance and structure, she says, but the young people will do the rest.

"It has to be youth led," she says, "or they won't do it." 

You can meet the members of the Youth Council next week on the Empower Knox Facebook page and keep up with their activities there.