Sandra Yu
by Tunde Wey & Claire Nelson
June 20, 2012
“Detroit does not have some of the usual draws of big cities. But it draws people who want to contribute -- people who are not here to consume, but rather to create.”
Sandra Yu is one of these people. Growing up in Ypsilanti, she says there was the distinct perception that Detroit was a dangerous place. This was not untrue – her birth in the 1980’s coincided with the rise of the crack epidemic and related violence. It just wasn’t the
entire truth.
For Yu, who counts her Christian faith as an important part of her identity, the road to unlearning her misconceptions about Detroit was a spiritual trek.
Yu attended high school in the affluent Ann Arbor public school district and rarely, if ever, visited Detroit. After graduating, she moved to Boston to attend the
Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), receiving undergraduate and graduate degrees in City Planning and International Development. While in college, Yu visited the Dominican Republic on a church mission, which exposed her to a remarkably different view of life.
She describes meeting kind, genuine people who treated her warmly and related to her beyond the usual superficial social markers of race or wealth. That trip altered the way she now interacts with people.
Now, she’s all about relationships. “The greatest value is what you can learn from someone else,” she says. Subsequent trips to the Dominican Republic reinforced this idea of what she calls “investing eternally” – investing in "things that last, relationships instead of products.”
For Yu, the beauty of Detroit is that it provides her a space to live these values.
By day, Yu works as a program manager at
Detroiters Working for Environmental Justice (DWEJ) coordinating green training programs and advocating for local capacity building. By night, she is what you might call a civic affairs junkie, taking diligent notes and reporting out from community sessions for the Detroit Works Project, charter reform and more. A big believer in engagement and transparency, she attends an impressive number of meetings and devours the latest data and research.
Yu is one of the drafters of the
Detroit Declaration, a manifesto offering 12 principles for a stronger city. Written in January 2010, the document continues to circulate, garnering over 15,000 followers and signers (and counting). Recently, Yu co-founded the
Detroit Facilitation Guild, where she helps organize tools to conduct group discussions – a vital need in a city reimagining its future. She is also a recent graduate of the
Great Lakes Leadership Academy, a program that connected her with a statewide network of individuals working for a more environmentally sustainable Michigan.
In her spare time, Yu volunteers at Roosevelt Park and plays with the Hubbard Farms Futbol Club.
Yu is a true team player, less comfortable being out in front than collaborating, learning and sharing. Her Facebook feed offers a mix of urban policy articles and photos from her journeys around town. She also has been known to move around, living in more neighborhoods in the last few years than most Detroiters do in a lifetime. This has helped to broaden her understanding of the city.
Often when we think of leadership, we think of a person standing in the spotlight, commanding attention and giving direction. Sandra Yu shows us another kind of leadership – less ego, more service; less preaching, more action. She’ll raise her voice against injustice (or shake her head at nonsense), but she’s more interested in finding solutions and building meaningful relationships to move Detroit forward.
Portrait by Marvin Shaouni Photography.