 Pictured above are recipients of the 2023 Linda Gabriel Human Rights Awards (not pictured, Sue Miglino).
December 13, 2023
The Kitsap County Council for Human Rights announced recipients of the 2023 Linda Gabriel Human Rights Awards at the Board of Kitsap County Commissioners meeting Dec. 11. The awards are presented annually to recognize people advancing and promoting human rights, equity and positive change for all, often serving as role models, collaborators and advocates.
The awards are named in honor of Linda Gabriel, a founder of the Kitsap County Council for Human Rights, who passed away in 2014. Recipients are nominated by community members and the council votes to make the annual selections. Awards are made in four categories: youth, adult, organization and lifetime achievement.
For more information, visit the Council for Human Rights website at kcowa.us/hrc or contact Rebecca Pirtle in the Kitsap County Commissioners' Office at rpirtle@kitsap.gov
2023 Recipients
Youth – Katie Blackburn
Katie Blackburn is a senior at South Kitsap High School who is grateful to live in Kitsap and committed to contributing to the community. She has been involved in many activist groups with a goal to help to make our community a safe place for all. She is passionate about ensuring youth have a voice, especially around issues such as sexual assault, gun violence and mental health. She works to increase awareness around each of these and to support others in sharing their stories and perspectives. She has partnered with her high school’s administration and Scarlet Road to bring sexual assault awareness training to her high school and led a walkout to call attention to the issue. She is also a member of Kitsap Strong’s Youth Leadership Team and in this capacity is working with Senator Emily Randall to create and advocate for a bill in this legislative session to support student mental health. She believes that any one person can do it all and she is certainly doing a lot already!
Adult – Pastor Gregory Reffner
Pastor Gregory Reffner of the Brownsville United Methodist Church has been at the forefront of a groundbreaking initiative known as the "Good Neighboring Experiment" in the Puget Sound area. Through this experiment, he has successfully brought together individuals from diverse backgrounds and faiths, fostering unity, understanding, and tolerance within the community. His work includes transcending racial and gender barriers and ensuring that the Christian ideal of acceptance is being demonstrated within our community.
Pastor Reffner has been one of the local religious leaders willing to speak at sometimes contentious school board meetings to address the incidents of hate speech and action against LGBTQ+ community members and students of color by calling for acceptance, kindness, and support for all. He has also actively participated in events such as the Juneteenth march and Kitsap Pride celebration and is integral to building bridges between different communities. His presence at these events exemplifies his dedication to breaking down barriers and promoting understanding among diverse groups, making him a true advocate for social harmony and acceptance. He also actively encourages local churches to serve those living without homes in our communities, including veterans, and works to ensure they have access to services to meet their needs.
Adult – Cristina Roark
Cristina Roark is the executive director of Kitsap Strong and seemingly at every event in Kitsap that is celebrating diversity or working to advance social justice. She is often the one behind the camera, capturing the stories and images from the work being done in our community, but she is also one of the architects of Kitsap Strong and its phenomenal work. During times of social unrest and organizational disruption, she has remained steadfast and persevered, keeping equity and social justice work progressing and supporting individuals and organizations in overcoming barriers.
Most recently, the relationships Cristina built over many years provided her with the support needed to sustain the work of Kitsap Strong as a collective impact project initiative while it transitions to a nonprofit and gets situated within Kitsap Community Resources, which is serving as a temporary fiscal agent for the organization. This has preserved Kitsap Strong and ensures their vital work continues.
One of those nominating her said it best in noting, “Cristina has dedicated her life to capturing the very essence of humanity in its myriad forms. From the celebrations within our communities and understanding that community is learning. Her tireless contributions to resilient community building abounds throughout Kitsap County." Cristina is also a photographer who tells stories of resilience and hope, reflecting her commitment to human rights and an invitation to celebrate our shared humanity.
Organization – Catalyst Public Schools
Catalyst Public Schools was founded in 2020 and is a shining example of a school committed to understanding and promoting equity and inclusion. The school puts forth great effort to ensure all scholars are known, loved and challenged while prioritizing their social emotional health and equity. Over the course of the four years the school has served young people, Catalyst has grown from a student body of 168 to nearly 500 scholars in grades K-8.
Catalyst has been recognized for exceptional service and as a model of inclusion for scholars in special education by the Center for Reinventing Public Education. The school is also known for its co-teaching model allowing for more adult support for scholars than is typical. Catalyst works hard to hire a diverse staff that reflects the diversity of the school body so that all scholars can see themselves in their teachers and the adults in the building.
At Catalyst, part of the mission is to build the critical consciousness of their scholars to help them identify, navigate and challenge oppression. Students are supported to discover how they can make an positive impact and staff are dedicated to social justice and challenging systemic barriers.
Organization - Kitsap Strong
Kitsap Strong is improving the well-being and educational attainment of Kitsap residents through a focus on empowerment and equity, the prevention of adverse childhood experiences and building community resilience. They work with local schools, social service organizations, and other youth and family serving community-based organizations. The Kitsap Strong network partners serve everyone in the county, including 40,000 students and their families, through the development of shared knowledge, insight, strategies, and building relationships between schools and community-based organizations to provide equitable and trauma-informed services.
Kitsap Strong helps establish a culture of a self-healing community in Kitsap through collective work. As their staff stated, "Our partnerships are multi-faceted because building a trauma-informed community and addressing inequity in education and across other sectors is complex. As Michael Unger, the world’s leading researcher on community resilience indicates, we must 'keep solutions as complex as the problems you seek to solve.' ”
Kitsap Strong is positively affecting human rights in Kitsap County - three of the individual award recipients are working with the organization (Katie Blackburn, Cristina Roark and Linda Segur) and two additional nominees as well.
Lifetime Achievement – Linda Segur
Linda Segur’s 30 years of professional experience working with families impacted by substance-use disorder, poverty and mental health issues includes: 14 years providing parenting education and hands-on support for Kitsap County Family and Adult Drug Court participants; 10 years as a co-occurring disorders counselor with adults and adolescents working in the Kitsap Mental Health Pathways program; and nearly 30 years as an adjunct instructor teaching with the early childhood, adult basic education and workforce development programs at Olympic College.
She also provides staff development training for fellow professionals throughout Washington on topics related to effective practices to build resiliency when working with families impacted by childhood, community and historic trauma. Linda's current position as clinical director of the University of Washington’s Parent-Child Assistance Program in Kitsap provides additional opportunities for her to apply research focused on the impact of early adversity to create informed and effective professional practices.
Over the past several years, Linda has been a member of the Kitsap Strong educational cohort, sharing information and facilitating discussions on the exciting discoveries that have come with the expanding research and professional application of the NEAR (Neuroscience, Epigenetics, Adverse Childhood Experiences, Resilience) sciences. Her overarching goal is to help all individuals, and particularly those also dealing with substance use, to understand the impact of childhood adversity and move toward more stable lifestyles and parenting practices. She has been integral in advancing the work and leadership of Kitsap Strong.
Lifetime Achievement – Sue Miglino
Sue Miglino has worked with many organizations in Kitsap including the Dispute Resolution Center (DRC). As part of the DRC team, she worked for several years with the Port Gamble S’Klallam Tribe’s Reentry Program offering healing circles between those in the program and those that were harmed by choices and behaviors. She also convened listening circles between people in recovery, participants in the reentry program, local community members and leaders, police, elected officials, attorneys and others willing to engage in difficult conversations around how to address community issues.
Sue has worked for many years with local school districts, and now with Bremerton School District, offering healing and grief circles for students and mediation between students and between staff and students. Sue credits her co-facilitators - Robert Galbraith, China Cooper, N’yasha Jackson, and Russy Minder – for working with her to make these opportunities available.
Sue has worked with the other recipient of the 2023 Lifetime Achievement Award, Linda Segur, in a collaboration with the University of Washington Parent-Child Assistance Program to meet with and offer mediations to the remarkable women and families in the program. She also developed a restorative multi-party mediation style that helps groups in conflict. Her future focus is working with Washington State to bring facilitators together to work with incarcerated individuals and those whose lives they harmed.
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