When Systems Listen: Lessons from my Conversation with Alex Briscoe
By Amanda Majail-Blanco
I, Amanda I. Majail-Blanco, the daughter of a Salvadorian immigrant and a mother of twin boys, I only know how to work hard and to persevere. My only option has been to rise above all obstacles, work hard and be self-reliant. I inherited this, through my family, to always put your all into anything you do. As a youth, I went through the system as injustice-impacted by being on juvenile probation/ankle monitoring. After completion of juvenile probation, graduating high school, as well as becoming a young mother of twins - that already in itself came with its challenges, but in June of 2020 I became a person impacted by state violence. My brother, Erik Salgado, who was murdered by California Highway Patrol in 2020 is the clearest example of explicit harm in a life cut short by systems that were supposed to protect but instead inflicted irreversible loss. Mainstream media has a way to dehumanize those who become victims of state violence and are all of the sudden not seen as victims by harm done by those systems in place, I often heard rhetoric such as… but, “what did that person do to deserve that” or “Police violence is justified, they should’ve known better”. We live in a world where those who have been through the system, are expected to rise above it and are incentivized if we do, we are seen as rehabilitated…and those who die or become incarcerated or victims to an institution/system, we are seen as the problem and no one ever questions the powers that be.
When I sat down in September with Alex Briscoe, Principal of the California Children’s Trust, I carried all of this with me. I expected a policy discussion. What I got instead was a conversation about power, dignity, and what it takes to build systems that center the people they are meant to serve - especially young people navigating mental health, foster care, and law enforcement systems.
Alex described how his team has partnered with more than 50 community-based organizations serving justice-involved youth, teaching them how to bill Medicaid and secure sustainable funding for their work. “The real innovation,” Alex told me, “is teaching grassroots leaders how to access the dollars already on the table. That’s how you redistribute power.” That landed deeply with me. I know from personal experience that lasting change doesn’t come from a single program or leader, it comes when communities themselves have the resources and infrastructure to carry forward the solutions they know will save lives.
We also talked about the human stakes. In the case of Erik Salgado, a young man was killed by CHP officers in Oakland and a $7-million settlement eventually followed. The dollar amount, while headline-grabbing, does not measure the harm done to his family or community through the grief, the ruptured trust, the trauma that rippled outward. This resonated with me because I’ve lived through systems that extracted more from me than they gave back. The costs to safety, health, and hope are rarely accounted for on any balance or budget sheet.
Another theme that emerged in our conversation was reciprocity. How do we make sure that people with lived experience aren’t just invited to sit at the table, but are supported to thrive throughout and after the time they do? Too often, the way systems “engage” lived expertise can mimic dynamics of unhealthy interpersonal relationship dynamics. There’s the love-bombing at the start with praise, promises, the sense that your story finally matters. But then comes the inconsistency through support one day, silence the next. Demands without reciprocity. Requests for more vulnerability without adequate care or compensation. The burden of responsibility shifted back onto the very people who are supposed to be supported.
It’s a cycle many of us recognize personally, and it’s devastating to see it reproduced at the level of institutions. Engagement that extracts more than it restores is not partnership, it is harm disguised as opportunity. In the YTFG Fellowship, I had the opportunity to co-design a zine with my peers called The Roots of Equitable and Ethical Engagement of Lived Expertise which captures collective insights about how to do this work differently. Creating it reminded me that authentic engagement isn’t abstract; it’s something we can practice, build, and share together.
Alex’s advice was simple but powerful to lived experts: “Don’t do a fellowship unless you can get as much out of it as they do from you.” That’s not just guidance for individuals, it’s a challenge to those of us designing programs and partnerships. If we want authentic engagement, we must build structures that give back as much as they take.
What if, for every dollar invested in someone’s labor for an organization, there was an equal or greater financial investment in their wellbeing as a human being? This could look like mental health support, leadership development, or simply time and space to rest and grow. We talk about systems change, but systems change begins with how we treat people as contributors to our work and as whole humans.
This conversation left me both hopeful and challenged. Hopeful because I see leaders like Alex who are building new financial and policy pathways for equity. Challenged because it reminds me that we must demand more care, reciprocity, and healing-centered design from every system that claims to serve us.
If you are a policymaker, funder, or organizational leader reading this, ask yourself: are we redistributing power, or consolidating it? Are we designing for dignity, or efficiency at the expense of humanity?
And if you are someone with lived expertise: know that you deserve systems that work for you - not just because of you.