Degree Date
5-9-2026
Document Type
Dissertation
Degree Name
Doctor of Education
Department
Education
First Advisor
Dr. Acacia Nikoi
Second Advisor
Dr. Rachel Hodapp
Third Advisor
Dr. Kristeen Chachage
Abstract
Youth mentoring nonprofit organizations are increasingly emphasizing the importance of centering youth voice in program design and evaluation. However, a persistent gap remains between organizational commitments and the authentic integration of youth voice. More specifically, this gap extends to the degree to which youth perspectives meaningfully influence decision-making. This disconnect limits youth influence, contributes to disengagement, and reinforces adult-centered systems that shape whose knowledge is considered actionable. Although youth voice is widely recognized as essential, organizations continue to face significant barriers. These include adult-centered organizational systems, funding and compliance pressures, and limited capacity to translate feedback into action. Under these conditions, youth participation is often rendered tokenistic: organizations collect or acknowledge feedback without allowing it to meaningfully shape priorities, systems, or decisions. To examine how these dynamics operate in practice, this phenomenologically informed case study explores how leaders in youth mentoring nonprofits within a Midwestern urban center interpret and navigate the integration of youth voice into adult-centered organizational systems. Drawing on in-depth interviews across five organizations, this study explores how staff roles, decision-making mechanisms, and organizational dynamics shape the process by which youth feedback moves, or stalls, between frontline program spaces and broader leadership and accountability contexts. Findings reveal that staff function as system builders, translators, and gatekeepers of youth voice, shaping how youth perspectives influence organizational learning and change. The study identifies ethical tensions surrounding storytelling, consent, and representation, illustrating how responsibility for protecting youth voice is often delegated to frontline staff (primarily youth-facing roles, such as program coordinators, youth development specialists, or case managers) rather than being institutionalized within organizational systems. By conceptualizing youth voice as a dynamic organizational process rather than an isolated practice, this study contributes to educational leadership, nonprofit management, and youth development scholarship by exploring how and why youth feedback so often stalls between collection and action. The findings illuminate the organizational conditions that shape whether youth participation becomes tokenistic or transformative, offering concrete guidance for leaders, policymakers, and scholars committed to building youth-serving organizations where participation is structural, not symbolic.