From After School to CEO: Kirsten Sikkelee’s Career Empowering Women and Families Through YWCA
April 21, 2025
- Author
- Danielle Strickland
Waiting tables at Carpe Diem in Charlotte, newly minted Davidson College graduate Kirsten Sikkelee ’90 planned to make her way back home to the Washington, D.C., area. Inspired by the work of Marian Wright Edelman at the Children’s Defense Fund, she hoped to get her foot in the door there. Her mind changed after a conversation with a restaurant regular, who was also a YWCA board member, as she realized women and families were in need right in her community.
Sikkelee typed up her résumé that night and, soon after, started working at YWCA Central Carolinas in the after-school programs, making $6 an hour — she continued waiting tables, too. That first role set her on a path working in every YWCA program area and eventually led to the title of CEO. Along the way, she launched and directed the Women in Transition program and opened Families Together, helping to expand transitional housing for women and families in the region. She took the reins at the height of the Great Recession and led the organization as YWCA leaned more deeply into its intersectional anti-racist and anti-sexist mission, shepherding the agency through the COVID pandemic, forging strong relationships and raising millions for existing programs and future growth. Currently, 80 permanent affordable rental housing units are being built on the YWCA campus with nonprofit developer DreamKey Partners, transforming the property and bringing the campus housing unit total to 156.
Women in Transition provides safe, affordable, transitional housing and intensive support services for adult individuals identifying as female, who are single, unaccompanied and experiencing homelessness or housing instability. Last fiscal year, 88% of program graduates successfully moved into permanent housing or a facility with a higher level of care, as needed.
Our transitional housing programs resonate with people because we can all think of someone we care about — a sister or a bestie or a niece — who could have used a safe, affordable place to exhale, learn new skills, gather themselves and focus.
Families Together provides similar services for families with minor children facing homelessness. This program celebrated 80% of families successfully moving into permanent, affordable housing last year and 80% of families maintaining or increasing their income while enrolled in the program.
In her prior role as CEO, Sikkelee not only championed housing opportunities but also multiple youth learning centers that provide free, literacy-based out-of-school programming for students of low wealth, as well as racial justice and advocacy programming to educate and mobilize our community and a co-ed fitness center that serves as a portal into YWCA’s mission and campus.
After more than three decades of service, half of them at the helm, Sikkelee stepped down as CEO in March, but she is excited to continue to serve for several months as part of the leadership team in a project liaison role, working to ensure the operational needs of YWCA and its constituents are prioritized during construction and that YWCA remains fully operational during this 20-month construction project. She is thrilled to see Grounds for Change, this new initiative, moving from dream to reality. She calls this new phase her “rewirement.”
Sikkelee is energized by the selection of her successor, Dr. Pamela Gibson Senegal, who embodies the mission and brings great experience and vision to lead the YWCA forward.
Dr. Pamela Gibson Senegal with Kirsten Sikkelee ’90
“I had hoped to be able to say that I was thrilled, and I can honestly say that Pamela exceeded my expectations,” she said. “I'm so encouraged for the future of our mission and programs under her wise and warm leadership.”
Twenty-five years ago, YWCA Central Carolinas only had 12 annual donors and, Sikkelee said, their work was largely off the radar of local philanthropists. Under her leadership and by building on the strong foundation laid by her predecessor, Jane McIntyre, the organization relaunched itself as a critical resource to the Charlotte community.
“YWCA Central Carolinas is a learning community and a safe place to explore things,” Sikkelee said. “What does it mean to be an advocate? What does it mean for me to pick up my phone and call my elected official and tell them a story about how a policy will negatively affect someone I love? We all have more agency and influence than we think we do, and we have powerful voices. It’s important to breathe, focus and speak the truth.”
To Davidson, Home & Back Again
Sikkelee attended T.C. Williams High School in Alexandria, Virginia, of “Remember the Titans” fame. Across the street was Episcopal High School, where she participated in the theatre program. Several friends from that school were applying to Davidson College, so she decided to visit, tacking on visits to Duke and UNC Chapel Hill.
“I was not expecting to love Davidson the most,” she said. “I was coming from a huge public high school, but when I stepped onto campus and spoke with people, it felt like I was coming home. I applied early, and I only applied to Davidson. It was the first of several major life decisions I’ve made that way, trusting my heart, including taking a job at YWCA and buying a home in my 20s that is still our home today. When you know, you know.”
Sikkelee’s Davidson journey wasn’t free of interruption. Her parents divorced just before her move to campus, and she found it hard to focus on school. By the end of her sophomore year, she was regularly missing class, despite her professors’ consistent phone calls to her room in Watts Residence Hall.
Freshman year at Davidson with “First Rich” hallmates (Sikkelee ’90 in the tree to the far right, teal shirt)
“So I was invited to leave school,” she said. “I now call it my ‘invitational gap year!’ Dean Will Terry and Registrar Sue Ross co-created a list of conditions for eligibility to return. Davidson was telling me if I did these things, I could come back. That was a gift. I knew no other school of merit would have taken me at that point.”
She went home, engaged in therapy, waited tables in Old Town Alexandria and looked for opportunities to volunteer. She trained to become a non-medical respite caregiver for two little girls, one of whom had been diagnosed at birth with HIV.
“That’s when I began to see how volunteerism can transform the helper more than those being helped,” she said. “I was rebuilding my shaky self-confidence, but those little girls didn’t know that. They just knew that I showed up for them fully. Being with them every morning, taking community college classes and working at night allowed me to return to Davidson with determination and a stronger sense of who I was and where I wanted to be.”
Sikkelee declared a religion major, inspired by a course she took during that year at home, and she walked at Commencement with the Class of 1991, a year behind her classmates. She remains a proud member of the Class of 1990, though. As an alum, she has become a dedicated volunteer and says she was “humbled to my core” by the college’s invitation to join the Board of Visitors several years ago. Through that experience, she learned how the college has evolved and diversified its student body and the broad experiences students have today.
“I received an incredible liberal arts education from Davidson professors I will never forget, professors like the late Gill Holland,” she said. “College didn’t directly prepare me to run transitional housing programs for women experiencing homelessness, but it prepared me to know how and when to reach out to people more experienced and smarter than me to put together a suite of resources for people who most need them.”
Sikkelee’s winding road through Davidson adds to her appreciation for the women and families who walk through the doors of YWCA Central Carolinas.
“Part of my role at YWCA has been about encouraging people to live fully, to elevate justice and dignity, to build the community they want to see,” she said, “and it reminds me of when I was a little lost and needed some support to get my rudder back into the water. Davidson helped me to do that, and I’m honored to have had so many opportunities to serve the college and the Charlotte region.”
