The Young People to the Front Podcast (YP2FPod) aims to elevate youth voices and increase awareness about youth homelessness in LA. By exploring the causes and LA-specific issues that intersect with youth homelessness, as well as highlighting actions that can be taken to solve it, we hope to build a broad support network and deepen our connection to the community.
Sherrie Bradford on Foster Care, Finding Her Voice, and Building Spaces That Actually Heal
Episode Notes:
Sherry Bradford is a foster youth advocate, Prevention Early Intervention Training Coordinator at CASA of Los Angeles, educational consultant with Alliance for Children's Rights, and MSW candidate at Cal State Long Beach. In this episode, she sits down with Tonny to talk about her journey through the foster care system, how she got into advocacy, and her role in creating the TA(Y)LK To Me Podcast.
Topics covered:
Growing up in foster care and experiencing homelessness after aging out at 21
Navigating college as a former foster youth and the resources that made it possible
Why compensation and support for advocates with lived experience is non-negotiable
Creating the TA(Y)LK To Me Podcast, including how youth were paid, supported, and centered throughout
The importance of hiring people with lived experience in full-time roles, not just as contractors
Mental health alternatives beyond traditional therapy
Cultural competency and meeting youth where they are
The youth-to-youth support model and why it works
4 Mar 2026
Myriah on Foster Care, Knowing Your Rights, and Reclaiming Your Story
Episode Notes:
Myriah didn't set out to become an advocate. After emancipating from foster care, she started sharing her story and the work just took off from there. From being featured in the LA Times, to representing her community as Miss Compton Princess, to serving four years on the LA County Board of Supervisors Youth Commission, she's spent years making sure young people in care are in the room before decisions get made, not after.
In this episode, she talks about what it actually looks like to center youth voice in institutional spaces, the difference between youth-led healing and adult-led extraction, and why knowing your rights in foster care is something most young people don't find out until after they've already aged out. She also gets into her work with the Alliance of Children's Rights, the educational rights video series she helped create with the Office of Child Protection, and why it matters that young people leave these conversations with closure and not open wounds.
Oh, and she's also Chef Smiley. She talks about how cooking became therapy during her time in care, how she turned that into a career during the pandemic, and her dream of one day bringing culinary skills to foster youth.
In this episode:
How advocacy finds you before you find it
The LA County Youth Commission and why lived experience belongs in policy rooms
Educational rights foster youth aren't told about until it's too late
What makes a space truly youth-led vs. youth-used
Culinary arts as healing, hustle, and hope
2 Mar 2026
Evelyn & Christopher on Youth Homelessness, Exploitation in Advocacy, and Showing Up As Your Whole Self
Episode Notes:
What happens when the people closest to the problem are the last ones supported by the system?
In this episode, we sit down with Evelyn Karina Rodriguez (they/them) — artist, activist, researcher, and founder of 404 Found — and Christopher Hendricks, youth system strategist and MSW candidate at Cal State Fullerton. Both are rooted in Southern California, and both found their way to youth homelessness advocacy not by choice, but because the work found them.
Together, they get honest about what it actually looks like to advocate from lived experience — the code-switching required for survival, the "favorite child" phenomenon that rewards polished voices over authentic ones, and what it means to show up audaciously in spaces that weren't built for you.
They also dig into what's missing: real mentorship pipelines, intergenerational knowledge transfer, and organizations that move beyond trauma-informed language toward trauma-informed action.
In this episode:
Art as a tool for youth engagement beyond vocalization
The class system inside advocacy spaces
When sharing your story funds an org but doesn't build your future
Covert harm, stonewalling, and leadership that can't navigate its own emotions
What 404 Found is building differently — and why it took five years to get there
Recommendations for the Office of Child Protection and beyond
Reach and audience
Public platform figures. Ratings count people who left a rating, not total listeners.
Apple Podcasts (US)
5.0 / 5
4 ratings
Spotify
4.9 / 5
11 ratings
Podcast Authority Score: 48 / 100
A composite of feed quality, social presence, YouTube performance and engagement. Read the methodology.
Quality
68
Social presence
0
YouTube
0
Engagement
71
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