Brian:
Brian Stewart, founder of Milestone Adolescents Community Services, grew up in Seattle during an era filled with gang violence and drug use. Much like the other youth in his community, Brian was exposed to it at an early age, experiencing gang culture firsthand. However, his childhood was also blessed by the services of community programs that provided counseling and refuge from dangerous street activities. Through the guidance and mentoring of big brothers and non-profits, Brian was fortunate enough to realize the potential of knowledge and positive influence. He decided to become a mentor and counselor himself, dedicating his life to offering his education and experiences as an inspiration and positive influence to the adolescents of Seattle.
At an early age, Brian Stewart became involved in community programs and non-profit-work. At the age of four, he began attending the Central Area Boys and Girls Club in Seattle. Through the encouragement of his grandmother, he began volunteering his time there and giving back to the community. Brian soon realized that he had a passion for helping youth and committed himself to a life of serving kids and families. In high school, he was elected by the rest of his peers at Garfield High School as a Natural Helper. At Walla Walla Community College, he served as a D.A.R.E. student athlete representative to local elementary and middle school kids. Brian also mentored incoming freshman and transfer student athletes at Washington State through the Student Advising Learning Center. When Brian earned his Bachelor’s degree in the social sciences, he pursued as many degrees as he could to qualify him for serving at-risk youth. In 2005, he earned a Master’s in Social Work. In 2007, he received his certification as a Chemical Dependency Professional from Bellevue College. He is also certified as a Mental Health Profession (MHP), Child Mental Health Professional (CMHP), and Ethnic Minority Mental Health Specialist (EMMHS).
While the degrees give Brian Stewart the certification to hold multiple positions in the non-profit industry, his passion and experience allow him to truly connect with troubled youth. He has helped mend relationships between parents and their children; he has counseled children who have been estranged from their families and lack emotional support; he has coached sports teams, providing young children with the extra-curricular outlets and the loving role model that they need to keep them off the streets, away from drugs and violence. While he has worked several kinds of jobs since he was a young teen, all of Brian’s jobs since college have consistently focused on at-risk youth and encouraging them to make positive and healthy life decisions.
Brian has served on several juvenile justice boards and committees such as Building Blocks for Youth Advisory Board, CJNY Community Justice Network for Youth (San Francisco, CA), DARI Detention Alternative Risk Initiative, and JJOMP Juvenile Justice Operation Master Plan. His has attended speaking engagements for NOBLE National Office of Black Law Enforcement. SPD Seattle, Police Department , and DMI Drug Market Initiative. City Of Seattle SYVPI Seattle Youth Violence Initiative, King County BBCPC Black on Black Crime Prevention Collation. Brian is a graduate in the class of 2007 Leadership Tomorrow Program.
Minu:
Minu Ranna-Stewart, LICSW
University of Washington, Master of Social Work
Licensed Independent Clinical Social Worker (WA State)
Minu Ranna-Stewart is co-founder of Milestone Adolescent Community Services. Minu is a first generation American daughter of immigrant parents from India. She was born in Seattle and raised in the racially and ethnically diverse community of Rainier Valley. Minu developed an early interest in social justice during her teen years as the racial and economic disparities her community members faced became more and more glaring. As a way of beginning to channel her growing passion, and to escape trauma and adversities she was experiencing at home, she began to volunteer at her local community center with a teen program targeted at underserved and at-risk youth and with a community based healthcare equality outreach initiative. Minu was also fortunate to be selected into the first cohort of a youth job initiative sponsored by a local banking institution. Through the youth job program, Minu was able to obtain an afterschool, entry-level job and most importantly a college scholarship. This paved the way to Minu attending the University of Washington after she graduated from Franklin High School.
College is where Minu really began to blossom. Living independently began to allow her to heal from the trauma she was experiencing at home. Her youth and adolescence was spent trying to assimilate to the American culture and more specifically to the culture of her friends and their families who resided in the Rainier Valley community she grew up in. College allowed for connections with others from a broader range of life experience. Minu began to shift her orientation to feeling fortunate to having two cultures and embracing the best of both worlds. Minu continued to work for the bank and the community center during college with the goal of being employed as a human resources consultant after graduation. One fateful evening, Minu was being honored at a UW awards ceremony when she was approached by the former dean of the UW School of Social Work. That’s when Minu truly realized her calling, and what she had already been doing for years, was to provide direct services to those in need. Minu graduated with her BA shortly after that event and one year later began her studies is the Master of Social Work Program at the UW.
A lot transpired after graduating with her MSW. She met and married her husband, Brian Stewart, and they started a family. As with many working mothers, career and personal passions are often stifled in an effort to balance work and home life. However, that inner fire, while stifled, never extinguished and reignited with a renewed passion.
Minu focused her life experiences and desire to help others overcome trauma and life adversities. She offers trauma specific therapy to children, adolescents, and adults as well as supervises therapists providing trauma therapy services. She is a nationally certified Trauma Focused-Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (TF-CBT) therapist and is in the process of becoming a nationally certified TF-CBT supervisor. Minu provides community based trauma response and support services following larger scale critical trauma events including violent death and homicide. She provides evidence based trauma therapy training services locally, statewide, and nationally as part of a National Institute for Health (NIH) funded research study. Ms. Ranna-Stewart provides training and consultation services about the impact of trauma and appropriate response to various community providers, programs and systems. Minu is regularly invited to speak regionally on evidence based practices in mental health, effects of trauma on children and adults, and as an expert on trauma. Her training and consultation audiences include those in the areas of mental health, schools, child welfare, medical, law enforcement, and judiciary.
Outside of trauma, Minu also has expertise and experience in home based parenting education and support and parenting skills assessment, child welfare evidence based service planning and permanency planning, crisis mental health services for acutely mentally ill clients, and human and sex trafficking.