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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. 

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. 

“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. �鶹��Ƶ���� 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 �鶹��Ƶ���� with determination and a stronger sense of who I was and where I wanted to be.”