Walking Toward Change: Meet June of the Sioux Falls Trekkers
Since 2018, June has helped build a sisterhood where Black women can find connection, practice care, and recognize their collective power.
In Sioux Falls, South Dakota, June’s commitment to community takes many forms. It shows up in her advocacy for young people and families, her work alongside unhoused neighbors, and her efforts to address structural inequity. It also shows up in something as familiar as gathering women for a walk.
A founding member of the GirlTREK Sioux Falls Trekkers Crew, June has helped nurture this community since 2018. Today, as a City Organizer, she continues creating opportunities for women to reclaim space, build relationships, and walk through healing together.
Her story reminds us why local leadership matters. The women walking beside us bring experiences, knowledge, and a deep investment in the places we call home.
A Commitment to Community
Trained in social work, June has spent more than a decade focused on community health, social justice, and equity, centering the people most impacted.
Through Lutheran Social Services, she has supported justice impacted young people and families, working directly with those navigating disparities in the system. Her experience also includes street medicine work with unhoused neighbors and helping organize the Sioux Falls Women’s March.
She currently serves as Public Safety Chair for the NAACP Sioux Falls Branch, addressing issues tied to structural inequity and justice. A local political candidate as well, June brings experience in community advocacy to her pursuit of public leadership.
Across these roles, her work reflects a consistent commitment: showing up for people and helping build conditions in which they can thrive.
Why Walking Together Matters
For Black women, making time to walk can mean making room for ourselves amid work, caregiving, and the many responsibilities we carry.
A crew gives that time a community. It offers familiar faces, encouragement, and a place to return. Over time, those everyday connections can deepen into trust.
That trust matters. It creates room for women to share what they are experiencing, ask for support, exchange resources, and recognize concerns they have in common.
June brings her experience as an advocate into this work of connection. As a City Organizer, she helps create space for women to care for themselves while building relationships with one another.
From Connection to Collective Power
Community change depends on people who know their neighbors, understand local needs, and remain committed over time.
June’s years with the Sioux Falls Trekkers reflect that kind of leadership. Since 2018, she has helped sustain a space where women can gather, be visible, and invest in their well-being together.
Within GirlTREK’s We Want Power theme, her story invites us to consider how power takes shape in our own lives. It can begin with choosing time for our health, making our voices heard, or inviting another woman to join us. It can grow as we learn about a local issue, support a neighbor, or organize around a shared concern.
Walking together creates an opportunity to begin those conversations and discover what we might do next.
A Question for Your Next Walk
June’s story is an invitation to recognize the leadership already present in our sisterhood, including our own.
On your next walk, ask:
Who taught you what it means to use your power?
What is one change you want to see in your community, and how could you and your sisters help make it happen?
Give each woman room to answer. Listen for the experiences you share and the possibilities you could pursue together.
That is part of what June is helping build in Sioux Falls: a community of women who keep showing up for themselves and one another.
