A Farewell and Thank You to Tyese Wortham

Tyese Wortham, Director of Community Engagement has announced that she will leave CAST, effective December 13. Tyese joined CAST in 2015 as Office Manager/Project Manager, followed by her appointment as Director of Community Engagement in 2018. After 10 years of service, CAST honors Tyese’s leadership, her sincere dedication to artists and cultural workers across San Francisco and Oakland, and the meaningful connections she’s made to support and strengthen the Bay Area arts ecosystem. We wish Tyese success in her next artistic pursuits.

Read on for a personal message from Tyese over her tenure at CAST…

Origins & Reflecting on 10 Years

Prior to joining CAST, I was working in cultural equity grantmaking and in the presentation and production of traditional dance, and found myself in the same conversations over and over again that were grounded in frustrations around inequity in the arts, non-existent living wages, and the constant fight for funding. As a result, I found myself churning on questions like: 

How can we begin to actually tackle art sector issues to create viable solutions?  

How can the SF Bay Area arts sector learn, borrow, and repurpose from other sectors and industries? 

The answer seemed to sit at the intersection of arts and culture, policy, advocacy, and community development. This led me to CAST, and when I landed at the doorsteps of the organization, it was located in a windowless 200-square-foot room in one of the least pedestrian-friendly areas of the city, Otis and Gough. I never thought I’d work in real estate in a million years, but I could confidently say that my life work in and outside of real estate had always been about cultivating safe, inclusive spaces for black and brown folks to thrive. It proved to be a match as I came on to serve as Director of Community Engagement for CAST. I am truly grateful that then CEO Moy Eng and the founding board welcomed me with open arms. 

Truth & Purpose

Through the first seven years, I was in my dream job and achieved many of my career goals, yet struggled mentally and physically to maintain a full-time schedule. I pushed myself, year after year, to excel, serve the community, and impress my colleagues. Though I was exhausted, I continued to give all I had. I deeply cared about my work, especially my community––the CAST community.

Finally, I crashed.

I struggled to wake up even after taking two weeks off that summer “to recover” from work. My body was wrecked and constantly in pain. That’s when I had no choice but to go on disability in August 2021. My chronic Lyme disease had flared up along with all of its co-infections, complications, and conditions that wreak havoc upon the body. 

I felt like a failure, like I was abandoning my team, my community, my colleagues, and myself. I was embarrassed for needing time to take care of myself in this way. 

How was I so sick that I needed to formally apply for disability? 

I was spiraling:

What’s going to happen? 
Will I have to leave my dream job? 
What about my career? 
My identity? 
Could I even return to perform this job even if I wanted to? 
Am I a disabled person now? 
What does that even mean?

But, it was in the depths of the dark blue that I finally started working on my limbic brain and nervous systems and it changed my life!

I found joy again! I rediscovered gratitude. I started to regain my strength and energy. And most importantly, my physical pain decreased significantly. 

I returned to CAST a year later, working part-time to manage my healthcare needs, determined to show up as a whole body, whole person––embracing my worth and setting my boundaries. I was extremely fortunate to be at a workplace with compassionate, and brilliant colleagues who met me where I was at. This was very unusual! (And I appreciate y’all so much!) 

So, why would anyone leave such an incredible workplace and supportive community (I absolutely felt your love during my leave of absence)?! 

Leading with the Body

My body continues to demand optimal health that is in alignment with my calling. 

As a trained dancer with a background in teaching and performance in the folkloric, spiritual, and performative traditions of the African Diaspora, I naturally integrate movement into my daily healing practice, stepping back into the light to reconnect and heal with community, after being stuck in isolation for decades, hiding my illness from the world. 

The combination of my background in movement and holistic healing techniques along with my arts administration expertise allows me the perfect opportunity to share my learnings and support other BI(QT)POCs on their Lyme and chronic illness healing journeys.

So, I recently launched Thriving With Lyme to bring visibility to chronic Lyme disease in black and brown communities by creating programs that center cultural and ancestral movement practices and traditions in the limbic brain and nervous system healing processes. 

Gratitude & The Future

My work with my CAST colleagues and community over the past 10 years doesn’t stop here. It evolves as I transition into this new intersection of my calling: arts and culture, advocacy, health, and healing spaces. I’m taking all of the milestones we achieved together––thanks to the foundation of trust we built as a community over the years––into Thriving With Lyme. Together we…

• Shifted CAST from opportunity-driven real estate strategies to community-centered real estate strategies.
• Awarded over $350,000 in capacity-building and grant funds to Oakland arts and culture groups through Keeping Space–Oakland.
• Launched two cohorts of the Cultural Space Ambassadors, a network of Oakland artists influencing how cultural space is preserved, created, and reimagined.
• Responded to the CAST community during the COVID-19 pandemic with Dreaming Spaces to be together in conversation, aspiration, and community-building that began with a heartfelt prompt, “How might we gather again in spaces free from disease, violence, and discrimination?”
• Created opportunities to build trust across the Bay Area from Black Oakland, DIY spaces, and SOMA Filipino communities for lasting, authentic relationships.

And there was so much more we did together! We had tender moments, sad moments, tough moments, hard moments, sensitive moments, and moments to celebrate. It’s been an honor to co-create and support your visions along the way. 

This has always been heart-centered work for me. It’s always been more than buildings. For me, it’s about leveraging a pivotal moment in an artist’s or organization’s life to co-create containers and conditions for them to realize their dreams and create healthy systems of internal and external support to ensure success, not only across operations, programs, and facility management but also across people and culture. 

I will continue to carry this holistic approach into my next chapter, thinking of you all and your incredible impact on my personal and professional growth. 

Though I will miss you all dearly––my colleagues at CAST and CAST community––I trust our paths will cross again. 

To stay in touch with Tyese, please visit her at Thriving With Lyme or email her here.