You Don’t Have to Figure It All Out Alone:
Meet the Rise Above Collective Facilitators
Being 18 to 26 can feel like having the whole world in front of you—and somehow being expected to know exactly what to do with it.
College. Work. Relationships. Money. Mental health. Family expectations. Independence. The constant question of “What’s next?”
You may have more freedom than ever before while still figuring out who you are, where you belong, and what kind of life you want to build.
That is part of why Touchstone Foundation created Rise Above Collective: a space for young adults in Lancaster County to connect with peers, build community, learn from mentors, and have honest conversations about mental wellness and navigating adulthood.
Helping create that space are three facilitators with very different backgrounds: Dr. Anne Kinderwater Carroll, Heather, and Samuel Soliman. Together, they bring experience spanning education and leadership, health and wellness, creativity and storytelling, mentorship, and mental health advocacy.
Three Facilitators. Three Different Ways of Looking at Wellness.
Heather brings a whole-person approach to wellness. A Board-Certified Health & Wellness Coach, she works to advance community well-being through training, education, and integrative wellness coaching.
She began her career as a middle school health and science teacher and now works with the Community Health and Holistic Therapy Teams at Penn Medicine Lancaster General Health. Her work focuses on helping people live healthier lives, with particular attention to stress reduction, self-care, and chronic disease management.
For young adults balancing school, careers, relationships, responsibilities, and everything else life can throw at them, Heather brings practical insight into caring for yourself while building the life you want.
Outside of her work, she enjoys spending time with family, cooking, traveling, and exploring the outdoors.
Samuel Soliman brings another perspective entirely: the power of creativity, storytelling, resilience, and using your experiences to create change.
Sam is an impact-driven photographer, director, and mental health advocate who has spent a decade using visual storytelling to amplify underrepresented voices and encourage meaningful change.
His work explores stories that matter within the realities people are facing today. His most recent documentary has reached audiences across the country, including at the Big Sky Documentary Film Festival in Montana and through a screening in Congress in Washington, D.C.
Sam’s presence in the Collective offers another reminder that there isn’t one path into adulthood, advocacy, creativity, leadership, or purpose.
Your experiences can become part of what you bring to the world.
A Place to Be Known, Not Just Connected
You can have hundreds of followers, group chats constantly buzzing, coworkers, classmates, and people around you every day—and still feel disconnected.
Anne believes there is a difference between being around people and experiencing genuine belonging.
“We cannot undervalue the power of connection and the sense of belonginess,” she shared. “To be known and welcomed into spaces builds hope levels and strengthens wellbeing.”
And creating that kind of environment doesn’t always require something complicated.
It can begin with how someone welcomes you into a room. The tone they use. Whether they actually listen. Whether you feel comfortable being yourself instead of performing a version of yourself for everyone else.
“Authenticity is felt by each of us,” Anne said. “The tone we choose to use, how we greet one another, the civility we bring to our workplace and home…it is free and impacts those around us. Choose wisely.”
At the center of the Collective is something much simpler: connection.
Meet Dr. Anne Kinderwater Carroll: Finding Hope in What Comes Next
Dr. Anne Kinderwater Carroll knows that young adulthood can hold two realities at once.
It can be exciting. The world really can feel like your oyster. There are new people to meet, places to go, careers to explore, relationships to build, and opportunities you haven’t even encountered yet.
It can also feel like a lot.
Having spent decades in public education, worked in higher education, and raised young adults herself, Anne has watched people navigate periods of tremendous growth alongside uncertainty, pressure, mental health challenges, and major life transitions.
“Young adults experience feelings of being simultaneously untethered and burdened,” Anne explained. “Autonomy increases exponentially and the pressure of ‘what next?’ looms.”
That tension is one reason Anne’s work with the cognition and science of hope fits so naturally into Rise Above Collective.
Her career has brought together science, education, and leadership, but some of her most meaningful lessons have come simply from being present with another person.
She has sat alongside teachers experiencing loss, parents frustrated with systems, and students struggling with despair and depression.
“Being invited into an emotional space with another human is the greatest of privileges,” Anne shared. “It reminds me that behaviors are an extension of the heart and mind.”
Sometimes support begins there—not with having the perfect answer, but with having someone willing to listen.
Why Connection Matters Right Now
Young adulthood has never existed without uncertainty. But today’s young adults are navigating that uncertainty while also having nearly unlimited access to information, news, opinions, expectations, and glimpses into other people’s lives.
Anne sees emotional regulation and authentic connection as important challenges for this generation—and, really, for all of us.
Social media and endless newsfeeds can connect us to communities, ideas, and people we might never otherwise encounter. They can also make it difficult to disconnect, recharge, or stop comparing our lives with what everyone else appears to be doing.
“Our young adults carry this endless exposure differently than generations before them,” Anne said.
But she also sees something encouraging happening.
Young people are increasingly willing to talk about mental health. They are learning to recognize their limits, establish boundaries, and make decisions that protect their well-being.
Anne doesn’t see that as selfishness.
Instead, she sees healthy boundaries as a way to recharge so we can show up more fully as friends, coworkers, students, family members, and human beings.
Rise Above Collective gives young adults a place to practice some of that in community—not through lectures about what adulthood is supposed to look like, but through conversation, reflection, shared experiences, and relationships.
Mentors Can Help You See What’s Possible
Anne knows firsthand what it means to have someone else recognize your potential.
She entered educational leadership when many leadership positions were occupied by men. A female mentor helped her find her place at the table and encouraged her to trust her own perspective and use her voice.
A male mentor influenced her in a different way: he invited her to the table, encouraged her to recognize her strengths, and modeled leadership grounded in integrity.
Those relationships stayed with her long after those particular moments in her career.
Anne describes mentorship this way:
“Mentors are needed as both mirrors—where we see ourselves—and windows—where we see ourselves going.”
That idea is central to the kind of community Rise Above Collective is working to build.
You don’t need a mentor to tell you exactly what to do with your life. Sometimes you need people who can ask good questions, share what they’ve learned, recognize strengths you haven’t noticed yet, and help you imagine possibilities beyond what you can currently see.
Come As You Are. See Where It Takes You.
Rise Above Collective isn’t about having adulthood figured out.
It’s for the part where you’re figuring it out.
It’s an opportunity to meet other young adults in Lancaster County, connect with mentors who have taken very different paths through life, talk about mental wellness without judgment, and explore the person you’re becoming.
At 18, 21, 24, or 26, there may be more paths available to you than you realize.
You don’t have to know which one you’re taking yet.
Sometimes the first step is finding people who will walk beside you while you explore.
Join Rise Above Collective and come build community with us. Bring a friend, meet someone new, and discover what might be possible when you have a space to connect, recharge, and Rise Above. See you there!
