ARTHUR SORIANO

Arthur Soriano is the CEO and Founder of Youth Empowerment. He was raised in City Heights, San Diego where he fell into the pitfalls of gangs and a personal destructive path into the prison institution. His passion for his community brought him back to participate in a positive way. He has since founded Youth Empowerment, a non-profit community-organization that’s leading a grassroots effort to engage at-risk youth and adult gang-members. The key to his success was strengthening his family first. Then Community Therapy played a huge role to his personal healing. He continually mentors and provides life-coaching for juveniles, families, and adults to help bring about a transformation of a lifestyle. Mr. Soriano understands the gang mentality, lifestyle, and the dark culture of gangs and the criminal addictive mentalities. He uses his life experiences to be a servant for positive change. Arthur provides guidance to law enforcement agencies and San Diego County officials to bring about community restorative practices and help mitigate recidivism. Arthur is a co- learning facilitator and worked with Alliant International University to develop a certification program for Community Mentors. He is recognized in the community as an expert, by the Law Enforcement Officials, Probation Officials, Juvenile Judges, San Diego County of Education Officials, and other non-profits as an advocate for positive community change. 

Arthur is the co-author of Hidden Treasures, which examines the effects of trauma, it’s impacts on community, parents, children, and individuals. Each chapter represents a narrative with different perspectives and ends with reflective questions for the reader. A few examples of narratives are: a mother's narrative on when her children were in the system. the pain and struggles the family went through; a grandparent’s perspective on raising their child’s children; a Community Mentor perspective on their experience of trauma and turning their lives around. These powerful narratives provide hope and support.