When Anne-Marie Zell Schwerin ’85 (left, pictured with YWCA Mariposa leader Kate Stoops ’24) joined a Walla Walla bowling league as a recent Whitman College graduate, she had no idea it would change the course of her life.
Looking for opportunities to get involved in the community, Zell Schwerin asked her teammates for advice. One encouraged her to check out the YWCA of Walla Walla, which provides critical domestic violence and sexual assault services, community programs and childcare services to the Walla Walla Valley.
“I’ll never forget walking up the stairs of the YWCA for the first time,” she says. During that first meeting, then Executive Director Peggy Sanderson (Parent ’82, ’83, ’88) described the organization’s mission of eliminating racism and empowering women. Zell Schwerin was sold. At 23, she was one of youngest to ever volunteer on the YWCA’s board of directors.
“I was and still am passionate about that mission,” she says, “so I was on a mission to learn everything I could and do everything well.”
Over the next three decades, while working full-time in Walla Walla, first as a bookkeeper and then in accounting, she took leadership roles on local and national YWCA boards. Then in 1996, she left accounting to serve full-time as YWCA of Walla Walla’s Associate Director and Chief Financial Officer. In 2001, she stepped in as Executive Director, where she remained until her retirement in April 2025.
During that time, the advocate and visionary has had an enormous impact on the Walla Walla community, thanks largely to her steadfast trust—both in the organization’s mission and in her own ability to make a difference.
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