Speaker: Sonali Alluri
Topic: Finding your Community through Neighborhood, Networking, and Noodles
Where: Bella Milano – 455 Regency Park O’Fallon, IL 62269
Monday, May 19, 2025 – 11:30AM-1:00PM CST
Sonali Reddy Alluri, M.P.H is an advocate for behavioral health, reproductive justice, and equity for underserved communities. She is a 2023-2025 national fellow for Govern for America and is the Health Policy Advisor for the Saint Louis County Executive’s Office advising on best practices for mitigating the opioid epidemic. She is a consultant for various non-profit, private, and academic institutions on various fields including community program planning, epidemiology, and teen mental health.
Sonali is a mentor for the International Mentoring Program (IMP) which helps support international women to succeed personally and professionally in the region. She recently assisted in proclaiming International Mentoring Day on October 27 in Saint Louis County. She is an ambassador for a women-owned company that advocates for diversity and burn survivors. She collaborates with Aspire Advocates, a non-profit for behavioral health and substance use disorders for adolescents, and helped to establish the “You Are Loved” initiative for County employees to provide positive messages to show teens they are “no more than an arms length from someone who loves them” and helped proclaimed September 4 as “You Are Loved” Day in Saint Louis County.
Sonali is originally from the East Coast, born in Boston and raised in New Jersey, but has lived in Miami and the Caribbean who recently moved to St. Louis when the opportunity to oversee the opioid epidemic program planning presented itself. When she’s not connecting with the community, you may find her heading off to her next travel adventure, hosting a dinner party for her friends, or at the local farmers market searching for fresh baked bread.
Navigating any new territory is difficult, especially if you feel like you’re doing it alone. Being a woman or a person of color or neurodivergent (or hey all three of you’re like me!) can feel overwhelming and like the world isn’t built for you – mainly because it wasn’t – but that doesn’t mean we can’t rebuild it in our vision and join together with the people who look through the same lenses.
Moving to a new place, getting a new job, or even trying a new skill can certainly be daunting and yet sometimes it’s redefining yourself in an environment you’ve known your whole life that is almost debilitating – you have to fight the norms and actively push boundaries to become who you’ve always known yourself to be but weren’t given the chance to do so, be it from yourself or others.
What does community mean to you? Do you have a community of people that you can rely on? Do community and family mean the same thing to you?
We will have a conversation answering these questions and more on what you would like your community to look like and how to get there.
Presentation takeaways:
– Creating a home away from home and feeling more comfortable in your own neighborhood
– Experiencing new culture and cuisine that will help connect you to the local environment
– How to adapt to a new town, city, or country through organized spontaneity (there is a method to the madness)
