(CLAIR | Simi Valley, CA) — In 2020, Kris Turner walked away from youth work, thinking he was ready for a change. Within a year, he knew better. That instinct to return—to the kids, the camps, the noise of a place built for young people—is what eventually led him to the spot where hundreds of Simi Valley families spend their weeks.
Today Turner runs it. As Executive Director of the Simi Valley Family YMCA, he oversees a place stitched into the daily rhythm of the city—the after-school pickup line, the swim lessons, the summer camps that fill before spring ends. And he is steering its biggest change in years.
His story began far from here, in California's Central Valley. He grew up in Visalia, surrounded by orange groves and open fields where life moved at a steady pace. As the youngest of four, he listened more than he spoke. Perhaps that is where his attention to other people began.
That interest in people carried into college. He studied psychology at San Francisco State University, curious about how people develop and connect, and ran with the triathlon club on the side. The summer after he graduated in 2012, he took a job at a diabetes camp in Kings Canyon National Park, helping young campers manage a hard condition without flinching. "Those kids didn't see limits," he says. "They saw life." The experience pointed him toward youth work, and he stayed pointed that way for years.
That path led him to YMCA Camp Campbell, where eight years of work sharpened his craft. He taught outdoor science to fifth and sixth graders. He ran day camps and overnight sessions. He built a Teen Adventure Camp from nothing, handing high schoolers ropes and paddles and teaching them to climb, raft, hike, and surf. Somewhere in those years, his approach settled into what many of his colleagues know now—a calm, patient demeanor, centered on people rather than programs.
Then, in 2020, he left. Ventura County offered work in mental health programs and long-term care. The work was real. But it lacked something he couldn't ignore for long: the laughter and excitement of young people figuring things out. "I learned a lot," he says. "But my heart kept pulling me back to youth programs."
So he circled home. A lifeguard shift at the Ventura YMCA in 2021 reopened the door. From there came a stint as Membership Director in Montecito, helping families find their footing after the pandemic, then a year managing a rock climbing gym in Santa Cruz. His personal life caught up at the same pace—he met Michelle in January of 2022, proposed at the summit of Mount Whitney that summer, and married her by November.
Married and wanting to be closer to home, Turner looked for work in Ventura County. He joined the Simi Valley Family YMCA as Branch Manager in January 2023, and by July of the following year, he was running the place as Executive Director.
Turner leads by a few plain principles. "If you're not failing, you're not trying hard enough," he says. He believes movement is medicine, and that discomfort is where growth begins. "Follow your passions," he adds. "Don't say no. Always try."
And now those principles are meeting their largest test. Today, Turner is helping lead a capital campaign called Imagine, Inspire, Invest—an effort to widen the branch's reach to more families, youth, and older residents. For Simi Valley, that means a new full-size gymnasium, an expanded fitness center, three multipurpose rooms, a larger Kids' Zone, and seven family locker rooms. The $7.5-million project aims to reach 3,000 or more households across the city.
The expansion, Turner insists, was never about square footage. More than a decade has taught him what happens when kids feel safe, parents feel welcome, and staff feel valued: the place stops being a gym and starts belonging to the whole city. That is his real goal in Simi Valley—not just a larger building, but facility the town could no longer picture itself without.