TALLAHASSEE / CONNECTION / INSPIRATION
Kelly Otte
A place to find
each other.
By Rob Urban
Kelly Otte’s work has a useful range. It reaches from a summer camp to a public advisory commission, from a mother’s difficult week to the organizations trying to make the next week easier.
In Tallahassee, she founded the Oasis Center for Women & Girls in 2007 because she saw a missing connection. There were women and girls with different experiences, needs and ambitions, but no single organization devoted to bringing them together across those differences. The center’s founding history describes that gap as its reason for being.
Otte had already worked with people facing some of life’s most difficult circumstances. Creating Oasis widened the space around that work. A woman could need help with an immediate problem. She could also need friends, encouragement, a chance to try something or a place where somebody listened without deciding her future for her.
That breadth appeals to me. We contain considerably more than whichever difficulty has brought us through a particular door.
A wide view
of what
people need.
Otte’s professional background includes leading Refuge House, Tallahassee’s domestic and sexual violence program, and Pace Center for Girls in Leon County. She has worked in women’s centers, rape crisis programs and domestic violence services in Nevada, Virginia and Florida. Her education at the University of North Florida combined criminal justice with a master’s in public administration.
She also became the first executive director of United Partners for Human Services, a coalition of local service organizations, and has taught at Florida State University and UNF. That is a career spent seeing both what people need and what institutions require to keep responding.
The organizations matter here because they show the breadth of her working knowledge. Someone arriving at a service center may be dealing with safety, school, money and family responsibilities at the same time. Experience across those settings can help a leader recognize connections that a narrowly defined job description would miss.
Otte has written about the work, too. Her Notes on Nonprofits columns in the Tallahassee Democrat discuss the experience of running service organizations. In a 2023 column excerpt collected on her author page, she traced her commitment to women back to volunteering at a domestic violence center. Another excerpt begins with her offering to write about the mistakes she has made in nonprofit work.
I like that willingness to be useful in public. Advice becomes easier to trust when the person offering it acknowledges having learned a few things the expensive way. Anyone can produce a list of leadership virtues. Explaining where you stumbled gives the next person something more practical to work with.
Girls need room
to enjoy themselves.
One of Oasis’s most appealing program names is Girls Can Do Anything! It is a summer camp, and the exclamation point feels earned by the intended audience.
The 2026 program included swimming, field trips, physical activity, community service and themed weeks for younger campers, with a leaders-in-training option for ages thirteen and fourteen. The center also offered income-based assistance and a limited number of scholarships.
There is plenty of learning in that arrangement, but it leaves space for the ordinary pleasures of camp: making friends, trying something unfamiliar, being silly and discovering that you can do more than you expected. Girls deserve experiences that help them grow without making every enjoyable afternoon feel like preparation for a performance review.
The leaders-in-training option interests me in particular. It lets an older participant begin taking responsibility in a setting she can understand. Leadership becomes something she can practice with other people, rather than an impressive noun adults keep telling her to aspire to.
A smaller room.
A chance to speak.
During the school years, Girls Circles provide facilitated peer groups for middle and high school students. The center works in schools as well as inviting families to inquire about available groups.
A small group offers a different kind of opportunity from a large assembly. There is time to listen, to return to a subject and to get to know the people in the room. For a teenager, being able to speak without having to command an entire audience can make participation less daunting. Some young people discover their confidence gradually, in company they have learned to trust.
The center’s emphasis on relationships makes sense across those ages. A girl can benefit from both the freedom of a summer activity and the steadiness of a recurring conversation during school. Different settings allow different parts of her to emerge.
There is a public counterpart to that quieter work. In Tom Flanigan’s 2021 WFSU reporting, board member Stephanie Shumate described a fundraising celebration with local performers, including poetry and comedy. Women and girls could bring their talents into view while supporting the places where confidence had room to develop.
Mothers,
daughters
and the space
between.
Oasis’s women’s support groups include a facilitated group for mothers and a program for mothers or female caregivers with middle-school daughters. The latter uses shared activities and conversation to help participants understand one another’s perspectives.
Anyone who has tried to discuss a difficult subject across a kitchen table can appreciate the value of a little structure. Good intentions do not automatically produce a good conversation. A neutral setting and a capable facilitator can give people a way to begin without immediately returning to the last argument.
The mothers’ group also makes room for joyful experiences alongside difficult ones. That is a small detail I appreciate. Support should allow people to share the good news as well as the problem they need help carrying. Being known by other people includes both.
Otte’s work connects with Connie Siskowski’s attention to young caregivers in this respect: family responsibilities are easier to understand when someone takes time to hear the experience of the person carrying them.
A need people
can meet together.
Some needs are more tangible. Oasis participates in Tallahassee’s Menstrual Equity Coalition, alongside organizations including the Junior League, Whole Child Leon and the Foundation for Leon County Schools. The coalition collects and distributes period products and provides education.
That work treats a basic necessity as something a community can help make available. It also gives residents straightforward ways to contribute, from donating supplies to serving as a collection site. An issue that can be uncomfortable to discuss becomes a practical task people can share.
Taking experience
into public decisions.
Oasis also staffs the Tallahassee-Leon County Commission on the Status of Women and Girls. The county established the advisory body in 2011, and the city joined in 2013. Its role includes raising awareness and advising local government on issues affecting women and girls.
That creates a connection between direct service and civic discussion. Experiences heard in a community organization can inform questions about education, employment and opportunity. The person who needs support today may also be living with a problem that deserves wider attention.
Room to begin.
Otte’s contribution is the persistence of that connection. She has worked in crisis services, helped service organizations cooperate, written for others doing the work and built a center where women and girls can meet across generations. Each activity gives the others more context.
The name Oasis suggests somewhere to pause. What she has built also gives people room to begin: a first conversation, a new friendship, a summer experience or the realization that their point of view deserves to be heard.
Oasis’s founding values include a conviction that each woman understands her own experience and has the right to make choices about her life. I admire how much restraint that asks of an organization built to help. Experience can make a leader useful. It can also tempt her to supply the answer before someone has finished explaining the question.
Otte’s work makes room for a different relationship: people finding resources, company and encouragement while remaining the authors of their own decisions. A girl’s ambitions can surprise the adults around her. A mother can discover something she wants for herself. The room has done its job when the people inside it feel free to grow in directions of their own.
About Kelly and Oasis
Who is Kelly Otte?
Kelly Otte is the founder and executive director of the Oasis Center for Women & Girls in Tallahassee. Her career also includes leadership at Refuge House, Pace Center for Girls in Leon County and United Partners for Human Services.
What does the Oasis Center offer?
Oasis offers programs including Girls Can Do Anything! summer camp, Girls Circles, and support groups for women and families. It also participates in menstrual equity work and staffs the Tallahassee-Leon County Commission on the Status of Women and Girls.
When was the Oasis Center founded?
Kelly Otte founded the Oasis Center for Women & Girls in 2007 to bring women and girls together across different backgrounds and experiences.
Sources: Oasis’s founding history, staff biography and program descriptions, checked September 2026; Tom Flanigan’s October 2021 WFSU reporting; and the published excerpts of Kelly Otte’s 2023 Tallahassee Democrat columns on her author page. The column excerpts are identified as such in the article. Reflections are Rob Urban’s.
If you enjoy this kind of writing, or would like to talk about finding the words for your own work, meet Rob.