Brittney Scifres

Brittney Scifres

Brittney Scifres 1

When Brittney Scifres moved from Indianapolis to Salem in the second grade, she quickly found a place to belong. Between sports, 4-H, and making home movies with her brother and friends in a short-lived series they called BLOOPERS, Brittney built the kind of childhood that taught her the value of community long before she understood the word.

One of the experiences that left the biggest impression came through the Washington County Youth Foundation. As a member, Brittney helped with the Happily Ever After Project during its early years. Seeing young people come together to support people even younger planted a seed that stayed with her as she grew older.

Brittney attended Purdue University, earning a bachelor's degree in Mechanical Engineering with a minor in Global Engineering Studies. She later moved to Stuttgart, Germany, where she began her engineering career while also completing a master's degree in Computational Mechanics of Materials and Structures. Today, she lives in San Francisco and works as a Product Design FEA Engineer at Google.

Although she now lives across the country, Washington County has never been far from her mind or her heart. The bug started when Brittney co-established an endowment at Purdue supporting Women in Engineering. But the philanthropic itch didn’t stop there– since then, she’s also supported local organizations including CAST, CASA, the Food Bank, and the Warming Station.

Through her Touch Tomorrow Fund at the Washington County Community Foundation, Brittney hopes to continue investing in the people and organizations that strengthen the same community that helped shape her.

"When you’re younger, you seem to have more time to give, boots on the ground, and that's kind of the most important," Brittney says. "But If I can't be boots on the ground, I want to make sure my job and my life are able to support not only me, but where I come from, and all of these funds that I care about."

Today, one of the people encouraging the next generation of young learners in Salem is Brittney's childhood babysitter, who now teaches STEM at Salem Elementary. It's a small reminder that communities have a way of coming full circle… and that the opportunities we create for today's children often become tomorrow's reasons to give back.