Personal Biography:

I have lived in West Oakland for my entire life, with the exception of four years spent at Macalester College in freezing St. Paul, Minnesota. As a woman of color from a low-income community, I have seen the power of community organizing to bring visionary solutions to simple problems like not having curbs and sidewalks in my neighborhood and more complicated ones like re-routing the Cypress freeway after the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake and stopping the INS from building a detention center in our community.

As I have grown older and been privileged to study political science, geography, and public policy and to work with young people in many capacities from solving textbook math problems to identifying strategies to gain a stronger voice in their schools and communities, my commitment to community organizing as a means of connecting the public to decision-makers has remained strong.

I began working at Freedom Archives two years ago. I was charged with working with a diverse group of students, historians, activists, radio producers, and educators to make the materials that comprise the nearly 7,000-hour archive more accessible to the public. Through a strong program training students and other young people in audio preservation and production, historical research, and communications, we continue to develop their ability to make connections between historical events and the struggles that persist today for young people in finding their voices and a means of expressing them. I am challenged, inspired, and driven by this struggle each day and become newly committed to supporting and empowering them as they take part in it.