Jemima Abalogu is a 17-year-old freshman at Loyola University Chicago, where she is studying Political Science and Sociology. Originally from Austin, Texas, she spent her junior and senior years of high school as the Youth Justice Ambassador for the Texas Criminal Justice Coalition. While there, she researched and worked with students to study Restorative Justice practices as an alternative to Zero Tolerance, resulting in the report “Reversing The Pipeline to Prison in Texas: Ensuring Safe Students and Safe Schools”. Jemima has worked with students across Texas, listening to their stories about the harsh standard of disciplinary policies throughout the state. She believes that the youth justice movement is in an unprecedented moment and, if utilized correctly, can create long-lasting generational change.

CoBella Nicole Bennett works with young Black, brown, queer and trans students and parents to create change in the New York City school system. A former student organizer herself, she is trained in facilitation, moderation and de-escalation tactics that approach organizing from a Black femme lens. She has worked with BreakOUT in New Orleans, Black Organizers Leadership and Development (BOLD) and Black Youth Project 100 (BYP 100 Southern Organizers Chapter). She is honored to bring tools and practices that youth advocates can use to strategize and mobilize their communities. 

Alexis Davis is an enrolled member of the Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa and lives on a reservation in North Central North Dakota. She was a PBS NewsHour Student Reporting Labs Fellow in 2016 and has contributed stories about young oil field workers, youth mental health on the reservation (which was featured in Teen Vogue) and, most recently, #NotThanksgiving for SRL Instagram. Alexis is currently a student at Turtle Mountain Community College, where she is studying Oijbew Language and Education Administration with the goal of helping her community establish an immersion school unique to their language and culture. She is also a Native Governance Youth Rebuilder, a Fresh Tracks participant and has done work across the state of North Dakota while serving as chairwoman of the Turtle Mountain Youth Council.

Born and raised in Phoenix, Arizona, 19-year-old Adrianna Gonzales grew up experiencing unjust altercations with the criminal justice system; including witnessing her dad be brutalized by police many times. At the age of 16, she began organizing with Poder in Action and quickly moved her way up from volunteer to a team lead. Adrianna has organized around several issues, including participatory budgeting and police accountability. She is currently a Chapman Policy Fellow at the organization and leads their youth program, Youth Poder. Adrianna is committed to long-term organizing and plans to someday run for public office. Through her work, she will continue to build power that disrupts and dismantles oppressive systems while fighting white supremacy within local government.

Jared O’Brien, also known by the stage name King Jaybo, is a 22-year-old singer, rapper, songwriter, social justice advocate and community organizer. He was born and raised in Belize but moved to Los Angeles in 2014 with his mother and brothers, who are also musical artists. In 2017, Jared joined the Youth Justice Coalition (YJC) based in South Central LA. As an organizer, his work focuses on dismantling what he calls the “criminal injustice system”, as well as ending deportation and the school-to-jail track. Through YJC, Jared has helped set up a national open-mic music program, music industry orientation program, a rapid response Covid-19 relief fund for undocumented residents and has organized to help end LA County’s $3.5B jail expansion plan and free more than 4,000 people from the LA County Jail. As an artist, Jaybo uses music to connect people in the movement with themes of hope, change, international solidarity, racial and gender justice. Some of his song lyrics have been adopted as protest chants during #BlackLivesMatter demonstrations in Los Angeles.

Jaidyn Probst is an 18-year-old rising sophomore at Harvard College, studying Cognitive Neuroscience & Evolutionary Psychology. She is also an enrolled member of the Lower Sioux Indian Community in Minnesota and is Dakota. Jaidyn has been involved in gender and racial equity work for many years as a member of the Young Women’s Cabinet of Minnesota and the National Young Women’s Cabinet. She also has a strong passion for STEM and has presented and published research on the prevalence of depression in American Indian Diabetics at the National Institutes of Health through their STEP-UP internship. Jaidyn also served as a Youth Ambassador for her community and on the Lower Sioux Health and Human Services Advisory Council, where she helped work on two policies to improve her community’s health. She remains dedicated to social justice work, continuing to advocate for herself and her community.

Laura Rosado is a 20-year-old junior at Florida International University in Miami, Florida. Between her freshman and sophomore years, she participated in the Sierra Club Student Coalition Program (Sprog) in Puerto Rico, where she became politically activated through education and resources for community engagement. Upon her completion of Sprog, she worked as a community canvasser and intern at Power U Center for Social Change and a member of the Youth Leaders Board at S.O.U.L. Sisters Leadership Collective. Through this work, Laura has followed her family tradition of activism through local grassroots organizations that have abolitionist, anti-capitalist, and feminist values to create the conditions possible for a better future.

As the daughter of an undocumented immigrant serving 30-to-life in a New Jersey prison, Tanisha “Wakumi” Douglas has dedicated her life to building leadership among youth most impacted by mass incarceration and other oppressive systems. She is the Co-founder and Executive Director of S.O.U.L. Sisters Leadership Collective based on Miami. Wakumi has worked as a restorative justice circle keeper, social worker, community organizer, trainer and popular educator for community organizations and foundations including the New York Women’s Foundation, NoVo Foundation, United We Dream, Dream Defenders, Harlem Children’s Zone and Children’s Defense Fund. Wakumi holds a bachelor’s degree from Georgetown University and a Master of Social Work degree from Columbia University, where she founded and organized the first “Columbia University Beyond the Bars” conference in 2010 as a student organizer. She is also a 2017 Move to End Violence fellow. Wakumi’s work has been featured in Dr. Monique Morris’ 2019 documentary PUSHOUT: Criminalization of Black Girls in Schools as well as Huffington Post, NPR and Miami New Times. She has spoken on stages at Google, Obama’s White House and the National Educators Association. She has moderated a plenary featuring Dr. Angela Davis and Ericka Huggins on healing in our movements at the 2017 NACRJ Conference and has shared the stage with Congresswoman Ayanna Pressley at the 2019 Congressional Black Caucus Conference.

Hernán Carvente-Martínez is the Founder & CEO of Healing Ninjas, Inc., a health and wellness company aiming to build and deepen community between people on healing journeys. He is a Chicano social entrepreneur, community organizer and leader in the fight to end youth incarceration. Currently, he is also the National Youth Partnership Strategist at the Youth First Initiative, a national campaign focused on closing youth prisons and reinvesting that money into community alternatives. He manages the Youth Leaders Network, which provides young emerging leaders with the training and tools to lead the fight against youth incarceration. He is also an advisor to the Credible Messenger Justice Center, serves as a board member for Community Connection for Youth, and is a grant-making committee member for the New Youth Program of the Prospect Hill Foundation. Previously, he was as a Program Analyst at the Vera Institute of Justice, where he worked to ensure that youth and families were included in statewide policy reform efforts around the country. He’s trained policymakers, non-profits, foundations, and professionals in probation, child welfare, juvenile justice and corrections, on different approaches to empowering directly impacted youth in policy advocacy, community organizing, and in creating a new vision for youth justice in America. He was awarded the “Spirit of Youth Award” by the Coalition for Juvenile Justice and the “Next Generation Champion for Change” award by the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation. He has a B.S. from John Jay College.

Erik Stegman is a Native funder who is a member of the Carry the Kettle (Nakoda) First Nation. He is currently the Executive Director of Native Americans in Philanthropy (NAP), a Native-led organization that advocates for increased investments by the philanthropic sector in tribal organizations and communities. Prior to joining NAP, he led the Center for Native American Youth at the Aspen Institute. Erik has always believed in the power of young people to challenge the status quo and move the world toward a more just future. Early in his career, he served as a queer youth organizer in Seattle. Erik holds a JD and MA in American Indian Studies from UCLA and BA from Whittier College.

Loan Tran is a queer, bilingual writer and organizer of color based Durham. Loan is currently Co-Executive Director at the Southern Vision Alliance, board member at the Highlander Research and Education Center and part of the leadership team at The Rising Majority. Following the passage of HB2 in North Carolina, they served in the leadership body of the Queer and Trans People of Color Collective, and helped create the HB2 Queer Mobilization Fund to move resources for resistance led by queer and trans people of color. Loan has previously served on the board of G.L.S.E.N. and the advisory board of the Emergent Fund. Loan was a featured speaker at the Historic Thousands on Jones St. (HKonJ)/Moral March and has had their writing and commentary featured in numerous publications, including New York Times, The Advocate and Gendered Lives.

Manuela Arciniegas is the Director of the Andrus Family Fund where she manages AFF’s overall grantmaking portfolio of more than 65 organizations. Previously, she served as a Program Officer at AFF. Manuela currently serves as the co-chair of the Funders for Justice/Neighborhood Funders’ Group, the Fund for Women and Girls of Color, the Youth First State Advocacy Fund, the Youth Engagement Fund Advisory Board, the Funder’s Collaborative on Youth Organizing Advisory Board, the New York City Youth Funders, the New York City Capacity Building Funder’s Collaborative and the Steering Committee for Funders for Criminal Justice Reform at Philanthropy New York.

Shawnda Chapman has broad experience developing and implementing research, monitoring and evaluation materials both domestically and internationally, focusing on marginalized and vulnerable populations. Drawing from her own lived experience, her work has focused on racial justice, gender justice, and understanding the ways girls of color get pushed into the criminal justice system. She currently serves as the Director of the Girls’ Fund Initiative at the Ms. Foundation for Women. Previously, she worked as a lead program specialist on a national initiative aimed at preventing and ending girls’ incarceration at the Vera Institute of Justice. She also served as Director of the Beyond the Bars Fellowship program at the Center for Justice at Columbia University.

Born and raised in the Bay Area, Iris Garcia’s work has focused on mobilizing resources for collective activism that advances social change and addresses systemic injustice. She is a Program Officer at Akonadi Foundation, where she focuses on grantmaking that transforms youth justice in Alameda County. She also co-manages the All in for Oakland Initiative to end the criminalization of young people of color in Oakland and Akonadi’s So Love Can Win rapid response fund. Additionally, she co-chairs the California Criminal Justice Funders Group, is a Steering Committee Member of Hope & Heal Fund and Board Chair for San Francisco Women Against Rape. She remains committed to a vision of liberation and community safety based in healing and love. Outside of work, you can find her studying at a local dance studio. She believes deeply in the transformative power of dance and derives much joy from her dance community.

C’Ardiss “CC” Gardner Gleser is an advocate for social impact and social justice work. CC began her career as a project manager in the tech and engineering sector and then transitioned to the nonprofit and, eventually, philanthropic sector to match her purpose to her passion. CC is the first Director of Programs and Strategic Initiatives at Satterberg Foundation, whose mission focuses on promoting a just society and sustainable environment. She also serves on the boards of Andrus Family Fund, Charlotte Martin Foundation and Philanthropy Northwest. CC believes that the voices of those most impacted are the voices that need to be amplified and those with live experiences and the ones with the solutions.

April (formerly Julie Peterson) manages the Youth Justice Portfolio at the Pinkerton Foundation. She joined Pinkerton in 2013 after three years as Director of Public Private Partnerships for the New York City Department of Probation during the Bloomberg Administration. A graduate of Cornell and Harvard Law, she has represented displaced Navajo people in Arizona, worked in private practice and a variety of nonprofits. She has served as a consultant to several foundations as well as the Vera Institute of Justice. A fierce advocate for the incarcerated and, especially, court-involved youth, she has written about the valuable role that “credible messenger mentors”—people with direct experience in the criminal justice system—can play in preventing others from repeating that history.

Galit is a program director at Public Welfare Foundation. She oversees the Foundation’s national juvenile justice work and directs criminal and juvenile justice grantmaking in two of the Foundation’s priority jurisdictions. Before joining the Foundation, Galit was a supervising attorney at the Public Defender Service for the District of Columbia, where she represented people accused of serious felonies, including numerous children being tried as adults. Prior to her work at the Public Defender Service, Galit was one of the original lawyers at the Three Strikes Project at Stanford Law School, where she engaged in a multi-pronged campaign to end California’s punitive three strikes law. Her responsibilities included selecting cases for litigation, partnering with community organizations to promote change through the political process and engaging the media. Galit concluded her time at Stanford by serving as Director of the law school’s Criminal Defense Clinic. Galit started her career as a lawyer at Georgetown University Law Center’s Prettyman Fellowship Program, where she represented young people accused of crimes and taught and supervised law students in Georgetown’s Juvenile Justice Clinic. Galit has her B.A. from University of California at Berkeley, her J.D. from Yale Law School, and an L.L.M. from Georgetown University Law Center.

Gina is currently a program officer for the Human Rights program at the Heising-Simons Foundation, where she is committed to building power and capacity of grassroots organizations working to end the mass criminalization that leads to mass incarceration and immigrant detention. She also serves as co-chair of the California Criminal Justice Funders Group. Previously, she worked for the W. Haywood Burns Institute (BI), a national non-profit organization working to eliminate racial and ethnic disparities in the justice system by creating community-based alternatives to system-involvement and served as a Deputy Probation Officer, where she helped connect system-involved youth and families to community-based, culturally responsive, and healing-informed programs. Gina has experienced the detrimental impact of incarceration first hand, as she has witnessed her friends and family swept up by the criminal legal system. She is committed to developing a deep understanding of the systems that negatively impact Black, Indigenous and other communities of color. She lives in Oakland, California with her son, Isaiah, and life partner, Benito.

Amarilis Pullen believes identity is a central way to navigate spaces and brings her authentic self while working with communities. Her framework for social change focuses on youth developing their critical consciousness as a methodology to dismantle structural oppression and fight for liberation. Amarilis is currently a Program Officer at the Perrin Family Foundation, where she ensures PFF’s grant strategy and programs are aligned with youth-led social change. She also manages PFF’s grantmaking portfolio, capacity building initiatives and cultivates supportive relationships with grantee partners. Prior to joining PFF, Amarilis dedicated 10 years to youth development and managed a vibrant youth development department serving over 1,700 youth annually. As a youth development practitioner, Amarilis designed and implemented initiatives that bridged leadership development, college access, visual arts, social emotional wellness, undergirded by an anti-oppressive lens and analysis. She has expertise in building leadership pipelines, developing workshops, retreats and conferences dedicated to centering the analysis of race, culture and structural oppression in youth work. Amarilis earned a BA in English from Temple University and a Master’s in Social Work from Columbia University.

Maisha Quint’s career has been guided by her commitment to build power and self-determination in marginalized communities. Her two decades of on-the-ground leadership as a social justice organizer, community programs director, arts and policy manager and family advocate are essential to her role as a Program Officer focused on Criminal Justice & Drug Policy Reform work. Prior to her current role, she served as the Multicultural Fellow at the San Francisco Foundation, Community Programs Director at EastSide Arts Alliance, Communications Director and Family Advocacy Coordinator at Legal Services for Prisoners with Children. Maisha has campaigned with Committee to Free the San Francisco 8, Stop the Gang Injunctions Coalition, the Committee for the Defense of Human Rights and the Malcolm X Grassroots Movement. She currently serves as adviser to the Center for Political Education, is a recent fellow of both the Justice Funders Network’s Harmony Initiative and CompassPoint’s Arc Towards Justice Leadership and Solidarity Program, and is presently a poetry fellow with Cave Canem. A Bay Area native, Maisha holds a BA in African American Studies from Barnard College at Columbia University and an MFA in Poetry from Mills College.

Casey Trupin has worked on issues related to youth experiencing homelessness since 1994 in Seattle, California, Washington DC and throughout Latin America. He is currently the Director of the Raikes Foundation’s youth homelessness strategy, which supports efforts in Washington state and nationally to ensure that all youth have a safe and stable place to live. Prior to joining Raikes, he was the Directing Attorney for the Children and Youth Project at Columbia Legal Services, where he engaged in litigation, legislative advocacy and other systemic initiatives to improve outcomes for children, youth and adults experiencing homelessness, as well as those in the foster care and justice systems. Casey has chaired numerous national initiatives related to children and youth, including the American Bar Association’s (ABA) Commission on Homelessness and Poverty and the ABA’s Children’s Rights Litigation Committee. He has authored and edited numerous books and articles on at-risk, homeless and foster children and, in 2011, was awarded the ABA’s Child Advocacy Award—Distinguished Lawyer.

Judy Yu is a program officer in the Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity and Expression (SOGIE) program at Wellspring Philanthropic Fund. She has more than 20 years of experience working to create a more just and liberatory world through supporting the leadership of LGBTQ youth of color and people of color. Judy has led and overseen a variety of innovative youth justice advocacy, youth leadership, and arts programs serving LGBTQ communities and communities of color. Previously, Judy was the Director of the Juvenile Justice Project at the Correctional Association of New York (CA), where she oversaw and managed the CA’s youth justice advocacy reform efforts in New York, including its legislative campaigns, community organizing and engagement, and youth leadership development programs. She also served as Director of Programs at APEX, an Asian American youth organization in NYC, and Associate Director of the youth program at the NYC LGBT Community Center, where she managed the health education, arts and training programs. Judy currently serves on the board of directors of Queer|Art and Funders for LGBTQ Issues. She is also a writer, queer Asian American femme and a believer in the power of a bold lip.

Jessica Pierce is a national leader in civil rights with expertise in youth engagement, organizational development and training. Her passion for organizing started at UC Santa Cruz, where she was elected as Student Union Assembly President for two terms. After graduating, Jessica served as the Organizing Director for the United States Student Association (USSA), where she led campaigns in more than 15 states. During her tenure at USSA, she led efforts to pass the College Cost Reduction and Access Act – the largest increase to grant aid since the passing of the G.I. bill. With leaders of the Generational Alliance (GA), Jessica led efforts to develop Generation Vote, a coalition of 20 organizations invested in building a youth voting bloc that generated over 1 million youth contacts. Jessica then served as the National Training Director for the NAACP, where she helped to coordinate national election efforts for the 2012 election to turnout over 1.2 million Black voters and build uniform capacity and training programs at the national, state and local levels. Most recently, Jessica was the National Chair for Black Youth Project 100 (BYP100), where she focused on capacity-building and sustainability efforts through civic engagement, convenings and trainings. Jessica has committed herself to building power through training, working with organizations such as Wellstone Action, Midwest Academy, and the Center for American Progress. To date, she has personally trained more than 20,000 people. She has been featured in Ebony, PBS Newshour, BET, CNN, and Buzzfeed and has won numerous awards including the 21st Century Innovator Award from the Midwest Academy.

Bryan Perlmutter is a national leader in youth engagement with expertise in grassroots organizing, campaigns and communications as well as organizational, campaign and leadership development. He is the founder and former Executive Director of Ignite NC/Ignite NC Action Fund as well as part of the founding team at the Southern Vision Alliance. These North Carolina-based organizations have become national models for youth engagement, including two feature case studies on their best practices for youth civic engagement. He has also served as the Communications and Development Director for the Youth Organizing Institute, where he was able to help win policy change around school discipline. He was among the first 17 people arrested during the “first Moral Monday” and became a leader in this movement, serving as the youth speaker at many events. He is the recipient of the 2016 Mario Savio Youth Activist award and was the commencement speaker at the 2014 NC State University graduation for the non-profit studies department. Bryan has appeared on MSNBC, MTV, and PBS regarding racial justice and voting rights. He is on the boards of Bull City Safe Schools, Southern Partners Fund and Southern Vision Alliance. He holds a bachelor’s degree in Business Administration with a minor in Nonprofit Studies from NC State University and a master’s degree in Public Administration, Nonprofit Management and Policy from NYU Wagner School of Public Service.