From Collaboration to Co-Liberation: Reimagining Partnerships for Healing | 6.21.23

Oakland Youth Poet Laureate: Nadia Elbgal | Spoken Word Performance

The Ever Forward Club’s Taking Off The Mask Workshop helps youth, communities, and organizations unlock their potential and transform the way they Interact and Relate to Each Other and their Communities.​

Program Innovation Leader, Mindfulness, Trauma and Racial Healing, pioneered and leads the unique effort to bring mindfulness into public health practices and programs though the Trauma Informed Systems of Care Initiative in the San Francisco Department of Public Health. ​

Her goal is to improve the organization’s ability to manage change, stay resilient, inspire growth, and become a mindful culture that leads and serves with compassion.​​

At her core Jenée is a champion and accelerator of human flourishing.

Roza Do, Re:verb Health Consulting, will share the evaluation results from the Amplify Healing Connections program. Program participants from CCI partnership programs (Amplify Healing Connections and Catalyst) will share their work and progress to date. Colette Reid-Horn, Horn Development Consulting, will be facilitating this fireside chat.

• Amplify Healing Connections: Timiza Wash, Healthy Black Families Collaborative & Emma Fay, Central Coast Violence Prevention Collaborative
• Catalyst: Charis Baz & Lisa Marie-Riley, County of Marin Health and Human Services

Jenée Johnson, San Francisco Department of Public Health & The Right Within Experience 

Mindful Movement Builder and Thought Leader 

“Surviving is important. Thriving is elegant.” Maya Angelou 

 Jenée Johnson, Program Innovation Leader, Mindfulness, Trauma and Racial Healing, pioneered and leads the unique effort to bring mindfulness into public health practices and programs though the Trauma Informed Systems of Care Initiative in the San Francisco Department of Public Health. Her goal is to improve the organization’s ability to manage change, stay resilient, inspire growth, and become a mindful culture that leads and serves with compassion.  

At her core Jenée is a champion and accelerator of human flourishing. 

Her work has been featured in various publications, including Mindful Magazine-where she is a regular contributor and where she has been recognized as a leader and agent of change in the mindfulness movement.  

Jenée is the Founder and Curator of The Right Within Experience, a mindfulness immersion program that reclaims humanity, joy, and wellbeing for people of African ancestry through mindfulness practices. These are the human rights and exalted emotions that are eroded in Black lives through the consistent exposure to the trauma of racism. The Right Within Experience expands the scope of mindful practice to acknowledge its ancient African lineage and increase access and relevance to people of African ancestry. The program promotes healing and sovereignty for Black people and is curated for those on human missions of all kinds including community service, social justice, and entrepreneurship. 

For 15 years, she served as the Director of the San Francisco Black Infant Health Program, a program which provides direct service to Black pregnant women and new mothers to address the health disparities in infant and maternal mortality.  

Jenée Johnson is a professional co-active coach and certified trainer and practitioner in mindfulness and emotional intelligence based on the latest neuroscience. She is a certified HeartMath trainer, Emotional Emancipation Circles Facilitator (Association of Black Psychologists) and certified to teach Femme! A meditative movement and wellness modality for women. She is a keynote speaker, workshop curator, coach, and consultant with Sankofa Holistic Counseling Services and NTU Wellness Center in Oakland, and on the advisory board of Search Inside Yourself Leadership Institute.  

Jenée is a native New Yorker with Caribbean and Southern roots. She resides in Oakland, California with her husband and young adult son. 

www.jeneejohnson.com 

Roza Do, Re:verb Health Consulting

Roza (she/her) is Principal of Re:verb Health Consulting and brings over a decade of experience working with nonprofit and philanthropic organizations, health systems, and cross-sector initiatives across California and beyond to support capacity building and collaboration, with a focus on strengthening the health care and social safety net. She specializes in program and strategy development, evaluation, and coaching that integrates human-centered design, quality improvement, and relational change to drive continuous learning, collective action, and community care. Roza also serves as Health Equity Senior Associate at HealthBegins leading strategic learning and evaluation across the organization to advance impact of programs and initiatives focused on supporting Medicaid-serving organizations to move upstream and address structural and systemic barriers to health and racial equity.Aside from consulting for mission-driven organizations, Roza is the touring DJ for Oakland-based artists and activists – journalist and emcee, Rocky Rivera, and Grammy Award-winning children’s music collective, Alphabet Rockers. Roza holds joint masters degrees in Public Health and City and Regional Planning from the University of California, Berkeley.

Nadia Elbgal, Oakland Youth Poet Laureate

Nadia is a Bay Area native raised in Oakland, California. She has lived in The Bay her whole life in both Oakland and Berkeley as she traveled between her parents’ houses. Nadia went to Berkeley schools and graduated from Berkeley High in June 2022. She took a few classes at Berkeley City College during her gap year and plans to continue her education as a full-time student in Fall 2023. Nadia is a Yemeni-American Muslim woman who advocates for and raises awareness on topics relating to the Middle Eastern and Muslim communities. She has been a literacy mentor to Yemeni students in elementary schools that are part of the Oakland Unified School District, as well as a teaching assistant in a mental health class at Hoover Elementary School’s summer program. She was also a counselor at Camp Elmwood in Berkeley. As an artist-activist, Nadia’s themes range from the Middle East to American cities: the perspectives, experiences, and effects on people from both sides. She is an older sister and cousin whose values and insight come from her upbringing in mixed cultures and families. Nadia identifies as a storyteller: an umbrella term that includes her creativity as an actor, playwright, lyricist, and poet. Her interest in theater began in 4th grade when she tried out for the school play. In 5th grade, she and a group of students wrote and performed a play adaptation of By the Great Horn Spoon. Nadia joined the summer camp at Berkeley Repertory Theatre in her Freshman year of high school, then went on to join the Gritty City Repertory Youth Theatre collective in her Sophomore year. Through the Gritty City playwriting program, she has written her own short play, Circles, which was performed over Zoom in 2020. During her middle school years, Nadia participated in a hip hop therapy program in Oakland called Beats, Rhymes, & Life. She was a part of two showcase events and is featured on two albums. She is currently working on writing her own EP. Nadia feels that she has always been a poet, but became comfortable with the title when her first high school drama class assignment was to write and perform a monologue. The same drama class teacher wrote her first recommendation for the Oakland Youth Poet Laureate Program, where she won the title of 2021 Oakland Vice Youth Poet Laureate. In her senior year of high school, she had an AP Literature teacher who wrote her second recommendation and supported her through her 2022 Youth Poet Laureate year. Since then, she has performed at various locations ranging from writing workshops in schools to galas. Nadia is incredibly passionate about bettering her communities. She is unafraid to speak her truth and firmly believes that sometimes the facts that make people uncomfortable are the most important to hear. She plans to get a degree in social work and pursue a career that will keep youth out of jails. 

Colette Reid-Horn, Horn Development Consulting

Mr. Branch, born and raised by a single mother on welfare in Oakland, California, took the road less traveled to get out of the ghetto and attended one of California’s premier engineering colleges, California Polytechnic – San Luis Obispo. Ashanti studied Civil Engineering and worked as a construction project manager in his first career. After tutoring struggling students and realizing his true passion was teaching, Mr. Branch changed careers. He had suddenly found the “fire” that was missing in his life and he hoped to ignite a similar enthusiasm in his young students.

In 2004 as a first year teacher, Ashanti started The Ever Forward Club to provide a support group for African American and Latino males, who were not achieving to the level of their potential. Since then, The Ever Forward Club has grown to serve both young men and women and become a 501(c)3 non-profit organization. The Ever Forward Club has helped 100% of its members graduate high school and 93% of them have gone on to attend college.

With over 19 years mentoring youth and 10 of those years as a math teacher educating inner city youth, Ashanti was awarded with a Fulbright Exchange Fellowship to India, a Rotary Club Cultural Ambassadorial Fellowship to Mexico and a 2010 Teacher of the Year Award from the Alameda-Contra Costa County Math Educators. Mr. Branch is on a mission to change the way that students interact with their education and the way schools interact with students.

Carla Hinojosa, Arte Nopal

Charis (pronounced Care-iss) stands for autonomy, respect, equity and compassion for herself and others.  Her favorite thing is leading big change work in partnership with diverse staff at all levels across organizations and with community.  She believes trust is what makes everything possible. Currently she works for Marin County Health and Human Services where she co-led a 2022 Catalyst Innovation project with Lisa-Marie Riley and others that turned into the Seeds of Hope: a program to increase connection in the homelessness community to reduce deaths related to alcohol and other drugs.

Lisa-Marie Riley joined Marin’s Catalyst team to give back what has been given to her and make the behavioral health system better. Lots of her loved ones have been plagued by mental health and substance use challenges, and she has been sharing her story to spread the belief that recovery is possible. Her hope is that she can help be a part of changing the system for the better, and to do that, she is pursuing a path of peer specialist certification. Lisa-Marie values integrity and compassion.  She believes collaboration is the way to bridge the communication gaps between organizations and the people whose voices are not heard.

Emma is the Teen Wellness Coordinator for the Community Action Partnership of San Luis Obispo County (CAPSLO). She is responsible for the implementation of multiple grants serving adolescents with sexual health education, violence prevention, and farm-to-school programs. She is committed to co-creating solutions with young people and supporting their pathways to leadership. Emma is currently a Bloomberg Fellow in Adolescent Health at Johns Hopkins where she is completing a Master in Public Health degree.

TC Duong (he/him) is a program officer who leads a strategy to promote multisector collaboration within the Foundation’s work to align systems with community priorities. He has an extensive career in advocacy, policy, nonprofit program management, training, and technical assistance.

Most recently at the Building Movement Project, TC brought together learning communities to effectively shift service organizations to a social change model. As the community health and health equity program manager for the Blue Cross Center for Prevention in Minnesota, he managed community partnerships and developed training and convenings on building equity and strengthening relationships. He was the fellowship program manager for the Rockwood Leadership Institute, managing fellowship cohorts for immigrant rights leaders in California, LGBTQ advocacy leaders, and activists in arts and culture. Prior to his time at Rockwood, he served as the program manager for Asian Pacific Partners for Empowerment Advocacy and Leadership (APPEAL). In this role, TC provided cross-cultural organization development and leadership training to community organizations in Minnesota.

TC has worked on advocacy and training for several Washington, D.C.-based organizations such as the National Coalition for Asian Pacific American Community Development (National CAPACD), Southeast Asian American Advocacy Initiative at the Southeast Asia Resource Action Center (SEARAC) and Parents, Families and Friends of Lesbians and Gays (PFLAG).