Ella Baker Center Staff & Board

Jakada became Ella Baker Center's Executive Director in 2007, after serving as a lead strategist and chief team member on some of Ella Baker Center's most high profile campaigns for eight years.

Prior to becoming Executive Director, Jakada directed Books Not Bars, taking the ongoing campaign to replace California's abusive youth prisons with effective rehabilitation programs to ever-increasing heights. Jakada helped lead the successful Stop the Super Jail Campaign, a two-year effort to stop Alameda County from building a massive, expensive and remote juvenile hall that it didn't need. He was a leader in the Justice for Moreno and Pacheco Campaign, the successful fight to free two wrongly convicted Latino boys in Solano County. And he ran Ella Baker Center's youth organizing project, Third Eye Movement, during the No on 21 campaign to educate voters about the dangers of Proposition 21, a draconian ballot measure aimed at putting 14-year-olds in adult courts and 16-year-olds in adult prisons.

Before joining Ella Baker Center staff, Jakada was a Constituent Liaison for Oakland City Councilwoman Nancy Nadel. He helped launch or lead a number of important Bay Area organizations, including Empowered Youth Educating Society (EYES), Rising Youth for Social Equality (RYSE) and Underground Railroad (an artist collective).

Born and raised in Oakland, California, Jakada is the father of four powerful and creative young girls. You can read his articles on Ella's Voice as well follow his contributions to City Brights and the Huffington Post.

Jessica comes to the Ella Baker Center, having started her fundraising career in 1997 at the University of Chicago Law School.  Since then, she has worked at various Bay Area organizations serving underrepresented youth of color in education at places such as Outward Bound, the Level Playing Field Institute and Juma Ventures.  She is excited to broaden her scope of work at the Ella Baker Center, where numerous strategies are used to make lasting change in low-income communities through policy, activism, youth engagement and leadership development.

Jessica received her Masters in Social Sciences from the University of Chicago and her Bachelors degree from UCLA.  Originally, she expected to become a professor of Art History but decided her work and passion was really in increasing the opportunities for youth to succeed. Growing up in Los Angeles and having made it successfully through what was then the thriving public school system, she has seen the decline of education and the impact it has had on students in underserved communities.  Jessica lives with her husband, Ken, in Emeryville. In their spare time, they can be found at Point Isabel with their beloved pup, Kumba, or riding their bikes in the East Bay hills.

Meredith is excited to be a member of the Ella Baker Center team and work to build on the legacy of Miss Ella Jo Baker. Most recently she served for over 7 years as the National Program Director of COLAGE, a national movement of children, youth, and adults with LGBTQ parents. Prior to that, she was the Youth Services Coordinator at the Richmond Village Beacon in San Francisco. Meredith holds a BA in Political Science, Jewish Studies and Women's Studies from Wellesley College and is originally from Peoria, IL. Outside of her paid work, Meredith is a drag and burlesque entertainer who uses performance to promote social justice and positivity. She is also an avid reader and foodie, has a secret talent at playing Boggle, and participates in radical Jewish organizing. You can read Meredith's writing on Ella's Voice and in the forthcoming book "Let's Get this Straight" from Seal Press.

Rhina Ramos is a poet at heart. She is deeply moved by words that convey images of a better world. Her professional life includes being a lawyer, a community organizer, and a trainer on issues of education equity, domestic violence, labor rights and international solidarity with her homeland El Salvador.

Rhina prides herself in being an immigrant. She came to the United States at age 14, and understands first hand the pain of invisibility. Fueled by her dream of becoming an advocate, Rhina graduated from Hofstra Law School in 1995. She also holds a Master in Divinity from the Pacific School of Religion in Berkeley, and is working towards becoming an ordained pastor with the United Church of Christ. Her pioneer spirit is guiding her to begin the first Spanish, immigrant LGBT church in Northern California.

Outside of her role as the Ella Baker Center Director of Programs, Rhina can be found enjoying film festivals, good food, and long walks around Lake Merritt.

Shemika Skipworth joins Ella Baker Center as the Director of Finance and Operations with ten years of accounting experience and five years of human resources experience. She's worked in the nonprofit sector for seven years, at Family Builders by Adoption and New Connections. In her free time, Shemika enjoys spending time with her son and her younger sister.

Sumayyah became the Campaign Director of Books Not Bars  after many years of leading the project's policy work, crafting and tracking legislation and conducting extensive research to support the campaign's effort to reform the California juvenile justice system. After working at the Family Violence Law Center and Equal Rights Advocates during law school, Sumayyah came to the Ella Baker Center for Human Rights for a fellowship after graduating. When her fellowship expired, EBC was thrilled to add her to its team as a grassroots organizer. She served as one of the primary people responsible for leading Families for Books Not Bars, the only statewide network of families whose children are locked away in California youth prisons.

As the Books Not Bars Policy Associate, Jennifer combines her extensive policy work experience with her exceptional organizing skills to further the goals of the Books Not Bars campaign through state and local policy change. After graduating from UCLA with a B.A. in English and a B.A. in Korean, Jennifer pursued her interest in the criminal justice system at the University of San Francisco, School of Law. Her course of study has focused on Children's Rights and Juvenile Law. As a pending recipient of the School's Public Interest Certificate, she has had past experience working with organizations such as Learning for Life and Habitat for Humanity. It was during her internship with Books Not Bars as a policy intern when she committed herself to reforming California's juvenile justice system and joined our staff as the Books Not Bars Lead Organizer. When she isn't advocating for the rights of youth, you can find her sipping British high tea or cheering at a Giants game.

Owen is the lead organizer for Books Not Bars, organizing with families impacted by the broken and destructive juvenile (in)justice system. As a student at the Boston University School of Law, Owen worked at Great Boston Legal Services as well as for public defenders and defense clinics in Boston, San Francisco, and Harlem. Before joining Books Not Bars, he spent three years in campaign strategy and organizing at UNITE HERE!, the union representing low-wage workers in hotels, food service, and other industries.

Student organizing is close to Owen's heart since he got his start with groups like Stanford Asian American Activism Committee and Student Labor Action Coalition while studying race, class, imperialism, and patriarchy at Stanford University. He was also an intern at the Organization of Chinese Americans, spent time coordinating a voting rights project in Seattle and experienced an unforgettable year as an organizing fellow at the Boston Youth Organizing Project.

Owen's biggest inspiration is his parents, who were the first members of their families to learn to read and write, and who have always stood up to racism, classism, and xenophobia in their daily lives. When he is not working for social change, you might find him singing karaoke, eating at an Asian dessert cafe, or relaxing at a park.

Lourdes is a Families Organizer with Books Not Bars. She is a founding member of Families for Books Not Bars and assisted in growing the membership from 10 members to over 400 members. She has spoken extensively on the issue of juvenile justice reform in both the English and Spanish media. She is a former member of Coleman Advocates for Youth and she continues to fight for juvenile justice reform locally in San Francisco where she is from and at the state level. She has worked previously as a sales person for various telephone companies and as a childcare provider. These experiences and her experience fighting for justice for her own son have proved invaluable for her as a families organizer.

Katie DeCarlo is honored to be the Campaign Director of the Green Jobs Campaign at the Ella Baker Center.  A self-described political nerd, she brings a wealth of organizational management, candidate campaigning, issue advocacy and public affairs experience to the Green Jobs movement.  This advocacy began young- first, fighting unpalatable tater tots in the elementary school cafeteria and later, homophobia in her high school halls.

Working hard to move through the California Community College system, she is proud to have received her degree in Political Science from the University of California at Berkeley.  A California native, Katie has called the San Francisco East Bay home for most of her life, settling in the rocking city of Oakland.  When not at work, she can be found with friends and family at a farmers market, searching for a unique craft brew store, or at home around the stove.  In addition to creating an environmentally and socially just future, she has a life goal of maybe, someday, beating her mother in Scrabble.

Emily Kirsch is the Lead Organizer for the Green-Collar Jobs Campaign at the Ella Baker Center for Human Rights. Emily is the coordinator of Communities United, a statewide coalition that in 2010 swung the people of color vote to defeat the Dirty Energy Proposition (prop 23). Emily also convened the Oakland Climate Action Coalition which passed the boldest and most equitable Energy and Climate Action Plan of any city in the country. Emily is a leader in coalition building, climate planning and green job creation with expertise in building long-term relationships across sectors, communities and interests. Through her work at the local and state level, Emily is  building the new environmental movement in California. Check out Emily on Ella's Voice.

As a philosophy student at UC Berkeley, Tia adopted the Rawlsian maxim that
any deviation from equality in the distribution of basic goods must benefit the
least well off. Tia’s hella excited to apply this maxim in her work as she develops
environmental and economic state policies that she hopes will best serve those who
need it the most.

When not at work, Tia can be found reading picture-books to pre-school students,
learning Bollywood dance moves at the Berkeley YMCA, picking up a shift for San
Francisco Women Against Rape’s crisis hotline, or biking to the worker-owned
Alchemy Collective Café espresso cart where she enjoys reading the hippest authors
of maximalist literature while her boyfriend proudly serves her the world’s best
Spiced Mocha.

As the daughter of immigrant and working class parents, Denise brings a dedication to working with communities of color and low-income communities. After surviving a repressive dictatorship in their homeland of China, her parents settled in Los Angeles. Denise’s mother found employment as a garment worker, and her father continues to work as a newspaper pressman to this day. Her parents’ working class roots give her a firsthand understanding of the need for good, green jobs.

Denise graduated from UC Berkeley, and feels fortunate to have parents who encouraged her to attend college. Her past professional experiences have ranged from successfully unionizing service workers at Oakland Airport to supporting deportation defense cases in an immigration law firm. Having followed the Ella Baker Center for some time now, she is very enthusiastic to contribute her perspective and passion as a member of the Green Team. In her free time, Denise enjoys cooking, gardening, and biking.

As a first generation Nigerian, Nwamaka did not actively begin pursuing her interest in civil rights and social justice issues until she attended the University of California- Davis. There, Nwamaka edited the African American magazine and organizing the Pan-African Student Organization on campus.

She began volunteering with the Ella Baker Center because she
believed in the organization's commitment in providing innovative solutions for some of the hardest problems affecting our cities.  She first joined our team as the Director of the Green-Collar Jobs Campaign before moving into the leadership of Soul of the City. She is an active member of Ella's Daughters, a national networking organization focused on connecting women activists and organizers from across the nation around issues affecting our communities. Follow Nwamaka on Ella's Voice.

Alicia is a multiracial Xicana feminist, scholar and activist from Altadena, California who believes in the power of love to radically transform systems of oppression. She was raised by a powerful single Latina mother who instilled in her the values of survival, empathy and justice. It was her mother Monica who encouraged her to begin doing social justice work at the age of 15 with the National Conference of Community and Justice in Los Angeles, California-a human relations organization dedicated to fighting bias, bigotry and racism in America.

In 2004 Alicia moved to the Bay Area to attend the University of California, Berkeley where she double majored in Ethnic Studies and Peace and Conflict Studies. Since her transition, Alicia has been very active in teaching low-income youth and organizing around immigrant rights and access to higher education. As an undergraduate, Alicia took up multiple leadership positions on-campus and worked closely with the Multicultural Student Development. In addition, she has done policy advocacy with the Greenlining Institute and worked on youth empowerment through Glide Memorial Church, the Early Academic Outreach Program and Aim High.

This past summer, Alicia became part of the Ella Baker Center familia and now serves as the Soul of the City Campaign Associate. She is simultaneously working towards her M.A. within the College of Ethnic Studies at San Francisco University. Outside of work, you can find Alicia sharing her love for running in East Oakland where she coaches 4th and 5th grade girls with a non-profit prevention program called Girls On the Run. Follow Alicia on Ella's Voice.

Rima Chaudry is the primary grant writer and foundation contact for Ella Baker Center. She attended San Francisco State University where she was the Director of the Women's Center.After graduating with a B.A. in Sociology, she did advocacy work for victims of domestic violence and human trafficking working with Narika, Asian Anti-Trafficking Collaborative (AATC), and the Family Violence Law Center.  In 2009 she moved to Hawaii to study Sustainable Development and work on anti-human trafficking campaigns. She has also served as the Co-Director of Calligraphy of Thought - a Bay Area based Muslim arts collective promoting social awareness and social justice through art.

Rima first learned about Ella Baker Center during the No on Prop 21 campaign in 2000 and has performed spoken word at Silence the Violence events. In her free time Rima enjoys reading and writing poetry, beaches, discovering good music and places to eat.

Molly comes to the Ella Baker Center with experience in nonprofit development and administration, mental health, youth services, education, and locally-focused "slow" food and beverage. Her first job out of college was in China's far West, and later worked as Development Director for the trans-Pacific exchange program Volunteers in Asia. After obtaining her MA in Psychology at New College, she has served as a mental health provider in schools and private practice. She also has case management experience with underserved Berkeley youth through the City of Berkeley's YouthWorks. She studied feminist relational psychotherapy as an MFT intern at the Women's Therapy Center for three years, and now has a small private practice internship in Berkeley.

Molly is thrilled to have skills in one of the "backbone" areas of nonprofit work, and committed to being a part of an agency that shares her passion for social justice and human rights. When she's not being a therapist or assisting EBC's development work, Molly is also an avid bicyclist, urban farmer, weightlifter, cheese and wine aficionado, music geek, and she loves spending hours letting her mind wander at the Museum of Jurassic Technology in Culver City, CA.

Hayes has been providing invaluable technological support to progressive non-profits in the San Francisco Bay Area for almost ten years. He started soon after earning his undergraduate degree, working at a childcare center in West Oakland. Not only did he provide the center with ongoing technical support (like maintaining workstations, servers, and printers), he also developed a state-of-the-art database system to help the center manage complex reporting and attendance requirements. Seeing that non-profits needed help making better use of technology, Hayes joined Techsperience, a small Oakland-based consultancy, in 2000. That was where he first encountered Ella Baker Center, one of the many non-profits he has helped to improve their use and management of technology resources. After helping repair and upgrade the PoliceWatch database, Hayes spent the next five years providing Ella Baker Center with emergency technical support. In 2005, Ella Baker Center decided that Hayes had become too valuable to remain a consultant and brought him on staff as Director of Information Technology. Since then, he has transformed the agency's entire technology framework. Hayes resides in East Oakland with his brother, his dog, two goats, three chickens, and four cars (one biodiesel, another with no engine).

Abel Habtegeorgis has been working around issues of social justice for
more than 10 years with a particular focus on leveraging media for
change and providing mentorship to youth of color. He has advocated for
better recruitment and retention for people of color on college campuses, immigrant’s rights, and a greater investment in education for our disenfranchised youth. He has used his knowledge of public relations to highlight issues around discrimination, violence and social justice while working in the areas of media communication and outreach strategy development. Past jobs include media positions at the Mosaic Cross Cultural Center and the Cesar Chavez Community Action Center. Abel has also spoken at the Tommie Smith and John Carlos “Fists of Freedom” ceremony, Young Leaders Summit, and The Conference of Indigenous Peoples. He is also a graduate of the NCCJ Leadership Today program, the Center for Third World Organizing, and has been inducted into the Associated Students “A.S. 55 Club” for his work in student activism. Abel has also participated in a PBS Documentary Series in the summer of 2006 entitled Roadtrip Nation. Abel is an editor and frequent contributor to Ella's Voice.

Originally from Los Angeles, Ricardo Morán moved to the Bay Area in 2004 to attend UC Berkeley. While pursuing an undergraduate degree in Film Studies, he developed a skill set in media, communications, and web technologies. As a compliment to these skills, Ricardo previously managed a community driven, certified green cafe. Ricardo's neighborhood cafe experience helped him grow Oakland roots and solidified his love for the Bay Area. Outside of work, Ricardo is either riding a bicycle, rooting for the A's, or enjoying a cup of coffee with his sweetie.

With a background and passion for community organizing, research, and  education reform, Tara was fortunate to find her niche at the Ella Baker Center. She started as an intern for Soul of the City, where her faith in finding solutions to Oakland’s seemingly insurmountable problems was restored. Within months of her internship, she joined the Ella Baker Center team as Volunteer Coordinator.

Tara's work has focused on the intersection where education, poverty, and policy meet. In 2006 she authored a chapter in the book Poverty in India, in which she analyzed major lessons learned on poverty alleviation strategies in developing and developed countries. With the conclusion that education was the key to economic development, she focused her Honors thesis in Economics on successful international microfinance programs and their application as an alternative form of education in the United States. After graduating from UC San Diego, Tara taught in a low-performing school in Richmond with Teach for America; and then joined a research team at UC Berkeley to evaluate the efficacy of Teach for America corps members in boosting achievement among low-performing students. Tara has played a key leadership role in a number of successful campaigns, including the University of California campaign that led to the UC Regents divestment from Darfur. Outside of work, Tara enjoys running around Lake Merritt and playing guitar.

Lenore comes to the Ella Baker Center with more than 20 years experience as a business professional in the private sector. Her expertise lies in executive-level management support, project management, and training and development. During, and after, her private sector career she worked with a number of nonprofit organizations in Southern California. At the Center for Parent Involvement in Education (CPIE) she volunteered as an Administrative Assistant along with providing free computer classes for parents in underserved communities.  She also chaired the annual Walter Kudumu Scholarship committee that awards scholarships to graduating seniors in underserved schools. Lenore’s parents encouraged her to advocate for social and civil justice as she came of age during the turbulent 60’s and 70’s. She began as a volunteer at the Ella Baker Center to fulfill her desire of doing something purposeful in her free time. Her hobbies include gardening, fitness, and photography.

Glenn Backes is an independent researcher and public policy consultant, specializing in public health and criminal justice policies. In addition to extensive work in the California State Capitol, Glenn has worked on initiative campaigns to Fix 3 Strikes, and in opposition to the Runner Initiative, which would have spent billions more on prison building, and would have made more young people vulnerable to prosecution as adults Glenn was senior staff at the Drug Policy Alliance for eight years, leading their policy reform efforts in the California from 2000 until 2005. In his previous position as the Director of the Soros Foundation’s International Harm Reduction Development Program, Glenn helped establish drug treatment and HIV prevention projects throughout Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union. He previously worked for five years as a counselor and outreach worker at the Streetwork Project in New York City, where he helped homeless youth develop plans to rebuild their lives. Glenn has consulted for the World Bank, Unicef and the United Nations Programme on AIDS. Mr. Backes holds Masters Degrees in Social Work and Public Health from the University of North Carolina, and lives in Sacramento with his wife and two daughters.

Sandra first joined the Packard Foundation from 2002 to 2004 and was a senior editor/policy analyst for The Future of Children. Sandra rejoined the Foundation in 2005 as program officer and is responsible for managing and monitoring the directed grantmaking funds, which include the President’s and Special Opportunities funds. She also conducts research and works on special projects for President and CEO Carol Larson.

Prior to joining the Foundation, Sandra was an assistant professor of criminology and government and politics at the University of Maryland, College Park. She also served as interim associate director for the Institute for Research on Women and Gender at Stanford University.

Sandra holds a bachelor’s degree in political science from San Jose State University and an M.A. and Ph.D. in political science from U.C. Berkeley. She was a doctoral fellow at Rand Corporation, testified before the U.S. Civil Rights Commission on police accountability, and coedited Racial and Ethnic Politics in California Vol. II, 1999; and was issue editor for Children, Families, and Foster Care, The Future of Children 2004. Sandra is also a child welfare mediator with the Consortium for Children.

Diana is a founding member of the Ella Baker Center for Human Rights, and has remained the behind the scenes support that makes the Center's work possible. Diana has proudly supported the organization's growth from a small-scale operation of one full-time staff into a grassroots powerhouse. Diana received her B.A. in Social Welfare and her J.D. at Hastings College of Law. While she is not focused on the Ella Baker Center, she is operating a private community criminal defense practice, and serving on the boards of Bay Area non-profits Machen Center and TURF (Together United Recommitted Forever.) This San Francisco native is also a real estate broker, supporting activists and other members of her community to empower themselves through homeownership.

Holly was named by PR News as a "Young PR Star" recognized as a PR leader and creative practitioner in the industry. Her work was recently honored by the Council on Foundations with a Gold Award for Public Policy Communications. She was Editor of Loud and Clear in an Election Year, a guidebook created to help nonprofits convey their messages in the crowded election environment.

Her experience includes work as Vice President of Spitfire Strategies, where she created communications programs for grantees of the nation's largest foundations, including the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, and the David and Lucile Packard Foundation.

She was Executive Director of the Communications Leadership Institute, which helps nonprofits use high-impact communications to achieve social change. In addition to guiding CLI's key programs, she led flagship training retreats for nonprofit leaders and grantmakers. Holly also served as Director of the SPIN Project, assisting hundreds of grassroots groups with strategic communications resources. She launched the successful SPIN Academy and created much of the SPIN Project's training curriculum and online tools.

Shiree Teng has worked in the social sector for 30 years as a social and racial justice champion – as a front line organizer, network facilitator, capacity builder, grantmaker, and evaluator/learning partner. Shiree brings to her work a lifelong commitment to social change and a belief in the potential of groups of people coming together to create powerful solutions to entrenched social issues. 

Shiree has an intimate understanding of the issues and challenges related to working in communities of color and dynamics of class, culture and power. Having spent her life in the social sector, Shiree comes to the work from the perspective of building capacity. For the past twelve years, Shiree has worked as a Program Officer and Consultant to Packard Foundation’s Organizational Effectiveness program. Shiree leads the statewide technical assistance team of La Piana Associates to support The California Endowment’s Healthy Returns Initiative. She is a member of the national consultant pool for the French American Charitable Trust’s Management Assistance Program. She has worked on the evaluation and capacity building teams for the Hewlett Foundation’s Neighborhood Improvement Initiative, and is the lead evaluator for NCDI’s five-year capacity building effort funded by the W.K. Kellogg Foundation in Benton Harbor, Michigan and in the Mid-South Delta region. Shiree leads by serving, using a culturally-based approach and relying on core competencies of strategic thinking, listening and synthesizing, connecting, and mobilizing action.