Our People
SJPLA Team
As an organization, we actively seek to challenge white-dominant norms and co-create a culture where we can all bring our full selves.
Healing Justice & Wellbeing Senior Manager
Alli brings a background of project management, administrative operations, event logistics, and wellness work to SJPLA.
Executive Director
Christine is passionate about channeling our collective power to create enduring justice and community.
Program Manager-Racial Equity in Homelessness
Frank brings to SJP over 16 years of experience in creative marketing, digital engagement strategies, and communicating complex issues into compelling brand stories for non-profits.
Program Manager
Michelle has a mission: create spaces where everyone feels like they belong. They value connectedness, justice, and personal growth.
Partnerships Manager
Sharon brings to SJPLA a background in the social change, innovation, and human rights space in Australia, South Korea, and the U.S.
Senior Communications Manager
Teresa has spent her career communicating for nonprofits, private industry, athletics teams, and candidates.
Director of Operational and Financial Sustainability
Yolanda enjoys helping people embrace who they are and connecting them to work they love.
SJPLA Board
Eric Ares serves as Housing and Homelessness Director for Los Angeles City Councilmember Eunisses Hernandez. Prior to this he was the Sr. Manager of Strategy and Systems Change at the United Way of Greater Los Angeles.
Co-Chair
Chris Ko serves as VP, Impact & Strategy for the United Way of Greater LA overseeing its efforts to combine community power, donations, and new solutions to support neighbors in crisis and close the prosperity gap.
Paul is best known as a communications and public affairs strategist. Paul has over 25 years of experience working to engage and influence a range of audiences on key issues such as juvenile & criminal justice, racial equity, homelessness and health care.
Margaret Hardin is a global products CEO and board director who helps scale B2C and B2B2C companies by building passion brands, creating go-to-market strategies, and evaluating acquisition opportunities.
Michelle’s career has been defined by standing up for equity and access for disenfranchised individuals and communities and is currently the CEO of LIFT.
Treasurer
Vera is a program director at the Weingart Foundation where she manages the John W. Mack Movement Building program, capacity building partnerships and grantmaking in Ventura County.
Amber Sheikh is Chief Impact Officer at Sheikh/Impact, where she leads an incredible team who tenaciously work to raise the capacity of organizations trying to solve the toughest issues and assist our Los Angeles communities through organizational development, fundraising, and communications.
Helen Leung is the Executive Director of LA Más, a community-based organization that builds collective power in Northeast Los Angeles.
Co-Chair
Sam is the Founder & Executive Director of LA Room & Board. With nearly 14 years of experience in higher education as a student affairs practitioner, most of his career has been built in Housing & Residential Education.
As 2023 comes to a close, we’re bidding farewell to Kelli Poole after three and a half amazing years at SJPLA. We’re closing out the year by reflecting on her contributions and the indelible mark she has left on our organization and community.
Challenging traditional nonprofit leadership styles, Liberatory Leadership offers a fresh, authentic approach rooted in community and equity. Dive in to discover which leadership style truly aligns with your values and fosters genuine community engagement.
Navigating the decision between our two new courses, Liberatory Workplaces and Liberatory Leadership? Our latest blog provides an in-depth breakdown to help you choose the course that aligns best with your career stage and objectives for justice-centered growth.
A Liberatory Workplace is an organization that consciously divests from white supremacy culture and challenges dominant workplace norms. Instead, it embraces a culture of appreciation, trust, wellbeing, and liberation.
In December, our Systems Change Accelerator cohort and Racial Equity in Homelessness Fellowship cohort came together for a visioning exercise focused on creating a liberatory workplace. Together, they developed 12 organizational leadership strategies to build a liberatory workplace that you can begin today.
Each year, our Fast Pitch coaches act as key partners in amplifying the stories of our Accelerator leaders and embodying the values we wish to see in the world. Recently, we held a reflection session with our Fast Pitch coaches to build community and explore coaching norms to consider ways to take a more liberatory approach.
Quiet Time sounds simple enough, but the goal of Quiet Time is that it creates individual and collective renewal and doesn’t cause additional stress. We’ve learned some lessons about how to prepare for Quiet Time individually and as a team.
“My #1 love language is quality time so I love nothing more than to just sit and chat with people.“
We are seeking a full-time Administrative Coordinator to work closely with our Manager of Sustainable Operations in supporting our whole team to coordinate events, meetings, and trainings and manage organizational and program data.
“I’m big on finding any reason to celebrate, such as friendaversaries and dog birthdays!”
“Y’know, usually I celebrate new beginnings, especially heading into a new job with a simple dinner out with the family. But in this go around, I decided to take some needed time off to recharge and rest.”
“I've spent most of the time just learning about the injustices that exist in LA and continue to every day.”
Kelli joins SVPLA as Director, Racial Equity in Homelessness Initiative, leading the vision and design of our new initiative to create systemic change within the homelessness response system
Program Operations Manager
Anh’s mission in life is to contribute more good to the world.