Team
Staff
Nour Elkhattaby Strauch, Executive Director
Nour Elkhattaby Strauch is a community organizer and facilitator from Casablanca, Morocco, currently living in Western Massachusetts. Nour has been organizing and facilitating YES! Jams since 2012, including the Middle East Leadership Jam, the Northeast Changemakers Jam, the Men Raised as Men Jam and others. He is now starting a new adventure as …
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Jovan Julien, Alignment and Storytelling Integrator
As a storyteller, organizer, and facilitant educator, Jovan has been working for years in the practice of building Beloved Community through the practice of radical witnessing. He currently makes home in Atlanta, Georgia, by way of Rhode Island, Massachusetts, New Jersey, and Haiti. After 21 years being incubated in the North, he began to make his way…
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Nandita Batheja, Community Learning and Partnerships
Nandita Batheja (she/they) is the Cultivator of Community Learning and Partnerships at YES! A can’t-even-pretend-to-fit-in-a-box-er, Nandita is a facilitator, artist, question-asker and community weaver who works across sectors, advocating for justice, liberation and creative being. They believe imagination is crucial to change-work and that play is freedom’s underdog…
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Joy George, Collective Wisdom and Communications
Joy George (she/her) focuses on Collective Wisdom and Communications at YES! Born and raised in the Bronx as the daughter and sister of Nigerian diaspora, Joy has found herself at the intersections of love, transformation, restoration, human rights and social change in her work and activism. After graduating from Swarthmore College with BA in Political Science…
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Joanie Smalley, Operations Manager
Joining the team in July 2015. She brings with her a passion for supporting people. This passion took her to Australia in 2008, where she studied Holistic Kinesiology, earning a diploma from the Australian College of Complementary Medicine, in 2010. Today, she has a Holistic Kinesiology practice based in Oakland, CA. Prior to moving to Australia…
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Board & Advisors
Alia Lahlou, Board Chair
Alia grew up in Morocco and is constantly moving through different spaces looking to learn andunlearn, to grow, and to love. She has a master’s degree in international relations but has learnedeverything she knows outside the classroom. …
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J. Manuel Herrera, Board Member
Manuel, an elected official in San Jose/Silicon Valley, envisions the transformation of the public square in our communities and an emerging 21st Century politics that is whole, generative, and personally transformative. His career is in public policy and administration, working with city managers, elected officials, and nonprofit agencies. Currently…
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Austin Willacy, Secretary
Austin is a critically acclaimed singer/songwriter who has toured extensively throughout the U.S and Europe as a member of The House Jacks, a multi-award winning a cappella rock band currently featured on The Sing Off on NBC and on Monday Night Football on ESPN. He is the director of ‘Til Dawn, Youth in Arts’ award-winning teen a cappella…
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Angela Sevin, Board Member
Angela is a white, cis female, rural educated, middle class raised educational consultant, facilitator and visual artist. Passionate about racial equity and stewarding the world we inhabit, she works holistically in collaboration with cutting edge leaders, developing solutions with and for resilient communities. After earning a graduate degree in…
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Joyous Dawn, Board Member
Joyous is a singer-songwriter, budding herbalist, circle facilitator, and youth educator. A founding member of Thrive Choir in Oakland, CA, Joyous delights in vocal harmonies that uplift spirits, and ignite social movements. Joyous completed a B.A. in American Studies with an emphasis on Race and Ethnic Studies from Wesleyan University, and…
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Vincent Felice, Board Member
Vincent is a small farmer and entrepreneur dedicated to connecting values, action and fun in the field. He has run a successful vegetable farm in Seattle, started an all-organic, all-local soup business, become a night sky tour guide, sailed thousands of miles on a classic wooden boat, and most recently, grown heirloom grain in California…
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Phoenix Michele Bissonnette Robbins, Treasurer
As a teenager, Phoenix Michele volunteered for peace in Russia, and studied ecological and spiritual communities around the globe. In 1994, at age 18, she joined “YES!”, with which she toured the United States speaking to more than 50,000 students in high school assemblies. In 1998, she became a founding partner in YES!’s birth as an independent…
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