Who's Participating?

Lisa Durán is the Director of Rights for All People, Denver's immigrant rights organizing project, and a co-founder of the Colorado Immigrant Rights Coalition. She chairs the board of the Colorado Progressive Coalition and serves on the Campaign for Community Values National Campaign Council, a project of the Center for Community Change (CCC). Previously she has worked with the Highlander Research and Education Center in Tennessee, Clínica Tepeyac at our Lady of Guadalupe Church in Denver, and the Grassroots Institute for Fundraising Training.

Ashara Ekundayo is an award-winning “cultural Jedi” who explores the dynamics of urban life and identity through her consulting company, BluBlak Media and the non-profit organization she founded, the Pan African Arts Society. Her projects include the nationally broadcast, “Café Nuba,” a monthly spoken-word showcase, and www.podslam.org, a new-media experiment using slam poetry to address challenges such as genocide, homophobia and racism while celebrating the diversity of being and the divine nature of living. She is currently the on-air host for Freespeech TV’s “The Activist Studio.”

Wendy Emrich is a third generation Coloradan who has traveled extensively around the world. She is a peace and environmental activist, philanthropist, fundraiser and single mother of two adopted Haitian children. She has helped several organizations get off the ground including an organic farm school, and two grassroots funding organizations, one funding social change in Colorado and another funding environmental groups in developing countries. She currently sits on the boards of KGNU radio and the Lambi Fund of Haiti.

Jordan Garcia s an Immigrant Rights Organizer with Coloradans For Immigrant Rights, a project of the American Friends Service Committee. He serves as the chair of the board of directors for the Colorado Anti-Violence Program, ending violence within and against the LGBTQ community and volunteers for their 24-hour crisis hotline. He also sit on the boards of the Chinook Fund and the Grassroots Institute for Fundraising Training, and is a member of the Denver Mayor’s LGBTQ Commission.

Gabriel has worked with the Community Resource Center for 9 years, assisting small community groups and nonprofits to strengthen their capacity in the areas of advocacy, constituency building, strategic planning, and community organizing. Some of the issues he has worked with include affordable housing, public education, zoning, rural health care, and community building in neighborhoods. Gabriel is dedicated to the sustainable development of organizations committed to serving people often left out of and ignored in decision making processes. Gabriel was born in London, England and raised in both Santa Fe, New Mexico and Naples, Florida.

A first generation, bilingual woman, Nancy is originally from El Paso, Texas. Currently a Program Officer with the Hispanic Scholarship Fund, she has also worked at Colorado College, the Gill Foundation, La Clinica Tepeyac, and the Colorado Parent Information and Resource Center. Nancy has a B.A. in Philosophy from Colorado College and earned a Master’s in Nonprofit Management at Regis University as a Colorado Trust Fellow in 2005. She volunteers for multiple organizations in her spare time.

An ordained Deacon in the Rocky Mountain Conference of the United Methodist Church, Daniel has worked with migrant workers in the Philippines, as a community organizer in Jacksonville, FL, and as a Union Representative for mental health care employees in Denver, CO. He is currently the Religious Outreach Organizer for the Front Range Economic Strategy Center.

Rev. Paul Kottke serves as senior pastor at University Park United Methodist Church and is the co-founder of the interfaith Forum for Religion and Society of the University of Denver and Iliff School of Theology. Some of his previous positions include founding Executive Director, Denver Urban Ministries, Director of Development, Iliff School of Theology, and Pastor of Warren United Methodist Church. His undergraduate degrees are in Philosophy and English, and he obtained his Masters of Divinity from Iliff.

Indra Lusero is a mother, a writer, a doula, the Assistant Director of the Palm Center, and a law student at the University of Denver. Her practice is based on compassion, inspiration, and deep listening, with particular attention to the most marginalized voices. She wrote and widely performed a one-woman show called “impossible body.” Indra’s experience identifying as a queer, Chicana warrior-poet has put her on the fringes many times, a position that informs her resistance to the convenient, the shoddy, the conventionally accepted, and the merely safe.

Carol Mehesy is the Executive Director of Flobots.org, a non-profit dedicated to creating a community of music fans actively engaged in social change. Prior to this, Carol was the Vice President of Programs at the Colorado Foundation for Families and Children, an organization dedicated to creating to creating policies and programs that are supportive for vulnerable families and children. Carol has over 15 years experience in the non-profit field and firmly believes that the issues facing our communities can only be solved by bringing people together to address them by creating a collective and hopeful vision.

Kris is the former senior producer of Democracy Now!, a national, independent news program, for which she coordinated the daily newscast, helped lead the program’s dramatic expansion, and reported from around the world. She then moved to Colorado to lead community radio station KGNU’s expansion into Denver. She has studied the liberation movement in South Africa, and recently obtained her certification in peacemaking through the Peacemaker Institute of Colorado. She practices meditation, yoga and loves to hike in the mountains.

DeQuan is the former Executive Director of One Nation Enlightened, one of Denver’s first and foremost youth organizing groups. Prior to that, DeQuan served as Director of Training with the Grassroots Institute for Fundraising Training, and Program Coordinator for Chinook Fund’s Social Justice Institute, where he developed curriculum designed to empower low-income people of color to take control of their lives and create better communities. DeQuan has also worked with Action for a Better Community and Californians for Justice.

Rebecca is Vice President of Communications for The Denver Foundation, a community foundation serving the seven-county Metro Denver area. She has worked in the nonprofit and foundation sectors in Denver and the San Francisco Bay Area, with responsibility for communications, donor relations, and fundraising. Prior to her work with The Denver Foundation, Rebecca was communications manager for Peninsula Community Foundation in San Mateo, CA and Vice President of Communications for The Daniels Fund. Rebecca currently serves on the boards of the Colorado Nonprofit Association and the Communications Network.

Jonny 5 (Jamie Laurie) has been writing and performing raps since 1996. He is a lead vocalist with the Denver-based band Flobots, and a founding member of Flobots.org, a non-profit organization integrating music and activism. After graduating from Brown University, he worked for three years in the field of youth development as an Americorps *VISTA. Returning to Denver in 2004, he created a voter engagement campaign and worked as a mentoring/tutoring coordinator at East High School. He enjoys learning new languages and currently speaks and writes various amounts of English, Spanish, Japanese, ASL, French, Arabic, and Mandarin. The Flobots provided instrumentals for the homepage video on this site.

Georgina has made a career as a Video Editor and Camera Operator in the Denver area for over a decade, and has been with Little Voice since 2002. As a member of the Little Voice team, she strives to use her video skills as a way to bridge her interests in social consciousness and activism with her passion for filmmaking. This entails working directly within the community and with organizations to document their work and help them tell their story with integrity, creativity, and professionalism. Georgina enjoys playing music, traveling, the great outdoors, and is in love with Colorado.

Julie is an award-winning producer/director and has been creating digital video productions for 15 years, most notably in the nonprofit sector. A lifelong student of “emotional intelligence”, she puts a strong emphasis on emotions and the human spirit in her work. Recent credits include Emmy-nominated “Sweet Ambition” and “Haiti’s Small Miracles” (both aired on PBS and classrooms around the country), and award-winning video campaigns for over 100 local, national and international nonprofits. Julie believes that social change happens when people overcome their fears and work together from a place of love and compassion. Her company, Little Voice Productions, www.littlevoice.org, produced the videos for this site, and donated much of their time.

After graduating with a degree in marketing and business administration from the University of Colorado, Tony worked briefly in marketing for the IT industry before leaving to focus on socially relevant video production, working with Little Voice Productions, the Colorado State House of Representatives, the Pan African Arts Society, and Free Speech TV, among others. Tony has presented over 100 media education courses with various non-profits and at conferences, schools and universities. Tony is also an experienced video producer with hundreds of films and videos produced for local and national television, film festivals, and community screenings. Deproduction edited the videos for this site.