Meet Project VOYCE’s Dream Team!
Vanessa Roberts
Vanessa Roberts, Executive Director (she, her, hers) first fell for the mission, vision, and people of Project VOYCE in the Spring of 2016 when she was brought in as part of a team of scholars charged with revitalizing the summer VOYCE Academy curriculum. Vanessa was also trusted to serve as the lead facilitator for the new curriculum that summer and as most PV students and staff will tell you, she just never left! She is thrilled to now take on the role of Executive Director, focusing on staff development, organizational capacity-building, resource development, program development, internal operations, and grant writing. Vanessa earned her BA from Colorado College and a MA in Performance Studies from the Tisch School of Art at NYU and is a current doctoral candidate in the Department of Sociology at the University of Colorado-Boulder. Her academic concentrations are race & ethnicity, cultural sociology, and youth development. In addition, she serves as a co-leader of the Innovative Research Action Group, an initiative launched by Create Justice and Carnegie Hall dedicated to leveraging research as a means for supporting arts intervention programs for system-impacted youth.
She can be reached at vanessa@projectvoyce.org
Alma Urbano Torres
Alma Urbano Torres, Program Manager (she, her, hers) is an emerging leader and educator serving as Program Manager at Project VOYCE. She joined the Project VOYCE team after receiving her Bachelor of Arts in Sociology from Kenyon College in Ohio in 2018. She herself is an alumna of the Project VOYCE programing where she learned to value her own narrative while addressing issues of health and environment in her community. In addition to managing various programming aspects of Project VOYCE, Alma is an active community advocate and partner representative of the Globeville Elyria-Swansea Coalition.
A Mexican immigrant and current DACA-holder, Alma is thankful to her Northeast Denver community who has loved and supported her family since they first arrived in 2006. Growing up in Denver as a young immigrant and woman of color is also what sparked her own interest in youth organizing. Now, and in the future, she hopes to continue her work empowering and partnering with the younger voices of Denver, Colorado to create real lasting change. You can reach her at alma@projectvoyce.org.
Briannah Hill
Briannah Hill, Social Media and Communications Coordinator (they, them, their) serves as Project VOYCE’s Social Media and Communications Coordinator and in-house Graphic Designer. Born and raised in the Park Hill neighborhood of Denver, Briannah Hill has been a local activist, educator, and mentee to the Colorado community for the majority of their life. Bri identifies as a Blaqueer, Nonbinary person of good heart. They are a graduate of Denver George Washington High School, and received a BA in Ethnic Studies and a minor in Ecology and Evolutionary Biology from the University of Colorado Boulder in 2019. They have an ongoing commitment to working very closely with the Queer Trans Community of Color, and strengthening their skills as a radical leader in the movement for Black Lives.
They are excited to bring experiences in looking beyond the margins for answers to strengthen social justice practices. And they are eager to see the possibilities that youth have to empower themselves and become intellectuals. When Bri isn’t doing something that takes up their time, they enjoy plants way more than their wallet can afford, performing poetry/spoken word.
You can reach Bri at briannah@projectvoyce.org
Tiya Trent
Tiya Ashantia Trent (she, her, hers), Program Facilitator is a community activist, organizer, mentor and mother to two young men. She received her BA in Theater and Ethnic Studies from the University of Colorado, Boulder where her passion for acting grew even bigger when she joined the Interactive Theater Project and began to act for social justice. Tiya also received a degree in Women and Gender Studies. After receiving her bachelor’s degree Tiya went on to pursue a Masters Degree in Education and has been working with young folks in various communities and capacities ever since. In addition, to working with young folks in the community, Tiya has served on the organizing committee for the March for Black Women since its inception, three years ago. Tiya is excited to be able to combine her love of speaking, community engagement and working with young folks in her new role at Project VOYCE.
In Tiya’s spare time you can find her performing African Dance, modeling in fashion shows, acting in theater productions and even, mountain bike riding with a group of African American women. One of Tiya’s love languages is acts of service, so if you see her with treats eat!
You can reach Tiya at tiya@projectvoyce.org
Roshan Bliss
Roshan Bliss, Organizing Director (he, him, his) is a community organizer, inclusiveness trainer, and mediator who has lived in Denver since 2010. He originally came to Colorado to pursue graduate studies in conflict resolution, but a racially exclusive campus climate and his soaring student debt burden ultimately pushed him out of the university and into social justice. His negative experiences in schooling led him to spend several years as a student organizer building the CO Student Power Alliance and to co-founding the Student Voice, Student Vote coalition to win 16-year-olds the right to vote in school board elections. Since then, Roshan has also been an active part of several national and international movements, including the international student movement and the Black Lives Matter movement, and he has become a local leader in police accountability and criminal justice reform in his role as a co founder of the Denver Justice Project. He is excited to bring his experience in social justice movements and his passion for empowering young people and democratizing education to the work of Project VOYCE.
Roshan holds a BA in Philosophy & Religious Studies from Purdue University and his graduate studies in conflict resolution at the University of Denver focused on civic theory, participatory democracy, and public deliberation. In past professional roles, Roshan spent several years serving as the Youth Engagement Coordinator for the
National Coalition for Dialogue & Deliberation, a national network for professionals in dialogue & democratic engagement, and most recently served as the criminal justice organizer for Together Colorado, a progressive, multi-faith community organizing institution. Roshan loves good political conversation, the power of people, and sunsets, and he hates the sound of styrofoam squeaking against itself. He can be reached at roshan@projectvoyce.org
LaRae Goldsmith
LaRae Goldsmith (they, them, theirs//she, her, hers) is Project VOYCE's first Youth Organizing Lead. LaRae has been working to engage young people as partners and leaders in learning, liberation, and systems transformation for the past 5 years. They are a resident of the Globeville community and recently moved back to Denver from Portland, Oregon. While living in Portland, LaRae worked with the Immigrant and Refugee Community Organization (IRCO) as a Schools Uniting Neighborhoods (SUN) Program Coordinator. Through this work she had the opportunity to collaborate with a diverse group youth and adults to create powerful school-based cultural programming and develop stronger support systems for marginalized youth to reach their academic, college, and career goals. LaRae also engaged in community organizing efforts with a cohort of other Latinx community leaders through Edúcate Ya and created the "Latinx in PDX" workshop and campaign to bring the diverse stories and faces of Latinx youth to light in a city where erasure of communities of color is commonplace.
Prior to their move, LaRae spent several years in Fort Collins working in education with nuerodiverse populations, particularly youth and young adults on the autism spectrum. They are a Positive Youth Development (PYD) facilitator and have provided trainings to various youth-serving organizations on how to authentically partner with youth and integrate equity as a central tenant of their work. LaRae believes in the (re)imagining, restoring, and (re)creating of systems that encourage reciprocity and being in right relationships with ourselves, each other, and the environment.
Their approach to organizing is to facilitate relationships and movements that are accessible, intentional, intergenerational, multicultural, and queer and trans affirming. Her approach to youth organizing specifically involves challenging systems of power, removing barriers, and honoring the brilliance of young people and other marginalized populations so their voices can be amplified to create change.
LaRae can be reached at larae@projectvoyce.org
Tezcatli Diaz
Tezcatli Diaz, Civic Engagement and Fundraising Lead (she, her, hers) is a community organizer and is experienced in legislative processes and campaign building. She served as a legislative aide to Representative Joseph Salazar at the Colorado House of Representatives and has supported many local and statewide campaigns rooted in social and environmental justice. Tezcatli also worked with youth and volunteers as a Membership Manager at the Girl Scouts Councils of Colorado and Greater Chicago & Northwest Indiana. With the combined passions of youth leadership facilitation and policy-oriented organizing, Tezcatli hopes to contribute to the Project VOYCE mission to elevate youth voice and leadership through accomplice-ship. Tezcatli can be reached at tezcatli@projectvoyce.org
Ashton Kynard
Ashton Kynard, Program Facilitator (he, him, his) is a program facilitator, youth mentor, community activist, history teacher, and social media curator. He is native of Aurora, Colorado and graduate of Gateway High School. Ashton first came to Project VOYCE as a participant of our Summer VOYCE Academy in 2017, he became a Facilitator Apprentice in 2018 and now serves as a Program Facilitator, building up and assisting Project Voyce's youth facilitation team in running the Summer Academy and Year-Long Programming. Ashton is fully committed to uplifting and educating our communities of color. Ashton can be reached at ashton@projectvoyce.org
Astrid Flores
Astrid Flores, Stakeholder Manager (she, her, hers) is a current student at the University of Colorado Denver majoring in Political Science with a Pre-health Track, as a way to combine her love for both activism and biomedical science. Her political activism career began as a young participant in the summer VOYCE Academy of 2017 where she learned to be a social change agent and has since gone to work with various non-profit organizations to continue to fight for reproductive and social justice. Today she holds the position of Stakeholder Manager at Project VOYCE to ensure a smooth on-boarding process and management of Project VOYCE interns, volunteers, and donors. She is very grateful to be apart of a movement to empower youth to be youth activists because from personal experience she knows that youth are the most directly affected by bad policy and are often the most ignored. Astrid can be reached at astrid@projectvoyce.org
Sierra Takushi
Sierra Takushi, 2020 Summer Fellow (she, her, hers), is a rising senior at Colorado College, who is pursuing a major in Race, Ethnicity, and Migration Studies and a minor in Education. Sierra views her fellowship with Project Voyce as an ideal combination of her major and minor and is thrilled to engage with PV's youth partnerships and community organizing. During the school year, Sierra has dedicated her free time to activism and inclusion efforts, by serving as the chair of Asian Student Union, as well as the student-leader of CC's college-access "Outreach and Access Team." Sierra is grateful to work with Project Voyce under the Public Interest Fellowship Program (PIFP), which partners Colorado College students with nonprofit fellowships. With her summer fellowship, Sierra is wildly excited to apply academics to sustainable action and to learn under the wings of PV's expert staff. Sierra can be reached at sierra@projectvoyce.org.