Elyssa Feder (she/her) is the Executive Director of Rising Organizers and Rising Organizers Action and a Contributing Facilitator (W3) with VAPLP. She has over a decade of experience as an organizer and trainer, and has held roles as the Training Director for EMILY’s List and Deputy Training Director at Priorities USA, the largest Democratic Super PAC. While at EMILY’s List, she created multiple new training programs, including the Ignite Change Fellowship, which trains women from underrepresented communities to increase their presence in political office and grow the pipeline of candidates of color. She co-founded Rising Organizers in 2016 to provide core grassroots organizing skills to emerging activists and organizers. The organization has since gone on to train 3,000 individuals and hold ten intensive community organizing fellowships, with alumni now organizing in states across the country. All told, Elyssa has trained over 10,000 activists, political operatives, and candidates in the pursuit of social justice and civic engagement. In 2020, Elyssa was recognized for her work by being named one of Washingtonian Magazine’s 40 Women Under 40. She holds degrees, with honors, from The George Washington University and London School of Economics. Elyssa’s cookie of choice is a snickerdoodle – that chewy goodness full of cinnamon, just right.

Irene (she/her) serves as the Executive Director of VCET and a Facilitator for VAPLP. Prior to VCET, she served as the Senior Director at Crowdpac, a tech platform focused on combating the influence of big money in politics. Recently, Irene was elected to the Virginia House of Delegates, becoming the first Korean American woman to serve in the General Assembly. She also serves on the Boards of NAKASEC, the Competitive Commonwealth Fund, and Sister District Project. 

Irene is most looking forward to meeting the participants! Hands down, the people of VAPLP is what makes it such an amazing program. Irene, her fiancé, and dog live in the Town of Herndon. In her free time, Irene enjoys… wait what? Free time? What’s that? Fun fact, Irene learned to play the ukulele and bake sourdough during the pandemic.

Isa (she/her) is working with VAPLP as a Program + Operations Associate and is most looking forward to interacting with the pod members and building new relationships. Isa loves to travel and is motivated by building communities everywhere she goes and creating connections through conversation. Isa has taken many different avenues in serving her local, national, and international community through community work, policy research, storytelling and narration, advocacy, training, and education. She is particularly interested in environmental justice and its disproportionate impacts on minoritized communities. Isa has created a Smithsonian Learning Lab on environmental degradation’s impact on Alaska Natives, traveled to Hawai’i to learn about Permaculture and its Indigenous origins, and is a Diversity and Inclusion Fellow with the Citizens’ Climate Lobby. 

Isa has earned a Bachelor’s Degree in Political Science with a concentration in International Relations and minors in Environmental Studies and Philosophy. Isa plans to continue her education by pursuing environmental law and continue serving her community.

Jessica is the co-founder of Groundwork Co-Creative, a social impact consultancy focused on supporting progressive organizations in operationalizing liberation, and a Contributing Facilitator & Curriculum Designer (W4) with VAPLP. With over a decade experience in the nonprofit sector, Jessica supports social justice organizations through grant writing and prospecting, process facilitation, project management, program design, policy advocacy, training, and community organizing. Since Groundwork’s inception in the fall of 2022, Jessica has secured over $5 million in grant funding for Black-led organizations. Jessica also serves on the board of Austin Justice Coalition. Jessica received her Juris Doctorate from University of Texas School of Law in Austin, Texas, and her bachelors degree from the College of William and Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia. 

Jessica’s love for facilitation comes from her fascination with deconstructing processes to decide what parts are needed and what parts are merely convention. Fun fact, Jessica used to play competitive roller derby internationally with Texas Rollergirls. Jessica grew up in Midlothian, Virginia and deeply misses Strawberry Street Cafe’s cream of crab soup (IYKYK).

John (he/him) currently resides on occupied Monacan and Tutelo land in what is now called Blacksburg in Southwest Virginia, and joined VCET in March 2023 as a Programs + Operations Associate, in which capacity he is so excited to support VAPLP! As a queer Appalachian (a·puh·la·chun), John strives to center connection to place and environment in all that he does. He is active in organizing with displaced peoples, having worked with American Indian and Indigenous communities in the New River Valley and imprisoned persons as a member of the Critical Carceral Studies Lab at Virginia Tech, and hopes to continue growing in this work in the future.

John is invested in supporting leadership growth in others, and most recently worked helming a leadership development program for first-year and transfer students that relies on the Social Change Model and centers leadership as a process of positive change, recognition of relatedness, and connection to community. He is passionate about space- and place-making, leadership, quilts, language studies and etymology, and Mary Oliver poetry. His role models include Miss Piggy (of Muppet fame), Robin Wall Kimmerer, and Winnie the Pooh. Fun fact! John killed a rattlesnake when he was 8 (don’t mess with his cat). 

Kristin (she/her/we) resides on occupied Powhatan land in Richmond and graduated from The Great Pod 8 of VAPLP in 2022. She is super excited to join the facilitation team this summer.

Kristin serves as a Contributing Facilitator (W1) with VAPLP. Additionally, she is the Advocacy and Engagement Manager at Voices for Virginia’s Children – a non-partisan advocacy organization that champions public policies and legislation that achieve positive and equitable outcomes for young people. At Voices, Kristin manages and supports Virginia’s Youth in Action, a yearly cohort of young advocates across the Commonwealth learning about Virginia state legislature, storytelling, and advocacy to evoke systems-level change. Prior to working around policy change, Kristin was a crisis and trauma therapist for 2–17-year-olds for almost 7 years and continues to provide therapy as a licensed clinical social worker.

As a facilitator, organizer, and community advocate, Kristin is informed by abolitionist theories, Black feminist and Afrofuturist theories, the Womanist lens, and the Healing-Centered Engagement framework. In her free time, Kristin loves to listen to audiobooks, craft and collage, practice mindfulness, take long meandering walks to nowhere, and indulge in cozy-gaming binges. Fun fact, Kristin is countering her new pandemic social anxiety by taking improv lessons. Yes, AND?!

Nairuti Shastry (she/her) is an educator, engaged scholar, and movement builder working toward racial and economic justice that transcends organizational, cultural, and political borders. She is thrilled to work with VAPLP this summer as a Curriculum Designer because, as a facilitator informed by Freirean pedagogy and a hooksian love ethic, she always enjoys supporting changemakers as they hospice the old and birth the new. When not conspiring with the VCET team, Nairuti works as a social impact consultant, working with teams and communities spanning sectors as diverse as healthcare, education, tech, philanthropy, social services, and international development and finance. Previously, Nairuti served as the Director of Research for Beloved Economies, a story-telling and action initiative demonstrating the power of work to affect economic change. Nairuti has also worked at Johns Hopkins University working to advance place-based community engagement and redistribute capital across historically marginalized communities in Baltimore, but she began her career serving as a Community Impact Fellow at Break Away, promoting quality civic engagement programming to connect campus and community across the States. Nairuti holds a BA in Sociology, French & Francophone Studies, and Public Health from the College of William & Mary and an MBA from LIFT Economy. Fun fact, when living in Baltimore, Nairuti was training to be a real-life Mary Kom at her beloved boxing gym, Corner Team. While the pandemic cut her dreams short, she hopes to rise again, like a Desi fighting phoenix from the ashes of “I’m-not-really-an-athlete-ism”.

Nico (they/them) currently resides on occupied Nacotchatnk land (Washington, DC), and recently joined VCET in January of 2022. As the Leadership Development Manager, they primarily support VAPLP (Facilitator & Curriculum Designer) and the Staff of Color Roundtable. Passionate about social justice, collective liberation, and community solutions, Nico finds home in collective and visionary spaces woven together by queer and trans people. 

Nico learned some of their most important political lessons outside the classroom and was first politicized by the work of the Louisville Project in policy debate and their own Filipinx and Puerto Rican diaspora. As a new resident to DC, Nico is starting to get involved in Anakbayan, a movement organization in the US and Philippines; Diverse City Fund, a BIPOC community giving collective; and Stonewall Sports, a LGBTQ+ sports league. 

As a facilitator, Nico draws on the teachings of Paulo Freire and bell hooks with a lens of popular education and experiential learning. They are invested in co-creating loving spaces and considers relationships & community to be the basis of their work. Nico’s biggest role models are Gizmo the gremlin, HIM from Powerpuff Girls, and the nerds from nerds candy.

Shani Drake Duncan (she/her) is a Director at New Heights Communications and Contributing Facilitator (W2) with VAPLP. Previously, Shani served as the Director of Marketing & Public Engagement for the National Center for Civil and Human Rights in Atlanta. In this role, she led the strategic direction for programming at The Center and headed its marketing efforts. She also served as Campaign Manager for the Center’s Campaign for Equal Dignity, which resulted in thousands of new stakeholders engaging with the Center, tens of thousands of program views, and hundreds of thousands of sponsorship dollars for the organization.. Shani is a career-long marketer, having worked in the music, telecom, and nonprofit industries. In the public sector, Shani has fought for childhood nutrition for kids across the state of Georgia. Shani’s passion is to elevate and amplify the voices of marginalized communities and uplift the work of civil and human rights defenders and advocates. She strives to move people to action to ensure equal dignity for all. Shani is an Atlanta-native who received her B.A. in English from Spelman College and her M.S. in Marketing from Georgia State University’s J. Mack Robinson College of Business.

Fun Fact: Shani loves to read. However, she has a bad habit of buying new books before finishing all of the books sitting on her shelves. Please don’t judge. 🙂