OUR STAFF

Juanita O. Lewis is a seasoned community and electoral organizing professional with over 20 years of experience advancing social and economic justice. She joined Community Voices Heard (CVH) in 2009 as the Yonkers Organizer and has steadily risen through the ranks—becoming Hudson Valley Organizing Director in 2017 and Executive Director in 2021.

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A native of Saint Paul, Minnesota, Juanita holds a B.A. in History and Political Science and a Master’s in Advocacy and Political Leadership from the University of Minnesota–Twin Cities. Her career began as a community organizer with the Minnesota chapter of ACORN, and since 2004, she has served in various leadership roles on electoral campaigns at the local, state, and federal levels.

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Juanita has served as a national trainer for VoteRunLead for over 16 years, empowering hundreds of women across the country to pursue elected office through a nonpartisan, equity-centered approach.

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She is actively engaged in national and regional leadership and serves as:

• Vice President, Iota Alpha Omega Chapter, Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority, Inc.

• Board President, African Communities Together

• Board Member, Planned Parenthood of Greater New York Action Fund

• Board President, People’s Action, a national multiracial movement-building organization

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Pronouns: She/Her

Brittny Baxter is a D.C.-based consultant with over 15 years of experience in strategic communications, program management, and instructional design for advocacy and electoral campaigns. She has worked with diverse coalitions to advance policies that improve the lives of working-class communities, focusing on climate, economic, racial, and criminal justice issues.

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A Buffalo native, Brittny began her career collaborating with New York State elected officials, advocacy groups, and labor unions to pass progressive policies statewide. In 2017, she joined Maryland Working Families to lead a joint training, recruitment, and engagement program for first-time candidates, campaign staffers, and organizers in partnership with Wellstone Action (RePower).

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Brittny’s impact extends nationwide. As a lead trainer with the National Democratic Training Committee (NDTC), she has trained thousands of Democratic candidates and campaign professionals. In 2024, she served as Deputy Training Director for the Harris-Walz campaign, helping shape the next generation of political leadership. Over her career, she has trained and designed curricula that has reached appoximately 200,000 candidates, staffers, organizers, and activists across the country.

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As the founder of Politico Noir Consulting, Brittny provides culturally relevant strategy, messaging, and programmatic solutions to clients, including Netroots Nation, Gain Power, March On, and the Working Families Party. Her mission is to empower changemakers with the tools and confidence to build movements and win campaigns.

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Pronouns: She/Her​

Michelle Perez joined Community Voices Heard in May 2002 after having worked in fundraising for arts/community development organizations for 19 years. She has previously worked for the Jamaica Center for Arts and Learning, Meet The Composer, the NYC Department of Cultural Affairs, and The Joffrey Ballet.

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Michelle has a BA degree in Economics/Political Economy from Barnard College, and has done graduate work in business administration at New York University. Michelle was also a member of the Fall 2015 cohort of the NY Community Trust Leadership Fellows program.

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Pronouns: She/Her

Brianne is a Brooklyn native and holds a Bachelor's Degree in Public Relations from the State University of New York at Oswego.

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Before joining CVH, Brianne was the Operations Manager at Explore Schools of Brooklyn, where she managed operations with meticulous attention to detail. Her detail shined through as she coordinated logistics for family events within the community, managed day to day operations within the school, while also being a mentor to students and connecting families to community-based services and resources.

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She's excited to bring her skills to CVH to ensure day-to-day work, organizing, and events run smoothly and build power throughout the State.

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Pronouns: She/Her

Zoë joined Community Voices Heard in June 2022. She previously worked as Manager of Digital Media at the Coalition for the Homeless and Policy Coordinator at the John Jay College Institute for Justice and Opportunity, where she first started working on the Fair Chance for Housing Campaign. She believes in building collective power in Black, brown, and low-income communities and centering the voices of people with lived experiences. 

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Zoë holds a Bachelor of Arts in French with a minor in Media, Culture, and Communication from NYU and a Master of Public Administration at Baruch College with a specialization in Urban Development and Sustainability.

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In her spare time, she fosters cats for Brooklyn Bridge Animal Welfare Coalition.

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Pronouns: She/Her

Eli joined Community Voices Heard in July 2019 as the Base-Building Organizer for Dutchess County. Their many years of direct service work with youth, families and formerly incarcerated people taught them the power of relationships in making change, while working alongside and within Black-led organizations more recently informs their commitment to building power through transformational organizing. Before coming to Community Voices Heard, Eli worked as Advocacy Director with the Staley B. Keith Center’s Community Justice Advocacy Program in Hudson, NY. They then served as Programs and Community Engagement Coordinator at the Center for Law and Justice in Albany. Eli continues to organize with Showing Up for Racial Justice, a national network dedicated to engaging more white people in ending white supremacy.

 

Pronouns: They/Them

Kim is an Afro Latina mother of 4 from the Bronx. She is a co-founder of an activist group called NYC Shut It Down, a group committed to ending racist policing in our neighborhoods. Kim has been organizing for 9 years in both a labor and a community setting. Kim is passionate about community control, giving power back to the people, advocating for Black and Brown children, and tearing down systemic oppression. Her organizing around anti-police brutality work has been featured in Netflix (Copwatchers) and BET (Copwatch America).

 

Pronouns: She/Her

Juan Pablo Molina is a Newburgh native and a longtime volunteer of the Deacon Jack Seymour Food Pantry. He started his organizing experience in college, organizing students around voting rights with the New York Public Interest Research Group (NYPIRG). After organizing students with NYPIRG around voter mobilization, environmental conservation practices, and public transit, he graduated from college and worked as a paralegal for almost three years. His time in the legal field had allowed him to learn the stories of many clients who lived in the Hudson Valley. Oftentimes, these clients were juggling legal battles alongside their housing problems, but they were treated as separate issues. Listening to many clients' stories made him realize that there was much more work to be done organizing Newburgh residents for better housing conditions and better housing policies.

Juan Pablo is passionate about ensuring residents of Newburgh determine the future of their city and re-investing tax dollars into public infrastructure. 

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Pronouns: He/Him

Gabriel was raised in Miami, FL from the age of 5, but was born in Queens, where his family originally emigrated from Bogota, Colombia. He graduated with a Political Science degree from Florida International University in 2015. Afterward, he was selected to the AmeriCorps Public Allies Miami program where he served as an intern under Community Justice Project (CJP) a community-movement-lawyering non-profit (2016-2017). From 2020-2024, Gabriel worked as the Intergenerational Organizer at the Miami-based community organization, Power U Center For Social Change. Power U is a base-building organization focused on public education issues. Gabriel was tasked with developing the leadership skills of teachers and organizing them into the local rank and file caucus within the local teachers union so that teachers could push for a more democratic union fighting for issues beyond the classroom and into the community. 

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Gabriel joined CVH in March 2024. He is excited to continue base-building at CVH because he believes base-building is the antidote to give working class folks the power they need to change the current makeup of society that is heavily geared towards the interests of the elites, corporations, and Wall Street. He is motivated by the experiences of his working class single mother who always made the moral choice over the economic choice when it came to her children, even if it was at her own cost. He is also motivated by his own experiences as a restaurant laborer, having worked in fine dining restaurants for over 12 years in and around Miami Beach and the City of Miami. 

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Pronouns: He/Him

Zora Satchell is an organizer and writer, living in Queens, New York. She has a BA in Ethnic Studies from Colorado State University. She comes from a background of both electoral- and public health-focused organizing, having mobilized New Yorkers for the Covid-19 vaccine in 2021. She is particularly passionate about housing and food justice.

 

Outside of community organizing, Zora works to provide educational resources for artists, as she is a founding member of the Estuary Collective, which provides workshops for non-academic Black poets.

Shreya joined Community Voices Heard in June 2023 after working at the Human Rights Campaign in Washington, D.C. She holds a B.A. from New York University, where she studied public policy with a focus on urban development and racial inequality. 

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Born and raised in Maryland, Shreya's drive for community-led urban planning stems from seeing how systematic disinvestment and unequal access to transit and public resources impacted Baltimore's communities of color. At CVH, she leads digital organizing efforts to help New Yorkers build collective power, shape policy, and create a more equitable New York State.

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Pronouns: She/Her