STAFF
Nyoka Acevedo
Cecilia Clarke,
Executive Director
Aisha Domingue,
Co-Director of Programs
LeeAnn Fletcher, Program
Associate
Shreya Janssens-Sannon, Co-Director of Programs
Nyoka Acevedo,
has over nine years of community
organizing and social justice experience with young people in
New York City. She began her career in organizing as co-chair
of the MUEVETE! Conference for Puerto Rican youth throughout
the United States. Soon after, she joined the Malcolm X Grassroots
Movement as a coordinator of the Black August concerts and as
a member of the women’s caucus, in which she still participates.
She then went on to work at ASPIRA of New York, Inc. for two
years where she developed and ran a 36-week leadership curriculum
addressing issues such as identity, feminism and culture for
over 240 students in three Bronx public high schools. The curriculum
is still currently taught in several high schools throughout
the Bronx.
As a collective member at Sista II Sista, a young women of color collective based in Bushwick, Brooklyn, she developed a 7-week curriculum for young women of color addressing issues of identity, image and community organizing. Most recently, Nyoka organized at the Center for Law and Social Justice at Medgar Evers College around the issue of felon disenfranchisement. In addition to her work at SNLP, Nyoka is a participant of the F-Word project of Chica Luna Productions (a multi- media production company dedicated to supporting and helping women of color in entertainment). As a participant she has written a screenplay, edited a short and in the near future will shoot her screenplay. She hopes her activism at Chica Luna will inspire other young women to take control of the media and promote healthy, realistic images of women.
Nyoka is currently also a part-time college student at Bronx
Community College, a native New Yorker and lives in the Bronx.
Nyoka began her work at SNLP in July 2005 as Program Associate
supervising our new program, Nash University. In September 2006,
she was promoted to Co-Director of Programs, supervising and
developing all aspects of the SNLP program.
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Cecilia
Clarke, Executive
Director has
over 15 years experience in non-profit management. She
began her career as a social worker, counseling women at Fountain
House, a residential “club house” program for the
mentally ill. Cecilia then became the Manager of Government
Grants at The Brooklyn Museum of Art, where she raised close
to $2 million annually. From the Museum, she moved to
The Drawing Center, a not-for-profit exhibition space, as Director
of Development, and later was promoted to Assistant Director.
At The Drawing Center, Cecilia succeeded in closing an inherited deficit and increased the overall operating budget by 50%. After three years there, she was appointed Executive Director of the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture, an organization serving young emerging artists. During her 5-1/2 year tenure, Cecilia made many financial and infrastructure improvements: she erased a long-standing deficit, oversaw a highly successful capital campaign, found new and expanded support for scholarships, expanded the Board by 30%, increased the School’s services to its alumni, and improved working conditions for staff members. During that time, Cecilia also served as an Adjunct Professor in New York University’s School of Education, teaching graduate students.
In addition, Cecilia continued to work with women, volunteering
extensively for the Park Slope Safe Homes Project, a community-based
domestic violence program. She also currently serves as a member
of the Board of Directors of the Drum Major Institute for Public
Policy. DMI is a non-profit, non-partisan organization dedicated
to operating in the spirit of the civil rights movement with
the goal of fostering courageous leadership, informed citizens
and sound public policy.
Cecilia received her B.A. in 1984 from Georgetown University,
majoring in History and Art History, with an emphasis on 20th
Century American social history. She lives in Brooklyn, New
York, with her husband and 22-year-old daughter, Allegra, her
5-year old daughter, Josephine, and her 2 year old son, Simon.
Her first-hand experience as a single-mother raising a teenage
daughter provided her essential experience and enthusiasm for
this project.
Cecilia founded SNLP in May 2001 and still serves as
Executive Director. She supervises all programmatic and administrative
aspects of the organization. She is directly and primarily
responsible for fundraising, Board development, administration
and management, and programmatic strategy and advancement.
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Aisha
Domingue, Co-Director of Programs is originally from New Orleans, LA,
and graduated from Smith College in 2002 with a double major
in African-American and Women’s Studies. At Smith
she was an organizer and activist as well as a student leader
for a program for incoming students of color. Following
her graduation, she worked as a Residence Coordinator and oversaw
the management and educational and social programming for a
cluster of residential houses. While still living in
Northampton, MA, she worked as a counselor and advocate for
a domestic violence organization. Most recently Aisha
has worked as an educator with youth in the South Bronx and
Far Rockaway Queens, where she created original curriculum
to include social justice components.
Aisha is also a trained dancer and performs currently with Cheryl Bryon and Something Positive, an intergenerational African and Caribbean performing arts and education organization. She lives in Brooklyn.
Aisha joined the SNLP staff in September 2004 to oversee
the CAP program and support the Summer Institute. She was promoted
to Senior Program Associate in March 2006, and this past September
to Co-Director of Program where she is in charge of all programmatic
aspects of SNLP.
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LeeAnn Fletcher,
Program Associate, first came to the Sadie Nash Leadership
Project as a Dean for the 2004 Summer Institute. For SNLP, LeeAnn
has also served as a teaching assistant for the Nash University
Public Speaking class and recently taught a Nash U. Theatre
class. After relocating to New York in 2004, LeeAnn joined the
Drum Major Institute for Public Policy, a progressive public
policy think tank, as their Operations Manager / Development
Associate.
Originally from Nebraska, LeeAnn is a Cum Laude graduate of
Hastings College, where she earned her BA in Communications
and Theater Arts. There she was a student leader with the Campus
Acquaintance Rape Educators, Girl Power, Public Relations Council,
and the Hastings College Artist Lecture Series. LeeAnn is currently
the co-founder of the Vision & Voice Collective, an organization
for youth designed to pursue social justice themes through artistic
means.
LeeAnn began her new position December 2006. She supports
the Co-Directors of Program in all programmatic aspects of
SNLP. She also assists with overall organizational and administrative
function.
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Shreya Janssens-Sannon,
Co-Director of Programs, is originally from New Delhi, India. Over the past 10 years, she has worked directly with youth and has learned alongside them. She co-founded the Baltimore chapter of Peace by P.E.A.C.E., a creative conflict resolution program. She also worked at Teens Against Gang Violence in Dorchester, MA, a culturally based youth activism program.
In New York, she developed the Teen Programming at the Incarcerated Mothers Program, and led year-long co-ed leadership and activism groups as well as a girls group at South Asian Youth Action. At Global Action Project, she worked as a media educator, and worked with youth on the production of social justice youth media. She has also assisted with curriculum development on sexual health and teen dating violence for organizations such as the Asian/Pacific Islander Coalition on HIV/AIDS (APICHA) and CONNECT, a family and gender violence prevention organization. In 2005, she returned to India to work at Shikshantar, an applied research institute where she explored urban farming, theatre, video, and art workshops, and natural medicine.
Shreya began her work at SNLP in the summer of 2003, when she offered a class called “Power, Identity, and Privilege.” Since then, the class has become a “core class” and she has taught it for the past 5 summers. She is also working with the inaugural class of ELLA fellows.
Shreya received her B.A. from Barnard College, majoring in a combined degree in Psychology and Sociology. She received her M.A. from Harvard University Graduate School of Education, with a focus on Risk and Prevention in Adolescence. She is currently learning about herbal medicine and homeopathy; and through trial and error, is teaching herself video production and editing, vegetable farming, and composting.
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