Raquel Lavina

Biographical Information
"Raquel comes to Social Justice Leadership with 20 years of activism and organizing. She has been drawn to many social justice issues from reproductive rights to educational justice to work against the prison industry.  As an organizer she focused on helping to build youth organizing as a discipline within a broader community organizing field.  She helped to build some of the nation’s most influential youth organizations, some of which are reaching their 10 year anniversaries.  During the last 7 years, she has focused on using her experience to help organizations develop efficient and healthy internal systems, grounded in social justice values, to better enable grassroots organizations to wage external campaigns.  She served as the National Program Director of the Ella Baker Center for Human Rights, supervising 20 staff in 3 cities; the Executive Director of the Youth Empowerment Center, which housed 5 youth groups in Oakland, CA including SOUL, the School of Unity and Liberation; and as the Interim Executive Director of FIERCE!, a nationally recognized LGBT youth organization."