Our Team

Director of Criminal Justice

Kevin Reese grew up in Minneapolis Minnesota. He was incarcerated for 14 years. His work as a Prison Justice organizer at Voices For Racial Justice is rooted in his mission to end mass incarceration. He is an 2018 AWP intro Journals project award winner for poetry published in the Hayden Ferry Review. He can be found featured in Emily Baxter’s internationally acclaimed book We Are All Criminals. He has a running column in the Minnesota Spokesmen Recorder. His writing is centered around humanity, organizing, transformative movements, and ancestral visionary poetry.

Interim Executive Co-Director, Programs

Fayise has served as the Organizing and Training Director at Voices for Racial Justice for the past three years working to build and coordinate our longstanding organizing training and our Greater Visions network. Fayise’s organizing began in rural MN. As a daughter of East African refugees and factory workers she’s cultivated cultural strategy from hosting and listening to intergenerational conversations in rural MN factory working community. Fayise also joined voices with a history of supporting community-led grant making. She helped lead the development of an annual fund for youth-led research and organizing at Youthprise where she managed the research department. She is also a committee member of the Pan African Community Endowment (PACE) Fund with the St. Paul foundation. Outside of Voices, you can find Fayise’s poetry printed on the sidewalks of East Franklin and 26th street in Minneapolis MN. As well as in The Breakbeat Poets Vol. 2: Black Girl Magic, and in the forthcoming Spring 2019 Issue of Yellow Medicine Review.

Interim Executive Co-Director, Operations 

Monica is a Latina that believes that it is critical to work across issues to create change in our communities. Monica’s passions include environmental, women’s, people of color, and LGBTQ issues. She feels extremely fortunate to pursue her passions for both people and the birds.  Monica believes in the power of of community and comes to Voices with years of experience in development and with deep commitments to uplifting the leadership and voices of Indigenous and communities of Color.  Before joining the team at Voices, Monica was at Headwaters Foundation for Justice for over 16 years where she oversaw grantmaking that supports organizations working for social, economic and racial justice issues.

Interim Executive Co-Director, Communications

Gabriella Anaïs is an artist and cultural organizer, raised in Veracruz, México and Milwaukee, WI, who now calls Minneapolis home. Her organizing is grounded in cultural strategy that centers art and healing in movement work with communities of color. She founded the Youth Cultural Organizing Institute at Voices, a summer training that centers the voices of youth of color and opens spaces that prioritize their growth, leadership and organizing. Anaïs is also a writer who is finishing her first poetry collection, which looks at family legacies of displacement, trauma and healing at the U.S.-Mexico border. In 2014 she started Border Voices to create space for performance poets of immigrant and refugee diasporas to use their art as an anchor for our collective healing.

Director of Research and Policy

Originally from San Francisco, Brett graduated from UCLA with a Bachelor of Arts degree in Political Science – International Relations. Following graduation, he spent nearly a decade working as an academic outreach coordinator for UCLA and UC Berkeley’s Early Academic Outreach Program (EAOP) before going back to school to earn a masters and a doctorate degree in education policy from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Brett’s research focuses on holistic education in K-12 schools. He is interested in the education of the whole child and in how students define and practice their own learning. Brett loves to read, write, make music, study languages, travel, swim and ride his bicycle.

Senior Organizer 

Since 2007, Julia has led the Education Equity work at Voices, using a healing and racial justice lens. She has helped Districts and Schools use co-created tools that put students and parents in the center of equity solutions. The narratives that come out of this work are very powerful. She is a racial justice trainer and coach. Julia is a grandmother of ten and education is her passion, which she brings to her work coordinating shared learning opportunities for the Education Equity Parent Fellowship.

Racial Justice and Health Equity Organizer

Mónica grew up in Colombia, where she trained as a doctor of family medicine. From 2002-2013, she worked with Aqui Para Ti/ Here For You, a program funded by Eliminating Health Disparities Initiative. Since 2009, she has been one of the community members participating of efforts around health care data for equity in Minnesota. She is a 2011 graduate of the Voices for Racial Justice community organizing cohort. Mónica brings skills in policy, public health and community organizing to her work at Voices for Racial Justice.

 “If you have come to help me you are wasting your time. But if you have come because your liberation is bound up with mine, then let us work together.” (Lila Watson and her group)

Operations and Events Coordinator,

Ana  is a recent graduate from the University of Minnesota with degrees in Political Science and Philosophy. Ana is also the Development Director for Women for Political Change, an organization that holistically invests in the leadership and political power of young women and trans & non-binary individuals throughout Minnesota. Outside of work, Ana is a coach for a local synchronized swimming team, The Saint Paul Stars.