Most recently, Macheo developed a credible messenger program to reduce violence in Oakland schools. Dr. Payne has led the Oakland Freedom Schools over the span of 20 years, operating in schools and juvenile hall.

As an expert on school discipline, Macheo has worked with schools and school districts across the country.

From Salvador Bahia, Brazil to the United Nations, Azmera’s work is committed to healing and transformation. She has published articles on Capoeira as creative resistance, Call and Response in spiritual care, gender in Hip Hop, and unlearning religious fundamentalism.

She served as Community Partnership Lead at Harvard Radcliffe Institute, where she led the design and implementation of Storytelling & Justice programs for currently and formerly incarcerated youth and adults.

She also taught youth educators her signature framework The Capoethic Method™ at the Massachusetts Department of Youth Services Racial Trauma & Healing Conference and hosted vital conversations on family-systems change with the Transforming Justice Initiative.

Azmera received her masters degree from Harvard Divinity School, a dual bachelors degree in Visual & Performing Arts and Social Sciences Psychology from the University of Southern California, and a Fulbright Creative and Performing Arts Fellowship.

Azmera is supporting PWA in developing the Justice Serving Network, prioritizing healing-centered engagement and collaborating with community based organizations to shift power and agency toward youth directly impacted by criminal legal systems.

From Sing Sing prison to The White House, Kaia’s work is grounded in reimagining justice. She has taught extensively on liberation theology, ethics, punishment, race, eye contact, and transformative justice, and is the author of Voices from American Prisons: Faith, Education, and Healing (Routledge, 2014). Kaia serves as a consultant to educational communities across the nation. She received her master’s degree from Harvard Divinity School and her PhD from Emory University. She is ordained as an interfaith minister and has been learning/teaching in and about U.S. jails and prisons for 30 years.

Kaia is supporting PWA in developing materials to facilitate capacity building training for organizations working with incarcerated and formerly incarcerated youth and forging partnerships with CBOs, employment partners and youth-serving public systems that continue to advance transformative shifts in agency and power toward young people and their communities.

In his twelve years with the agency, he oversaw a budget of over a billion dollars that included one of the nation’s highest volume 911 systems, multiple general acute care hospitals, public health services, and more than $200 million in child and adolescent mental health services and contracts.

Before joining Alameda County, Alex was the director of the Chappell Hayes Health Center at McClymonds High School in West Oakland, a satellite outpatient center of Children’s Hospital and Research Center.  His work there has helped define the nexus of public health and public education.

He has designed and administered mental health and physical health programs and services in child serving systems, including home visiting programs, programs for medically fragile children, and clinical and development programs in child welfare, juvenile justice, and early childhood settings.

Alex has served on the Alameda County First Five Commission, The Alameda Alliance, and The Kaiser Commission on Medicaid and The Uninsured, along with other public and private boards and commissions.

He is a mental health practitioner specializing in adolescent services and youth development. He has advised or collaborated with a number of local and national foundations including The Atlantic Philanthropies, The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, The Annie E. Casey Foundation, The California Endowment, and most recently with Tipping Point Community.  He has specialized in Medicaid policy and administration, emergency medical services, youth voice and crisis counseling, and safety net design and administration.