Our Team
Stevie
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Coordinator of Evaluations &
Development
Jenelle
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Operations & Finance Coordinator
Program Team
Alexis
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Director of Programs
Rae
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Program Manager
Empowerment Self Defense
Georgina
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Youth Program Manager
Jasmín
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Youth Leadership Coordinator
Bianca
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Programs Specialist
Nordia
Community Engagement Specialist
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Our Instructors
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Celina
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Celina is an organizer and social worker with over a decade of advocacy experience. Through popular education, she emphasizes intergenerational community building, solidarity economics & dismantling of anti-Black racism to create transformative solutions among historically marginalized communities.
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Dalaeja Foreman is a Brooklyn-born, uptown based world-builder and martial artist with 20 years of Muay Thai practice, founding Metamorphosis Movement and co-founding the Breadfruit woodworking cooperative.
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Dalaeja
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Emily is a queer Dominican woman, born and raised in NYCHA housing in Brooklyn, and am currently a digital media professional at the United Nations. She has a deep passion for writing, justice, and teaching. In 2017, Emily graduated from SUNY Geneseo with a Bachelors in creative writing and comparative literature, and has published works in Huizache, Girls Write Now: Two Decades of True Stories From Young Female Voices, and the journal, Wizards in Space. She’s an avid writer of fiction, memoir, and poetry and facilitate a monthly book club that centers the fiction of women of color through her book review Instagram at @readwithemily.
Emily is vested in working with her communities digitally and on the ground to meet immediate needs. After about 2 and 1/2 years with CAE, she is passionate about engaging folk and helping them come to their own conclusions about how to navigate conversations about justice and liberation.
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Emily
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Originally a community organizer from Puerto Rico, Gabriel strives for liberatory practices and envisions a world where harm is addressed with support, not punishment. With a background in martial arts, social work, arts, and transformative justice, he embraces a holistic approach to create systemic change.
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Gabriel
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Grey has been a self-defense and de-escalation instructor with CAE since 2019. Outside of their work with this organization, they have been organizing and leading self-defense workshops in NYC as well as other localities both national and international since 2015. They hold a Third-Degree Black Belt in Tae-Kwon-Do, as well as a number of years of experience in mixed martial arts such as Muay Thai, Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu, Boxing and more. They enjoy creating accessible, trauma-informed, and safer educational spaces to share vital self-defense skills for the benefit of participants and their communities.
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Grey
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LaRelle is currently a School Social Worker with the Department of Education. Prior to this role, she worked as a Clinical Marketer providing Substance Abuse services to organizations. She is a licensed master social worker and is skilled in group facilitation and crisis intervention. LaRelle believes that all people deserve access to quality care and will continue to do expansive work to reach more people.
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LaRelle
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Lauren previously worked as a social worker in youth development spanning benefits casework to grief counseling to therapeutic arts. Their community organizing also includes oral history, direct action, and healing work with Japanese American organizations on incarceration and immigration detention. Lauren holds a Masters in Social Work from Hunter College and a B.A. in Cultural Anthropology from New York University, with additional trainings in trauma, de-escalation, and grief support. In all areas of their work, they hope to draw upon our histories and narratives to support creating person-centered spaces for healing and learning together, to build capacity and connection in community. Lauren is based in Queens, NY, and originally from Maryland.
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Lauren
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Lorraine came to CAE in 2010, working as an administrative intern and later training to become an Empowerment Self-Defense instructor. She has taught people of all ages (from children to seniors) physical and verbal self-defense strategies. And enjoys supporting participant's development and watching their confidence grow.
Lorraine enjoys collaborating on initiatives for community care and healing. She trains with a volunteer marital arts and self-defense group that provides community workshops and free self-defense tools.
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Lorraine
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Nadia has experience in advocacy, community development, and facilitating events for women, the LGBTQIA community, and youth. Nadia is passionate about empowering others to advocate for freedom and tap into their inner healing capacities, through art, storytelling, and movement.
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Nadia
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Omari Soulfinger, LMSW is an artist and facilitator committed to creative advocacy and healing justice. For years, they have served systemically denied communities in a diverse range of offerings including restorative justice circle keeping, theatre, self defense and ancestor reverence.
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Omari
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Reem was an organizer at AAANY, and then went on to AVP where she was the Director of Community Organizing & Public Advocacy. She brings her expertise on hate violence prevention, community safety, gender-based violence, & safety planning practices to her facilitation at CAE.
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Reem
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Come back later to learn more about Tara!
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Tara