In the coming weeks, we look forward to highlighting the phenomenal leaders recently selected for the 2026 REALize Power Leadership Program Southern Cohort. The 2026 Southern Cohort prioritizes leaders working in states across the Southeast and adjacent regions that share overlapping policy, philanthropic, and movement-building ecosystems. This regional focus is intended to support deeper peer learning and collaboration across places. The states prioritized for this first Southern Cohort are Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, and Texas.
- Learn more by reading the Participant Fact Sheet and FAQs
- Funder partnership and sponsorship information can be found here.
REALize Power Leadership Program – 2025 Cohort
The REALize Power Leadership Program is a capacity strengthening program for staff from nonprofits and grassroots organizations to gain insight, skills, and abilities to advance equitable data and evaluation practices, heal past traumas and triggers around data and evaluation, and strengthen emotional wellbeing. The second cohort of the REALize Power Leadership Program engaged leaders from across California as part of our partnership with the Blue Shield of California Foundation. In the spring – summer of 2025, these 14 REALize Power Leaders participated through virtual sessions and an in-person convening. Through this learning journey, the participants:
- Strengthened knowledge and skills to understand, implement, and advocate for equity-oriented data and evaluation approaches,
- Gained knowledge and skills to better tell their organization’s story of how they are advancing the work of their organization, and
- Discussed how shifting power dynamics through equitable partnerships and grant-making practices can help mitigate structural racism in philanthropy and nonprofits.
More information about the first cohort of the REALize Power Leadership Program can be found here.
The 2025 REALize Power Leaders
Julia Arroyo
Julia Arroyo is the Executive Director of Young Women’s Freedom Center (YWFC) and a tireless advocate for marginalized communities, with over two decades of experience in community health, reproductive justice, rape crisis intervention, and supporting sexually exploited youth.
Since joining YWFC in 2014, she has led the organization’s expansion across California, including in Santa Clara County, Oakland, Los Angeles, and Contra Costa County, while ensuring that healing and leadership development remain central to its mission. Julia’s reproductive justice efforts are grounded in her belief that all individuals, particularly women, girls, and trans youth, deserve autonomy over their bodies, access to healthcare, and the freedom to make decisions about their futures.
As a second-generation Xicana of Mexican and Filipino descent, Julia brings a deeply personal connection to her work. Having experienced the foster care system, underground street economy, and incarceration herself, she is dedicated to transforming systems that harm marginalized girls and helping them escape both systemic and interpersonal violence.
Kailin Chou
Kailin Chou is the Director of Community Engagement at Alliance for Girls (AFG), an alliance of 120 youth-serving organizations in the Bay Area and Los Angeles County working collectively to ensure girls and gender-expansive youth, particularly those of color, are respected, valued, and safe. In her role, Kailin provides broad support for leaders of youth-serving organizations, managing community engagement and outreach, developing communications, and coordinating services and resources among AFG’s community. Kailin has more than a decade of experience in the nonprofit sector, with a particular focus on racial and gender equity, and uplifting youth and communities of color. She enjoys cooking, art and design, traveling, learning languages, and stumbling through life with her partner and 2 young daughters.
Lianne Dillon
Lianne Dillon, (she/her), is a weaver and guide with disrupter tendencies, deep caregiving capacity, and lived experience in building, implementing, & operationalizing change. As a Racial Equity Strategist with State of Equity, a program of the Public Health Institute, Lianne co-leads the Capitol Collaborative on Race & Equity (CCORE), the largest state-level racial equity capacity building initiative in the nation, supporting a people powered movement inside of California State government to advance racial equity. Previously, Lianne was Deputy Program Director for California’s Health in All Policies Task Force, and has experience working at a local health department, Federally Qualified Health Center, and with the Institute for Local Government. Lianne is also an active member of the Showing Up for Racial Justice (SURJ) Sacramento Chapter, organizing with white people to end racism, a mom, personal trainer & group fitness instructor, youth soccer coach, and paddleboarding enthusiast.
Colin Gutierrez
Colin Gutierrez, MPH, is a public health specialist working to promote safe and healthy communities in California through intersectoral coordination of State-level departments, community based organizations, and academic experts. Colin tackles big-picture, up-stream problems utilizing a “health in All Polices” model to open down-stream policy opportunities. In prior experiences, Colin worked in the states of Michigan and Arizona, and completed an internship on international development in Cameroon. He earned both his MPH and BS degree from Michigan State University.
Kesha Harris
I’m Kesha Harris – the co-founder of July Forward – a peer led mental health organization committed to promoting health and wellness through nature, stigma reduction and advocacy. Through peer to peer support we offer wellness programs for caregivers, speakers bureau to reduce stigma and educate communities on mental health issues.
Helen Ho
Helen Ho is the Research and Evaluation Manager at a civil rights organization, where she conducts research in support of Asian American communities, immigrants, and multiracial democracy. She uses quantitative and qualitative studies to capture impact, inform internal strategy, and drive policy improvements. She holds a Ph.D. in Public Policy from Harvard University.
D’Aungillique Jackson
D’Aungillique Jackson is a community organizer, policy advocate, and people mobilizer currently pursuing her Master’s in Public Affairs at UC Berkeley. She earned her B.A. in Sociology from Fresno State, where she served as Student Body President. She now leads as Director of the Community Justice Network, advancing grassroots leadership and systems change throughout the Central Valley.
In recognition of her leadership and impact, D’Aungillique was named to the Central Valley’s 40 Under 40 Class of 2023. That same year, she was honored by Vice President Kamala Harris with an invitation to the White House Pride Reception celebrating the nation’s most distinguished LGBTQ+ organizers. In 2020, she helped organize and lead Fresno’s largest and most peaceful Black Lives Matter demonstration, amplifying a collective call for racial justice and community healing.
Guided by her lived experiences, she remains deeply committed to building equity, power, and lasting change alongside directly impacted communities.
Youngju Ji
Youngju Ji is a survivor, immigrant, and longtime community advocate who has dedicated her career to advancing community-driven responses to gender-based violence. As former Executive Director of KAN-WIN in Chicago, she led for over a decade in developing culturally responsive, survivor-centered programs rooted in healing and collective care. She brings a deep commitment to uplifting survivors at the margins—especially those who face persistent challenges related to language, cultural differences, and access to support. Today, she serves as Program Manager of a national technical assistance project supporting AAPI-serving organizations through tailored training, peer learning, and capacity-building.
Tara Kanjanapas
Tara (ติตา) (she/they) M.S., is a healing advocate, artist, community organizer, and plant grower based in the Bay Area, CA, and Bangkok, TH. At Healing Together she is the Program Catalyst. She has an annual migration pattern that takes her between her homes in Thailand and the Bay Area in order to learn and facilitate containers for liberatory healing, decolonization, tending conflict, nurturing autonomous community, and tending to the grief and rage of her generation which is growing up in a world of constant crisis. She mostly works with labor union organizers, queer and trans artists, university students, farmers, and clear eyed, disobedient people.
Gustavo Lopez
Gustavo leads the research, evaluation, and data work for the Alliance for Boys and Men of Color (ABMoC). Gustavo also helps lead the gender-justice work at ABMoC, including the Healing Together campaign which focuses on ending intimate partner violence by engaging with men. Prior to joining ABMoC, Gustavo led the research agenda for the Southern Border Communities Coalition of Alliance San Diego, focusing on migration and border policies. He holds bachelor’s degrees in economics and political science from Purdue University, and a master’s of public policy degree from UC San Diego’s School of Global Policy and Strategy.
Shirley Luo
Shirley Luo is the Program Manager for the culturally-specific Resource Center at the Asian Pacific Institute on Gender-Based Violence. She is responsible for developing and executing strategy related to API-GBV’s public awareness, resource development, and capacity building initiatives. In this role, she also delivers TA and training to diverse audiences on a variety of topics related to gender-based violence, culturally-specific advocacy, and AAPI experiences; and she engages the API-GBV’s national network of AAPI direct service agencies, state coalitions, TA providers, and other partners to deepen collaboration and nurture connections.
Shirley received an M.A. in International Relations from NYU’s Department of Politics and a B.A. in History and Political Science from UC Berkeley. She has been with API-GBV since late-2016, and through its work on the national and community level, she has become a strong believer in the power of partnerships in creating safer, equitable, and joyful communities.
Lizbeth Rivas
Lizbeth Rivas (pronouns: she/her/ella/siya) is the Contracts Manager at California Domestic Workers Coalition. Lizbeth grew up in a working class immigrant family & community in Lynwood, a city in Southeast Los Angeles. In 2012, she graduated from San Francisco State University with a B.A. in Sociology. After moving back to LA, Lizbeth worked in the research & evaluation department of Bienestar Human Services, working with LGBTQ Latinx communities through 2 federally funded linkage to HIV care programs. This work led Lizbeth to pursue her Master’s degree in Social Welfare with a concentration in social & economic justice at UCLA. As an MSW scholar, Lizbeth grew a particular interest in development and the barriers faced by some community-based organizations in securing funding through philanthropic systems that emerged out of colonized wealth. Lizbeth is committed to intersectional and actively anti-racist frameworks towards social and gender justice equity, mental health, and working with immigrant communities of color.
Aide Rodriquez
Originally from the Chicagoland area with Mexican immigrant and working-class roots, Aide brings over 15 years of experience in development, communications, and program support across the nonprofit, education, and arts sectors. She began her work in domestic worker rights at Mujeres Unidas y Activas and enjoys collaborating with artists, activists, and organizations on immigrant rights, policy and cultural work. Aide holds an MA from the University of Chicago, an MFA from California College of the Arts, and dual BAs from the University of Michigan. Her work merges academic training with a commitment to social change, supporting POC and immigrant communities through advocacy, storytelling, and resource-building.
Ivy Zucaya
Ivy Zucaya (PhD, MSW) is a child welfare scholar-practitioner with over 10 years of experience working for California’s public child welfare system to implement and evaluate interventions that aim to promote child safety, maintain family connectedness, and center system accountability. She is currently a Research Director at the UCLA Pritzker Center for Strengthening Children and Families. Prior to that, Ivy served as a research specialist at UC Berkeley California Child Welfare Indicators Project where she analyzed child welfare administrative records from 58 county-operated child welfare agencies and led a statewide evaluation of California’s Commercially Sexually Exploited Child Program. Ivy’s research is informed by her experience as a mother, social worker, and advocate for queer youth.
Acknowledging All Participants with Care and Respect
The full REALize Power Cohort 2 includes additional leaders who are part of this shared learning and leadership experience. In recognition of each person’s preferences around public visibility, we’re acknowledging their participation and presence below in a way that respects their privacy.
• Adriana M.
This page will be updated on a rolling basis as more information is shared or preferences evolve.