Our Team

Tash (she/they) is a queer, gender-nonconforming, community organizer and circlekeeper working to build racial and economic justice. For over 10 years, they’ve been organizing to reduce jail populations, stop jail expansions, and redirect resources out of carceral budgets and into life-affirming solutions.

Tash is trained in restorative justice, mediation, and various conflict resolution techniques. They believe that we must build cultures and practices that move beyond punishment if we are to meaningfully break cycles of violence and create a world rooted in shared prosperity.

Prior to joining Restore Oakland in 2019, Tash served as a Senior Organizer and Advocate at the Ella Baker Center for Human Rights, a founding partner of Restore Oakland. They proudly serve on the board of the REAL Peoples Fund.

Tash was born and raised in the Bay as a child of Vietnamese refugees. Their dedication to dismantling systems of domination is fueled by the deep ties she has in her community and her broader vision of liberation. They love noodles, backpacking, and nerding out over music and poetry.

Debbie (she/her) is an experienced finance, operations, organizational development,  and human resources management professional with a deep commitment to social justice and dismantling systems that disseminate economic injustice. Debbie brings over 20 years of experience working with mission-based organizations dedicated to community building and advancing a more just and equitable society to her role as Managing Director. 

A native New Yorker, Debbie relocated to the Bay Area in 2009. She comes to the organization with many years of experience in the non-profit sector working in Human Services as a Program Director and Learning and Development Coordinator with Housing Plus Solutions in Brooklyn, New York as well as, Economic and Workforce Development as the Director of Finance at Renaissance Entrepreneurship Center in San Francisco. 

Prior to joining Restore Oakland Inc as a staff member, Debbie was the Director of Finance and Operations at the Ella Baker Center for Human Rights, a founding partner where she helped manage a $22M capital campaign and helped the launch of Restore Oakland.

In her leisure time, she enjoys gardening, the beach, hiking, wine tasting, and exploring all that northern California has to offer.

Jessie (they/them) is a community advocate, food entrepreneur, and queer creative based in Oakland, Ohlone Land. Raised in the Bay, by way of Naperville, Illinois, they are a second-generation Vietnamese of the diaspora. Jessie began their career in economics and has spent the past decade cooking and sharing Vietnamese food. They are passionate about the heart-centered experiences of community building as opportunities for awareness, connection and care.

Kari (any pronoun) is a queer, Black organizer and facilitator who brings her training in policy advocacy and social work to the movements for prison-industrial-complex abolition and Black liberation. Kari has roots in rural North Carolina, Uganda, and Finland, and has been cultivating a home in the Bay Area over the last six years.

Before joining Restore Oakland, Kari provided advocacy and support to incarcerated Californians fighting for resentencing and release, and worked with unhoused folks and low-income families to access housing and vital services. They hold an MSW/MPP from UC Berkeley, and are passionate about liberatory approaches to healing and mental healthcare. On good days, Kari may be found reading in the sun, dancing to live music, homemaking with their partner, and tending to plants.

Asa (they/them) is a queer lifelong student, multi-media artist, and scholar-organizer devoted to Black feminist movement building, centralizing the heart of their work in prison-industrial-complex abolition. A child of Tanzanian and Malawian immigrants, Asa came from Michigan and Texas before finding their way to the Bay seven years ago.

Asa’s journey before joining Restore Oakland Inc. brought them to guide transitional-aged youth into becoming leaders in the struggle for free college; community alternatives to police; and corporate polluter accountability. They also co-designed and founded the NET Growth Movement Guaranteed Income Program for former foster youth (aged 21) in Alameda County. Having further provided in-custody resources and familial support to incarcerated parents, Asa facilitated reunification to system-impacted families.

Asa holds an honors BA in Political Science and Sociology from the University of San Francisco where their organizing journey catalyzed. They led direct actions advocating for issues such as Cops-Off-Campus as well as participated in acclaimed panel discussions and workshops, such as examining reparations for descendants of enslaved Africans with Dr. Cornel West.

On good days outside of work, Asa is sunbathing in the grass while immersing in their latest novel; catching a good sweat in dance class; writing a burst of couplets at the beautiful sights of everyday life; and being in community with their best friends.

Zoe (she/her) is an organizer, designer, and researcher committed to storytelling and collaborative design processes to address social problems. At the heart of her process is curiosity and a fierce commitment to inclusive design. Originally from the East Coast, Zoe has been living and organizing in Oakland for the past 10 years, and has deep relationship with the Bay.

Zoe has a background in architecture, anti-prison organizing, and restorative justice facilitation.  Working with Decarcerate Alameda and California Coalition for Women’s Prisoners, she has been supporting community-based movements towards liberation for over a decade. This work has led her to shift her design focus towards communications design for political organizing, and she recently graduated from California College of the Arts with a Master’s in Interaction Design. 

Jasmine’s (she/her) heart and work meet at the intersection of healing, organizing, power building, and economic justice rooted in cooperation and collective ownership. At Restore Oakland, she serves as the Restorative Economics Organizer—mobilizing small business owners and worker cooperatives to challenge extractive systems and build community-rooted alternatives.

Jasmine organizes toward an economy grounded in dignity and interdependence—where land stays in community hands, where labor is honored, and where healing is embedded in the way we govern, work, and grow.

As a daughter of Ugandan immigrants and small business owners, the work of cultivating power among oppressed people and creating pathways to wealth building is deeply personal to Jasmine. Over the years, she has worked with several grassroots and nonprofit organizations committed to housing justice, abolition, equitable development, and community self-determination.

Before joining Restore, Jasmine was a Program Manager at the East Bay Community Law Center, where she supported small business owners and tenant organizers through legal advocacy, including transactional legal support, as well as campaign strategy and coalition building rooted in racial and economic justice.

She currently serves as Board President of the Bay Area Community Land Trust, stewarding permanently affordable housing and resident power through collective ownership. Working alongside residents has deepened Jasmine’s understanding of what democratic governance can look like when it’s rooted in trust and the need to repair historical and interpersonal harms.

Jasmine’s background also includes legal work at the Berkeley Law Death Penalty Clinic, where she supported cases for people primarily on death row in the U.S. South; teaching inside San Quentin State Prison, where she supported incarcerated students preparing for their GEDs; and leading a class on Black feminist thought for high school students in Oakland, which further deepened her commitment to healing and political education.

She has worked on local policy campaigns that bridge abolition and housing justice—serving on the steering committee of the Berkeley Tenant Opportunity to Purchase Act Working Group, where she supported efforts to advance tenants’ right of first offer and refusal through proposed legislation, and contributing to Reform LA Jails, which passed in 2020 as Measure J, committing Los Angeles County to invest in community-based alternatives to incarceration and increase transparency around the jail system.

In every space Jasmine enters, she carries a commitment to transformation that’s relational, disciplined, and rooted in care. She doesn’t believe the future is something we wait for—she believes it’s something we steward together!

In her free time, you can catch Jasmine singing, hosting events for pleasure and community, reading about revolution and personal healing, and vibing out anywhere there is live music and nature.

Carlus “Ray” (he/him) is a Richmond native who currently resides in the South Bay. He is a business owner and a Restorative/Transformative Justice circle keeper.

He holds a weekly ‘Citizens Circle’ with formerly incarcerated and never incarcerated individuals. Ray has facilitated community building circles at Stanford University as well as given a speech on prison abolition for a Cops off Campus rally, also at Stanford University.

Ray knows the fundamental problems of the US prison system from the inside and is able to counteract this well functioning system with a humane approach to crime and conflict through this work that he does. He is a formerly incarcerated individual who spent 27 years as a resident of the California Department of Corrections.

Alejo (she/ella) is a first generation indigenous Zapoteca from Los Angeles, with over a decade of experience leading worker struggles to secure long-term material gains. Alejo is committed to developing rank-and-file leadership, challenging the boss, and embodying a principled stance that honors the praxis and historical legacy of proletarian struggles.

Some notable parts of Alejo’s organizing trajectory include her role in organizing fast food workers demanding livable wages in Northern California, and currently guiding the coordination of the statewide Safety Net for All coalition, which aims to secure fundamental benefits for immigrant workers historically excluded from government aid programs. She currently serves as the Executive director of TUWU, where she has been building working class power since 2019.

Laura is a first generation Xicana with roots in Chihuahua, Mexico. She grew up in a working-class, Mexican family in Lynwood, CA at the height of the “War on Drugs” and a wave of anti-immigrant propositions in the state of California.

Laura became politicized at a young age when she saw the impact of racism, criminalization and systemic neglect on her family and community. Laura learned to organize in her community as a young person fighting for educational equity and access to quality & culturally relevant education. This led her to pursue higher education, where she became a student organizer & mentor to other youth striving to access higher education and improve their families’ living conditions. Laura earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in History from Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles and a Master of Arts degree in Cultural Anthropology and Social Transformation from California Institute for Integral Studies in San Francisco. Laura became immersed in the immigrant rights movement in the Bay Area and nationally through her work leading a human rights abuse documentation project with the National Network for Immigrant and Refugee RIghts. She trained dozens of grassroots organizations throughout the country on abuse documentation and organizing. Trained in Freirían pedagogy of popular education, Laura believes in the innate capacity of people directly impacted by oppression to come up with the solutions to their own problems in the context of supportive community.

Laura currently serves as a community school leader at Garfield Elementary School and is dedicated to creating spaces of learning that are healing, inclusive and liberatory. As the parent to two precious seeds (children) ages 10 and 14, Laura is committed to breaking generational curses and paving the way toward healing from from the violence of colonization and displacement of brown bodies. Laura enjoys dancing to cumbias, hikes in the redwoods and cuddling with her two kids and their kittens.

Born and raised in Oakland, Joshua Lee has been leading grassroots organizations in the Bay Area for over ten years. A focal point of Josh’s work has been with youth organizing groups in the east bay such as Youth Together and AYPAL: Building Asian Pacific Islander Community Power, centering the voices and leadership of some of the most powerful yet vulnerable populations in the region in BIPOC young people.

Josh is currently a Senior Program Officer at the East Bay Community Foundation for the Community Organizing, Power Building, and Movement Building strategy. He has a MA from the University of Michigan in Higher Education with a focus on Social Justice, and a BA from UC Santa Cruz in American Studies.

Bio to Come

Bio to come