SPOKES Youth Advisory Board
Want to Join a team of young people who actively participate in Youth Speaks programs, give us feedback, help us imagine, and plan our activities and events throughout the year? Join SPOKES! SPOKES is Youth Speaks youth advisory board! Each year, Bay Area youth join SPOKES to grow as cultural organizers and arts practitioners by using their leadership skills to make the world more just, liberatory, and fun for their communities.
Lilith
Lilith Kelly (she/her) is a Latina transgender poet and Bay Area native, recognized as a semifinalist in the 2024 Teen Poetry Slam. Serving as the president of the CVCHS Slam Poetry Team and an active member of Spokes, Lilith regularly participates in Youth Speaks events. Her work thoughtfully explores themes of the trans experience, romance, and mental health, offering a candid and nuanced perspective through her poetry. Lilith’s favorite subjects are math and psychology, reflecting her curiosity and analytical mindset.
Madisen
Madisen uses poetry and art as ways to get to know herself more through the process of creation and loving the outcome. They are learning astrology and somatics and hope to combine them in a holistic healing career. She values the community aspect of SPOKES the most because she understands that to live is to be seen by herself first and then by the world but she has to be shown somewhere first.
Mallory
Mallory Asis (she/her) is a mixed Filipina poet and storyteller from San Diego, California. She is the 2024 Youth Speaks Teen Poetry Slam Champion and a member of the 2024 Berkeley Slam Team, the #2 ranked adult slam poetry team at the Bigfoot Regional Poetry Slam. Grounded in the belief that poetry is an act of liberation and reinvention, her work dismantles patriarchal and colonial narratives while exploring identity, diaspora, and collective memory in performance and on the page. She is a Mellon Mays Research Fellow at the University of California, Berkeley, where she bridges spoken word with academic research on femme diaspora poetry and is a founder of the Bay Area Poetry Slam (BAPS) at Cal. She has performed and presented research at Stanford, Florida State University, University of Wisconsin, The Courage Museum at the Presidio, and elsewhere. Mallory currently serves on the Youth Speaks SPOKES Advisory Board and has an upcoming publication in The Rumpus.
Sehinne
Sehinne Yohannes is a Habesha-America slam poet born and raised in the East Bay. She is the 2025 Oakland Vice Youth Poet Laureate, a member of the winning 2025 BNV Youth Speaks Bay Area team, and a member of the competing 2026 BNV Youth Speaks Bay Area team. She has been commemorated by Alameda County, won the Creative Youth Staff Favorite Award, and has performed at 40+ venues and events. She is currently a senior in the Social Justice Academy of San Leandro, and an upcoming college freshman at Spelman College majoring in Literature, Media, and Writing & minoring in African Diaspora Studies.
Mei
Mei Chung (she/her) is a 15-year-old poet from San Francisco who joined SPOKES because poetry and spoken word is something that she couldn’t live without. She aims to inspire people with her poetry and help other teens feel heard and understood. Mei is also a singer with the Young Women's Choral Projects of San Francisco. In her spare time, she enjoys playing guitar and hanging out with her two cats. She loves the Youth Speaks and SPOKES community and hopes to make a positive impact in the world with her writing
Anika
Anika Mangla is a Bay Area poet whose writing confronts issues of immigration, gender-based violence, and the political systems that attack marginalized communities. She writes from lived experience, using poetry as both activism and self-reclamation, especially as a way to speak from and for indian communities where stories are often buried, and representation is scarce. Through her work, Anika seeks to reclaim erased narratives, amplify voices, and use language as a tool for both healing and political change. She has opened for authors like Ada Limón and is the 2025 Alameda County Youth Poet Laureate, 2025 Brave New Voices Champion, 2026 Young Arts Winner with Distinction in Spoken Word, and recently published her debut poetry book embers & flames. Anika will be studying Political Science and Psychology at UC Berkeley in the fall, where she was selected as a Regents’ and Chancellor’s Scholar.
