Vanessa Huang

Vanessa’s work is deeply informed by a call-and-response practice as a multimedia poet, artist, and cultural worker – with over 15 years of leadership, movement, and capacity building experience with organizations and networks at the intersections of racial, economic, and trans/gender justice. Vanessa helped expand the anti-prison and gender liberation field as a Campaign and Communications Director running California policy campaigns involving funder organizing, narrative shift, and regional/statewide mobilization and national movement building; as a development, leadership expansion, and community organizing strategist with emergent organizations and national collaboratives; and as a producer of special events bridging cultural organizing with grassroots fundraising/power building and legislative campaigns to deepen coalitional relationships and strengthen values- and vision-based strategic alignment. Vanessa’s poetry collection, quiet of chorus (UpSet Press 2018), emerged from movement building to catalyze transformative change in partnership with people in women’s prisons, transgender women of color, and national/regional/local networks to counter state violence through decarceration, homecoming, and transformative justice while centering intergenerational leadership, resilience, and healing.