YUCA: The Advisory Board

	Meet the Advisory Board
	Sundiata Acoli Sundiata Acoli, a New Afrikan political prisoner of war, mathematician, and computer analyst, was born January 14, 1937, in Decatur, Texas, and raised in Vernon, Texas. During the summer of 1964 he did voter registration work in Mississippi. In 1968 he joined the Harlem Black Panther Party and did community work around issues of schools, housing, jobs, child care, drugs, and police brutality. In May 1973, while driving the New Jersey Turnpike, he and his comrades were ambushed by N.J. state troopers. One companion, Zayd Shakur, was killed, another companion, Assata Shakur, was wounded and captured. One state trooper was killed and another wounded, and Sundiata was captured days later. After a highly sensationalized and prejudicial trial he was convicted of the death of the state trooper and was sentenced to Trenton State Prison (TSP) for life plus 30 years consecutive.
	Nadinne Cruz Nadinne is a lifelong learner, dedicated organizer, and pioneer in the field of community-based service learning. Nadinne has a long and rich history of teaching, community organizing, and mentoring students. She previously served as the Director of the Haas Center for Public Service, and prior to that, the Eugene M. Lang Visiting Professor of Social Change at Swarthmore College and the Executive Director of Higher Education Consortium for Urban Affairs. She is married to Larry Ulrich, has two beautiful children Claire (22) and David (21), and a dog named Kuya.
	Keisha Evans Keisha is a longtime community leader in the East Palo Alto community. A former teacher at the Ravenswood Elementary School District, Keisha helped raise generations of East Palo Alto youth to be proud of their roots and history. She helped found Ujima Security Council in the early 1990s to fight for environmental justice in the community as one of the early leaders of the campaign to shut down Romic, a negligent toxic waste plant in the community. Keisha also represented East Palo Alto in the historic National People of Color Environmental Justice Summit in 1991 that led to the formal launch of the Environmental Justice Movement. With her husband Pete, Keisha runs Pan African City Alive , an Africentric shop located in Sunnyvale to provide for the Africentric needs of folks in the San Francisco Bay area. Keisha is a proud mother, grandmother, and is an avid birdwatcher.
	Saundra Webster Known to her friends as “ST”, Saundra Webster is also a longtime community leader in the East Palo Alto community. Since YUCA’s inception in 1994, Auntie Saundra has always brought in young people to YUCA to get them involved in the community. She is very passionate about youth and children. ST has been a foster parent for over eight years. She has provided respite care for over fifteen adolescents and has also been a Foster Parent for Therapeutic Foster Homes. ST was President of the San Mateo County Foster Parent Association in 2001and a parent-student advocate for Girls Club of Mid -Peninsula in 2004. In addition, ST was the Founder/Executive Director for the LEAP program at Sequoia High. Auntie Saundra was also a key member of Ujima Security Council that led to the shutdown of Romic.