As Co-Executive Director for Operations & Development, Denise leads diverse aspects of CEJA’s operations, finance, development, communications, and human resources programs with the goal of nurturing CEJA’s sustainable growth and amplifying the impacts of our policy work. Denise is responsible for working closely with the Co-Executive Director of Programs to guide the vision for CEJA, CEJA Action, and the CEJA Action PAC.
Denise has nearly two decades of experience working in multiracial social justice movement spaces as an organizer, advocate, and fundraiser dedicated to transformative justice, advancing grassroots solutions to systems change, and the movement for collective liberation from capitalism and white supremacy. Denise joined CEJA in 2019 and has served as CEJA’s Development Director, during which time she fostered the consistent growth of CEJA’s annual budget, grew the robust grants and re-grants programs, and launched CEJA’s first ever individual donor program. She has also served as a former Interim Co-Executive Director at CEJA, supporting the stability, sustainability, and strategic growth of CEJA as a powerful and essential movement institution successfully through transition.
Denise was raised in southeast Pennsylvania by a working-class family and was politicized among multiracial queer communities and sex worker advocates in the late ‘90s and early 2000s. Having spent most of her life living in EJ communities in both urban and rural areas, Denise has a lifelong commitment to combating the environmental racism experienced across these geographies.
Denise holds a MES in Environmental Policy and a MS in Nonprofit Leadership from the University of Pennsylvania. She is an International Coaching Federation (ICF) Certified Healing-Centered Coach through the Blooming Willow Coaching program and earned the CFRE (Certified Fund-Raising Executive) credential in 2023. She is currently based in Los Angeles on unceded Tongva land.