Jakada is Ella Baker Center’s new Executive Director, but he is hardly a newcomer to the Ella Baker Center team. For years, Jakada has been a lead strategist and chief team member on some of the Ella Baker Center’s most high profile campaigns.

Most recently, Jakada spent a year heading up Books Not Bars, taking the ongoing campaign to replace California’s abusive youth prisons with effective rehabilitation programs to ever-increasing heights. Before that, Jakada helped lead the successful “Stop the Super Jail Campaign,” a two-year effort to stop Alameda County from building a massive, expensive and remote juvenile hall that it didn’t need. He was a leader in the “Justice for Moreno and Pacheco Campaign,” the successful fight to free two wrongly convicted Latino boys in Solano County. And he ran Ella Baker Center’s youth organizing project, Third Eye Movement, during the “No on 21” campaign to educate voters about the dangers of Proposition 21, a draconian ballot measure aimed at putting 14-year-olds in adult courts and 16-year-olds in adult prisons.

Before joining Ella Baker Center staff, Jakada was a Constituent Liaison for Oakland City Councilwoman Nancy Nadel. He helped launch or lead a number of important Bay Area organizations, including Empowered Youth Educating Society (EYES), Rising Youth for Social Equality (RYSE) and Underground Railroad (an artist collective). Born and raised in Oakland, California, Jakada is also the father of three powerful and creative young girls.