The YTH Live 2020 Program Committee was made up of a diverse group of technology experts, health professionals, and youth leaders who designed a cutting-edge conference. Learn more about about each of these fascinating committee members:
Robert Ainslie
Robert Ainslie has over 25 years of experience working in Communication and Development. He is a Senior Program Officer for the Johns Hopkins Center for Communication Programs.
Currently Robert is the Senior Technical Advisor for the MyChoice project in Indonesia, working in partnership with the government to revitalize family planning in Indonesia using a unique demand generation/supply side model, including ICT platforms for youth, consumers, providers and outreach workers. His focus is social and behavior change communication, having worked on projects in Indonesia, Mozambique, Haiti, Nicaragua, Brazil, Guatemala, Cambodia and Tanzania for malaria, water and sanitation/hygiene improvement, youth, social marketing, vector control, family planning/reproductive health, youth, maternal child health and HIV/AIDS prevention programs. His work has been influential in the development and adoption of national communication strategies in malaria, water, sanitation and hygiene and reproductive health.
Robert served as a Peace Corps Volunteer in Guatemala.
Lidia Carlton
Lidia Carlton (she/her) has spent the past 15 years working on improving and advancing sexual health education in California. She took on the role of Director of Community Education at Planned Parenthood Pasadena and San Gabriel Valley in 2019 after 11 years of working at the California Department of Public Health, STD Control Branch in health education. Lidia represented the STD Control Branch on the Steering Committee of the statewide Adolescent Sexual Health Work Group (ASHWG) where she led a review of curriculum for compliance with the CA Healthy Youth Act. She was a member of the California Department of Education (CDE) Health Education Framework writing committee, and worked closely with CDE on the statewide implementation of new comprehensive sexual health education requirements. In her free time, Lidia likes rollerskating, rockhounding, and generally dabbling in many off brand hobbies.
Ivan Garcia
Ivan Garcia is currently a freshman at Head-Royce School in Oakland. He is committed to serving youth in the Oakland community and beyond to ensure that they have the support, and resources to be able to create a positive impact in the world.
Ivan also played a key role in ensuring the March for Our Lives Oakland rally was a success and he is currently helping by using social media to mobilize young people around the Bay Area to advocate for gun reform. Additionally, Ivan’s a Youth Ambassador for Litterati, an app which makes it easy for anyone to create an environmental impact, around the world. Ivan has done a lot of work throughout the Oakland community especially, while using social media to propel the projects he is working on.Ivan Garcia is currently a sophomore at Head-Royce School in Oakland. Ivan is proud to be a part of the LGBTQ+ community, himself being a young, gay activist who has begun fighting for the rights of all people. Ivan came out when he was only thirteen, but he realizes that he wouldn’t have been able to do it without an amazing support system, and he therefore has focused on ensuring that every young person in his community feels like they are being properly supported and listened to.
Throughout organizing though, one thing has always stayed the same for Ivan. He continues to remain proud of his identity and believes that it is crucial for marginalized communities, like the queer community to speak up about the issues which are most important to them. Ivan hopes to inspire others to love themselves for who they are and fight for a better tomorrow.
Ankit Hirpara
Ankit Hirpara is a Junior at UC Berkeley majoring in Molecular & Cellular Biology. His passion for health care developed after his internship at Wockhardt Hospital, India where he helped physicians set up health camps in impoverished villages and provided lectures in Gujarati on HIV transmission. After this trip, he decided he wanted to impact medicine in as many ways possible, paying special attention to the social determinants of health care.
He currently serves on the Homeless Commission of the City of Berkeley, representing District 7, and has developed lasting relationships with many underserved persons on the streets of Berkeley. As a pre-med, Ankit intends to impact health care through his biomedical research, app development, grant-writing, policy making, and clinical work.
During his free time, Ankit likes to play basketball and football, and he also enjoys running and barbecuing.
Isaiah Johnson
Luis Liang
Luis Liang is an Account Executive, Social Impact at Twilio.org, helping nonprofits leverage technology through communications that give hope, power, and freedom. Prior to joining Twilio, he worked at Salesforce, Univision and nonprofit organizations around the Bay Area. He has served as a Board Member for the Association of Latino Professionals for America and The Greenlining Institute Alumni Association.
Luis graduated from the Haas School of Business at UC Berkeley and is determined to be an impactful leader for social change leveraging technology to amplify impact.
Antoinette Manuel
Antoinette Manuel is the Executive Director for KidsFirst Child Abuse Prevention Council of Placer County, a counseling and family resource center providing evidence based trauma informed services. Antoinette has over 10 years’ experience in program implementation, outreach, and community engagement. She earned her Bachelors of Arts in Sociology, and went on to obtain a Master’s in Education from California State University, Sacramento. Antoinette has a keen interest on the intersections of race, gender, and mental health and working with under resourced communities to remove barriers around access to services. Antoinette believes she is on a life long journey of growth and development. She continuously volunteers her time in the community and has a service heart.
Ethan McFarlin
Ethan McFarlin is a Colorado native, budding computer scientist, and passionate youth advocator, committed to using technology as a force for positive social good. Serving as the youngest advisor on his county’s Innovation and Technology Committee, he is devoted to soaking up as much exposure as possible to the public sector. Building on his initial civics experience, Ethan was designated a Young Champion Ambassador by the Olympic Committee and volunteers as a Youth Liaison to his City Council. After experiencing the bureaucracies of local government first-hand, Ethan decided to drive immediate, grassroots action in the political sphere, joining the High School Democrats of America where he is a leading representative on the National Expansion and Communication Boards. Ethan also volunteers regularly in web development and infrastructure management for the Colorado Springs Citizens Project, a non-profit specializing in spreading nonpartisan info on local elections. Confronted with the realities of his community’s mental health crisis, Ethan decided to launch a congressionally-endorsed support app called Fulcra, which provides a safe space for victims to share their insecurities. Above all, the common thread sewn by his involvement in government is the belief that civic action can only be taken when ordinary citizens show the willingness to share their voices. In his free time, Ethan enjoys going hiking, listening to podcasts, and skiing in the Rocky Mountains.
Jose Montoya
Jose Montoya grew up in a mid-sized rural farming town in Eastern, WA. Fueled by his experience growing up in poverty, Jose studied Political Philosophy at Eastern Washington University, and dual minors in Cognitive Science and Economics, becoming a McNair Scholar assisting in research on “Wealth and its Effects on a Representative Democracy” and a heavily active member of Movimiento Estudiantil Chican@ de Aztlan (MEChA), where he held many leadership positions. While active in MEChA, Jose traveled the states and organized different campaigns in the implementation of Chican@ studies in Schools and Universities using direct action as a tool. After 15 years in Retail Banking and a pipeline in Wealth Management, Jose walked away from the banking world and pursued his passion to organize communities to fight back against a system that is broken and rigged against the most vulnerable populations. Jose, besides being the Sierra Club MLC treasurer and an Executive Board Member, Jose now works for the California Health Collaborative in the Gold Country Rural Initiative as a Young Adult Coordinator fighting big tobacco and the new poisons that they are selling us.
Shawn Reilly
Shawn Reilly recently graduated from Vanderbilt University with a Bachelor of Science in Human and Organizational Development, and is currently a master’s student at Vanderbilt in the Learning and Design program at Peabody College. As an undergraduate, Reilly was instrumental in a successful campaign to gain gender inclusive housing to support transgender and gender expansive students on campus. They formerly served as the Vanderbilt Office of LGBTQI Life’s first student spring break program coordinator, and for two years as a senior mentor with the Oasis Center’s Just Us program. Reilly is involved with a number of local organizations, and serves as the Student Engagement and Leadership Chair of GLSEN Tennessee, youth advisory board member of Healthy and Free Tennessee, and as a member of the TN Department of Health Transgender Task Force.
Kevin Shane
Kevin is the Communications Director for Male Contraceptive Initiative. He has over 20 years of professional experience spanning communications, marketing, and human-centered design. He has worked throughout North America, Africa, and Asia, with a particular focus on emerging markets. His interests and skills include design research and facilitation, copywriting and editing, photography, videography, graphic design, and audio production. He is keenly interested in the role of storytelling in driving positive, sustainable social impact.
Joshua Polk
Joshua Polk is the Program Coordinator for SoCal Club, a nonprofit organization in South Los Angeles that focuses on HIV/STI treatment and prevention, mental health, and wellness for Black and Latino queer folks. He facilitates all of the behavioral interventions, as well as the community advisory board. Joshua was previously the Outreach Coordinator at the Black AIDS Institute, which focused on ending HIV in Black communities. It is very important for him to work with LGBTQ+ folks of color because there is a rarity in being a person of color and being able to provide services to individuals that not only look like him but share similar backgrounds as well. He received his undergraduate degree in Health Sciences from Howard University in Washington D.C., and he is currently attending Antioch University where he is attaining a Master’s Degree in Clinical Psychology. Joshua has chosen to specialize in LGBT affirmative psychology because he would like to help people better navigate their lives through the intersectionality of race and sexual orientation.
Erica Weinberg
Erica Weinberg, Senior Affiliate Consultant, works at the intersection of the corporate and social sector to address disparities in healthcare, education, and social services.
A former pharmaceutical director credited with successful high-impact corporate philanthropy programs, Erica has returned to consulting with TCC Group where she connects social sector issues with global corporate responsibility and philanthropic giving.
Her career commitment to generate positive, measurable results for both businesses and society shines through when she leads clients and teams through business and strategic planning and program development processes. She is skilled at engaging a diverse range of stakeholders using a distinctive combination of thoughtful listening, diplomacy, and vision-driven clarity. An open and creative thinker, Erica considers all options and creates space for ideas to flourish and percolate, where anything can happen.
With her positive, solution-driven approach and industry expertise, Erica is called upon to facilitate visioning processes, develop collaborative exercises, and build learning communities, and she has presented extensively to a wide range of audiences on philanthropy trends and issues. Erica holds her MA in International Economics and European Studies from the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies and BA in International Relations from the University of Southern California.
