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2026 Board Members

Junta Directiva 2026

After the challenges of the past couple of pandemic years, we are so excited to get together with the community.

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President

Roxana Escobar

Roxana Escobar Ñañez is an Afro-Peruvian Ph.D. Human Geography living in T’karonto (Treaty 13). With her project, Roxana seeks to contribute to the geographic knowledge production about Black womanhood in Latin America. As an activist, Roxana has worked with decolonial feminist Peruvian and Canadian organizations in projects regarding sexual and reproductive rights, education, and migration rights. Currently, Roxana is the host of Tertulia Day, a podcast focused on highlighting the lives and the art of Afro-Peruvian women singers of criollo music.

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Co-Director of Communications

Jess De Vitt

Jess De Vitt (she/they) is a community arts mentor and visual artist based in T’karonto (Treaty 13). Jess is an Aquarius sun, double Virgo queer mexican-italian always looking for new ways of creating, learning and collaborating. Jess has experience working with community through the arts offering instructional workshops for a range of mediums and art making techniques both

digitally and in person. The techniques Jess teaches range from watercolour, acrylic, oil, image transfer, charcoal, resin, jewellery, bookbinding, soft and oil pastels, knitting and more. Jess is interested in challenging notions of scarcity within arts and community, searching for

ways of connecting with each other with intention and care.

PODER is honoured to cultivate these spaces in the meeting place of Toronto (from the Mohawk word “Tkaronto,” meaning “the place in the water where the trees are standing”). It is the traditional territory of many First Peoples, including the Mississaugas of the Credit, the Anishnaabe, the Chippewa, the Haudenosaunee, and the Wendat peoples.

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The territory is subject to the Dish With One Spoon Wampum Belt Covenant, an agreement between the Iroquois Confederacy and the Ojibwe and allied nations to peaceably share and care for the resources around the Great Lakes. Today, Tkaronto is still the home to many Indigenous people across Turtle Island. We are grateful to have the opportunity to build community in solidarity with Indigenous nations on this territory.

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We remember those who came here involuntarily, particularly those brought to these lands due to the trans-Atlantic slave trade and slavery. This city was built on stolen land and stolen labour of Black, Indigenous, and racialized people.

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