Shanelle Gabriel

Executive Director

Shanelle Gabriel serves as the Executive Director, and has been with Urban Word for many years, first as a teaching artist, then UW’s inaugural Poet-In-Residence, then returning as the Program Director. Shanelle is also a poet, singer, and educator who featured on HBO’s Def Poetry Jam,  competed in the National and Individual World Poetry Slam Competitions, and has toured internationally. She was named a “Powerful Indie Artist Activist You Should Know” by Blavity.com and one of “8 Millennial Feminist Poets That Deserve Recognition” by BET.com, and featured in a global campaign with Pandora Music for Black Music Month. As an advocate for lupus, she has spoken for the National Institute of Health, featured in Women’s Health Magazine, USA Today, and starred in a mini-documentary on lupus for Access Health on the Lifetime Network. A MA graduate from Teachers College at Columbia University, in her role as the Urban Word Executive Director, Shanelle is responsible for managing our many partnerships, overseeing the organization’s core programming, as well as the strategic planning in support of Urban Word’s mission.

Camea Davis, Ph.D.

National Youth Poet Laureate Network Director

Dr. Camea Davis is a poet-researcher and teacher educator with a doctorate in critical educational policy studies. Her research and community work explores minoritized youth civic action and youth spoken word as tools to advance equitable democracy. She is currently managing all participating cities of the National Youth Poet Laureate Program.

Michael Cirelli

Founder, National Youth Poet Laureate Program

Michael Cirelli served as Urban Word’s Executive Director for over 15 years, and in 2008 he founded the National Youth Poet Laureate Program. His work supports the strategic growth of Youth Poet Laureate Programs nationally, and elevating platforms for young poets, leaders and changemakers.

Marissa Lewis

Development Director

Marissa manages all aspects of fundraising for Urban Word, including grant writing, donor relations, appeals, and grant management and reporting. She also co-manages operations, including finances and human resources. Prior to Urban Word she was the Director of Programs & Grants at a private foundation overseeing all phases of grant funding and administration, from inquiry to award to monitoring and reporting. She has 15 years of non-profit fundraising, strategy and board development experience as staff, consultant, and volunteer/Board capacities at youth-serving organizations city- and nationwide. Marissa is a graduate of Binghamton University in New York and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Eboni Hogan

Program Director

Eboni is a Brooklyn-based poet, screenwriter, visual artist and educator. Her expertise in instructional design and differentiated learning was forged through over a decade of experience in youth-based nonprofits and educational technology. As a curriculum specialist, she co-authored Fresh Ed: A Field Guide to Culturally Responsive Pedagogy (2016), later serving as Project Director for the Fresh Ed integrative arts program. Eboni attended New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts before going on to become the 2010 Women of the World Poetry Slam Champion and the recipient of the 2018 Friends of Literature prize (Poetry Foundation). As Program Director at Urban Word, Eboni manages our roster of teaching artists as well as our core and off-site programming, including school residencies and general artist requests.

Mahogany Browne

Artistic Director

Mahogany L. Browne, Artistic Director of Urban Word, was selected as Kennedy Center’s Next 50, is the Executive Director of JustMedia, a writer, playwright, organizer, & educator. Browne has received fellowships from Arts for Justice, Air Serenbe, Cave Canem, Poets House, Mellon Research & Rauschenberg. She is the author of recent works: Vinyl Moon, Chlorine Sky, Woke: A Young Poets Call to Justice, Woke Baby, & Black Girl Magic. Founder of the diverse lit initiative Woke Baby Book Fair, Browne’s latest poetry collection Chrome Valley (Norton) due to drop Spring 2023 is a promissory note to survival. She is the first-ever poet-in-residence at the Lincoln Center and lives in Brooklyn, NY.

Drew Drake

Poet-In-Residence

Drew Drake is an actor, poet and educator from Huntsville, Alabama focused on creating art that facilitates healthy dialogue for people of color. He currently serves as Urban Word NYC’s Poet-In-Residence. His biggest inspirations are Zora Neale Hurston and Fannie Lou Hamer. Drew was seen in the New York Times Critics Pick “TJ Loves Sally Forever” at Jack Theatre in February and the independent film ” Privilege” which was released in May. Drew is currently teaching with Urban Word NYC, with Rehabilitation through the Arts at Taconic Women’s Correctional Facility, and more. His teaching focuses on eliminating the elitism of eurocentric and white-centered art, and creating more accessibility to different mediums of art for POCs by using Hip Hop and Black Culture as a tool of exploration of English Language Arts, Theatre and Creative Writing. He is a professor of theater at NYU Tisch School of the Arts, and creator of two Hip Hop EPs. Learn more at www.thedrewdrake.com.

Kimberly Nguyen

Poetry Coalition Fellow

Kimberly Nguyen is a Vietnamese-American diaspora poet. Her work can be found in diaCRITICS, Hobart, Muzzle Magazine, The Minnesota Review, and others. She was a recipient of a Beatrice Daw Brown Prize, and she was a finalist for Frontier Poetry’s 2021 OPEN and New Poets Awards and Palette Poetry’s 2021 Previously Published Poem Prize. She was a 2021 Emerging Voices Fellow at PEN America and can be found at kimberlynguyenwrites.com. She currently serves as Urban Word’s PoCo Fellow, supporting with communications, outreach, and contributing to programmatic needs.

Board Of
Directors

  • Eric Adisa

    Board Chair
    Assistant Principal, Hunter College
    Elementary School

  • Edward J. Jacobs

    Partner
    BakerHostetler LLP

  • Amanda Jacobs Wolf

    Visual Artist

  • Luis (Lou) Abad

    Principal
    KPMG LLP

  • Tina Jacobson

    Chair
    Space Matters Inc.

  • Jason Wadlow

    Standard Chartered Bank New York

  • Kevin Buddhdew

    Board Treasurer
    Director , Credit Suisse

  • Nkosi D. Shields

    Counsel
    BakerHostetler LLP

  • Ayana E.S. Walker

    Director
    HBO
    Product Management

  • Camonghne Felix

    Writer/ Poet Communications Strategist

  • DK Bartley

    Chief Diversity Equity & Inclusion Officer
    Moody's Corporation

Interested in joining our Board of Directors?

Are you or is someone you know looking for ways to be more involved in your community, support a vital Black-led organization, and amplify the creative, educational, and professional development of young people in NYC and across the country? As we expand our capacity and community, we are excited to grow our board. We welcome expertise and fresh ideas from all industries. If this is exciting to you, email shanelle@urbanwordnyc.org and our Board Development Committee will quickly be in touch.