In April 2020, Oakland Frontline Healers formed as a coalition of 20+ Black-led nonprofits, faith organizations, and community doctors responding to COVID-19's disproportionate impact on Black and Brown communities in Oakland, CA. As part of the Communications team, I led creative across the coalition's public health messaging, turning urgent, technical public health information into work people could actually see, share, and act on.

As head of the Communications team, I led creative efforts across the coalition's public health messaging and helped execute community programming on the ground, including documenting events. I delivered creative direction, graphic design, video production, animation, and social media content across OFH's COVID-19 response. I supported partner organizations, including BOSS (the coalition's lead agency), Umoja Health, Alameda County Public Health Department, and Urban Strategies Council. The work spanned animated PSAs, small-business safety kits, event promo videos, event capture, social campaigns, and the visual identity that anchored the coalition's public-facing presence. This wasn't a typical brand engagement. It was creative work in service of a public health emergency designed for Black and Brown neighborhoods in Oakland's flatlands, the communities hit hardest by the pandemic and least served by traditional health systems. The work had to be clear, urgent, culturally rooted, and built fast enough to meet the moment.

BOSS (Building Opportunities for Self-Sufficiency) was the coalition's lead agency, overseeing fiscal and operational functions for 16 sub-grantees, including Urban Strategies Council, East Oakland Collective, Serenity House, Roots Community Health Center, and Adamika Village. oaklandca

Umoja Health was the medical arm — a UCSF-led network founded by Dr. Kim Rhoads as part of the UCSF COVID-19 Community Public Health Initiative. Umoja partnered with OFH to deliver free testing and vaccinations through pop-up clinics in East Oakland. ucsf

The whole effort lived under the United in Health Oakland banner — a partnership between community members, UCSF doctors and nurses, the Alameda County Public Health Department, and the City of Oakland. Unitedinhealthoakland

1,000+ people per day tested at the Eastmont Mall drive-thru/walk-up — the largest COVID-19 testing event ever staged in the East Bay (August 2020) Muck Rack

3,000+ vaccinations delivered in Umoja Health's first year ucsf

Mayor Libby Schaaf proclaimed August 7 as Umoja Health Day in Oakland (2021) ucsf

OFH activities included community outreach, public health messaging, PPE/food/hygiene distribution, COVID testing, and connecting community members to rental assistance and hotel vouchers oaklandca

YouTube channel: Visual identity and content direction for the Oakland Frontline Healers YouTube channel, home base for vaccination drives, testing events, and community health education.

Bilingual promo video for the United in Health vaccination drive designed to bridge Black and Brown community trust by framing vaccination as an act of mutual care.

Organized and led documentation for this OFH community action at 98th and Edes, a Deep East Oakland corner in one of the city's most historically disinvested neighborhoods. The event delivered test kits, hygiene kits, food, PPE, resource info, and a neighborhood cleanup in a single afternoon. Not public health messaging; public health showing up in person with everything the community needed at once.

Created for the Oakland Youth Conference 2020 — a 2,000-attendee virtual gathering during peak distance learning. The animation opens on a school in sunshine, then turns: clouds roll in, chains lock the doors, a storm begins. A school bus slides into frame, opening onto an empty classroom. A screen in the corner displays Oakland students — each in their own room, Zoom-style — sharing what was hardest about COVID school, while a chalkboard animates their words as they speak. Every student in the animation was also at the conference, speaking for themselves.

Across two-plus years of OFH's pandemic response, the work included:

50+ design pieces — flyers, social assets, print collateral, event graphics

10+ community events organized and documented

Multiple animations, PSAs, and event promo videos

Public health messaging deployed across Oakland's small businesses, bus stops, billboards, schools, and clinics

Weekly coalition meetings and ongoing program coordination

This work contributed directly to OFH and Umoja Health's vaccination efforts in Oakland's most-impacted neighborhoods.

OFH started as a COVID-19 response and became something bigger — a working model of community-led public health, designed with the people it served instead of at them. Helping shape how that work showed up — through creative direction, animation, video, event documentation, and on-the-ground programming — is some of the most meaningful work I've done.