Meet our Leaders
SWAA is led by a steering committee of 11 current and former sex workers who are committed to serving as community advocates. They advise on all SWAA activities, make decisions via consensus, and support efforts to expand the rights of sex workers, through investment in public health research, mutual aid programs, and public policy that supports and affirms the members of their communities.
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Our leaders are incredibly proud of their roles and experience in this sector. However, as certain types of sex work remains criminalized in Oregon, we take the safety and privacy of sex workers very seriously. We do not share the identities of our leadership or our members without their explicit and enthusiastic consent, as we recognize the very real consequences that sex workers face in our current criminal justice system and other consequences due to intrenched stigma.
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77% of our steering committee members self identify as Black, Indigenous or as another person of color (BIPOC)
50%+ of our steering committee members self identify as a member of the 2SLGBTQSIA+ community
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Submit your applicationto join our steering committee in 2024!
Meet Our Team
Teal Lindseth (she/her)
Movement Building Co-Manager
Teal first became involved in Oregon politics as a leader of Portland’s Black Lives Matter protests in 2020. She has worked as a community organizer and other important campaign positions, including playing a key role in 2022's campaign to pass Ballot Measure 114 to reform gun laws in Oregon.
Tenisha Davis (she/they)
Movement Building Co-Manager
Tenisha is a proud Indigenous being enrolled member of the Confederated Tribes of Grand Ronde, and has been active in supporting the BIPOC sex worker community since joining the Haymarket Pole Collective in 2020 as their Direct Aid & Outreach Coordinator. In this role Tenisha has managed mutual aid and micro grant programs to help meet the needs of thousands of BIPOC sex workers in Oregon.
Marchel Marcos (she/her)
Campaign Supervisor
Marchel Chiemi Marcos (she/her) is an entrepreneur, change maker, and organizer. Through her role as the Political, policy, advocacy, and civic engagement Director at APANO Action Fund, Marchel has led multiple field campaigns including the We Count Oregon census campaign and helped to elect the first in the Nation- 4 Vietnamese Asian Americans into the Oregon legislature. Marchel currently serves as the Political Director for Family Forward and Mother PAC. As a speaker, Marchel has been invited to speak at the Portland March for Reproductive March, Portland State University, Lewis & Clark, Doc Martens, and has been featured in POP Sugar.
As a survivor of domestic violence and sexual assault, Marchel is committed to intersectional social justice, advocacy for communities of color, the LGBTQIA+ community, and survivors.
Marchel is a single parent raising two children in Hillsboro, Oregon. In her free time she enjoys traveling, trying new foods, and co-owns Rooted by Plant Mami’s. Marchel is proud to be born and raised in Honolulu, Hawaii and attended Iolani and Roosevelt High School. Marchel’s family immigrated to Hawaii from Okinawa, Ukraine, and Pangasinan, Philippines.
Nel Taylor (they/them)
Fundraiser Manager
Nel Taylor, they/them/theirs (Confederated Tribes of Umatilla Indian Reservation), is a nonprofit development, equity, HR, and fundraising strategy consultant with over 10 years of nonprofit experience, bringing a strong justice lens to indigenizing fundraising, systems, and strategies in the nonprofit sector.
Their introduction to nonprofit work came out of their transition from houselessness when they were 18 years old, advocating as a program participant in fundraising efforts. After experiencing exploitation at the hands of the nonprofit industrial complex, they set out to shift traditional harmful practices in fundraising, and then the internal systems that perpetuate harm throughout the nonprofit sector.
Their firsthand experience working within non-hierarchical organization structures, co-leadership models, and shared power systems, as well as being an impacted community member with lived experience of relying on the support of nonprofits, uniquely position them to guide organization leaders through the reckoning required for systems-change.
Meet Our Advisors
Christel Allen (she/her)
Christel Allen has worked in progressive politics and policy in Oregon for over 15 years, and previously served as the first woman of color to lead Pro-Choice Oregon (NARAL). In addition to advising and supporting the leaders of Sex Worker Affirming Advocates (SWAA), Christel currently works as a consultant to Seeding Justice where she supports community-led processes to guide the investment of Oregon’s $15 million Reproductive Health Equity Fund, utilizing strategies to expand reproductive health access and equity across the state. Christel is thankful for the opportunity to work across movements with an array of diverse and brilliant humans, all working to center and support the people who are most impacted by existing inequities. Raised in Salem, she credits the support and wisdom she’s received from her family of immigrants, her chosen community of fellow survivors, and her working parents for teaching her how to lead with empathy, solidarity, resilience, and grit.
Jeana Frazzini
Jeana has spent 30 years organizing, advocating and agitating for LGBTQ+ liberation, reproductive justice and racial equity as a leader in local, regional and national nonprofits. As a strategic advisor, she offers guidance, fundraising planning, growth management and organizational development support to nonprofit organizations and public agencies. Jeana is the previous Executive Director of Basic Rights Oregon, where she spent ten years building the organization into a nationally-recognized statewide LGBTQ advocacy leader that made Oregon among the first states to provide trans-inclusive healthcare, provided messaging and strategy guidance to the national effort to win the freedom to marry and established an anti-racist organizational culture. Most recently, she served as Director of Philanthropic Partnerships at Forward Together, where she led the fundraising work for a national women of color led reproductive justice organization, building the budget from $3M to $7M in five years. Collectively, she has raised more than $60 million to fund both political and educational efforts.