Spoken Word Poets Exchange

Connecting, inspiring innovation, strengthening relationships, and creating opportunities for community building are essential for social change and for BUILD’s early childhood mission. It is important for us to nurture our creativity and support self-expression. The current attack on the arts is not a coincidence; the arts are where we explore alternatives and envision new possibilities as a society.

This Spoken Word Poets Exchange will offer a mix of large and small group time. As a large group, you’ll have a chance to learn about:

• The history and lineage of Spoken Word
• The role of spoken word in movement building
• The principles of storytelling and community-building
• Poetry, healing, self-care, and empowerment

The Exchange will include the following breakout discussions:

• Group Coaching: Participants can ask their questions to unlock their storytelling/writing journey with experienced storyteller Melva La Joy Legrand. (Melva will offer one-on-one extended coaching sessions for up to three participants at a later date.)
• The Foundations of Poetry: Danielle Horton will facilitate a breakout room exploring the foundational elements of spoken word poetry for beginners and experienced writers alike. Participants will engage with core principles such as finding and honoring one’s voice, listening, emotional honesty, rhythm, and community care. The session emphasizes creating brave spaces for expression and offers practical tools for sharing stories authentically—laying the groundwork for poetry as a practice of personal reflection, connection, and eventual narrative change.
• Spoken Word, Narrative Change, and Movement Building: Lucy Recio will facilitate a breakout room discussion on how spoken word fits into broader strategies for narrative change and movement building. This will be a space to explore how Spoken Word can serve as a vehicle for advocacy, narrative change, and storytelling. It will also address how participants might integrate this medium into their advocacy efforts.
• Spoken Word for Healing, Self-Care, and Empowering the Voiceless: Tonia McMillian will facilitate a breakout room discussion on the use of poetry as a means to channel emotions, feelings, and responses to the world. She will explain how this creative space functions and its importance for healing and making sense of our experiences. Additionally, she will highlight how poetry can empower those who may have felt unheard or voiceless.

About our Speakers

Melva LaJoy Legrand is a self-made entrepreneur recognized for her work in the live events industry. Based in Washington D.C., she is also a public speaker, community leader, and storyteller. Melva is passionate about mentorship, and uses public speaking to amplify her mentorship, guiding others through their personal hurdles and trauma, toward healing and confidence. Evident in all of Melva’s work is her interest and longstanding commitment to causes rooted in social equality as it pertains to women, health, and race & identity.

Melva brings life to events in her role as CEO of LaJoy Creative (formerly LaJoy Plans), an event planning firm launched in 2007. Melva has been recognized as a trailblazer in the events industry receiving the 2024 Smart Meetings Entrepreneur of the Year Award, 2024 Meeting Industry Women to Watch,  BizBash Top Event Industry Innovator Award and the Events Industry Council, Global Social Impact Award.

Danielle Horton is the 2Gen place-based practice program associate for Ascend at the Aspen Institute. As a program associate, Danielle is responsible for all things logistics when it comes to managing our work in our designated places, including, but not limited to LA County, New Mexico, and DC. She plays a key role in supporting our key stakeholders including Parent Advisors and elevating how we work with families through a 2Gen approach through designing and implementing national convenings and research and publications that aim to improve how whole families gain the economic mobility they deserve while also changing the systems that make it so hard to do so in the process.

Prior to joining Ascend, Danielle worked closely with the organization, Youth Speaks. She has been an avid participant in their international poetry festival – Brave New Voices. Danielle made her way from participant to Festival Director, and helped to put on some of the first virtual poetry festivals this organization has seen. Danielle has a rich background in the Performing Arts. Being a Spoken Word Artist herself, Danielle has published an original book of poetry titled “Get Free.”

Born and raised in Flint, MI, Danielle believes in the power of creative storytelling and its ability to transform hearts, assist in one’s healing process, and foster meaningful exchange across society’s most pressing issues. As a first-generation college student, she has earned her Bachelor’s Degree in Communication with double minors in Theater and Entrepreneurship. Living passionately and authentically, she inspires others to do the same.

Lucy Recio has worked at the intersection of movement building, communications, policy, and advocacy for more than 20 years. Driven by an unwavering commitment to justice and our collective liberation, her work is anchored by reciprocal, transformative relationships and endeavors to enact systems change, shift power structures, and shape public understanding and perception, particularly around issues impacting children, youth, women, and BIPOC communities. She have advanced and strengthened the social movement to increase compensation and material supports for the early childhood education workforce, helped secure more than $54 billion in COVID relief funding for the child care sector, and played instrumental roles in changing the narrative around our country’s child care and early learning systems.

She now builds on this impact as the co-founder of Third Bloom Consulting, a social impact firm that aims to improve the well-being and thriving of leaders, teams, and the learning communities they are a part of—because the progress and sustainability of our social movements demands that we tend to ourselves and one another. Whether she is co-creating and facilitating containers, expanding worldviews and sense-making as a keynote speaker, or pouring into students as a university instructor, her lens as a healing justice practitioner, certified in healing-centered education, nervous system regulation strategies, and somatic embodiment, emboldens me to nurture communities where changemakers better understand themselves, their internal landscapes, and the change we are collectively endeavoring to live out.

Tonia McMillian was a licensed Early Care and Education provider for over 29 years. She primarily served low-income children and their working families. She helped educate and “raise up” hundreds of children, ages 6 weeks through 13 years old, ensuring every child had a fair shot at achieving the “California Dream.” Following her 2023 retirement from the practice of family childcare, she accepted the position of “Woman Who Shakes Things Up” in the Black Californians for Early Childhood Education organization. Ms. McMillian is responsible for directing the Lift Every Voice Campaign, which comprises Black early educators from across California. She now takes pride in uplifting, educating, and celebrating the roles that black early educators play as key figures in the lives of the children they serve in their learning environments.

She was a proud member of the CA State Assembly Blue Ribbon Commission and, in 2019, was appointed by Governor Gavin Newsom to the CA Early Childhood Workforce Policy Advisory Subcommittee. She was later appointed the Chair of the Subcommittee and, most recently, she was voted in to the Governor’s full Early Childhood Policy Council. She is serving her 2nd term as the elected National Secretary to the SEIU National African American Caucus and is a retired member of Child Care Providers United. Ms. McMillian is a member of the Advisory Council with Parent Voices CA and the Child Care Next Advisory National Board.

A chef, small businesswoman, author, and former dancer on Soul Train from 1979 to 1983, Ms. McMillian is also a proud grandmother. She can do it all!