People

Hayden

Hayden Daigle is a writer and multi-instrumentalist from Burbank, CA. An Alcove alumni themself, Hayden now attends Pierce College majoring in music technology but comes to teach, mentor, and help facilitate Alcove twice a week. They love to share expansive knowledge on their kinships to extreme metal, queer studies, and spirituality. 

Benni

Benni Quintero is a multimedia teaching artist from South Central Los Angeles.  They primarily work with hand-centric arts: sewing, crochet, stop-motion animation, sculpting, etc.  But Benni does also get a kick out of digital compositing, digital drawing, and video editing.  They have an Experimental Animation degree from CalArts stored in a box somewhere.

Corinne

Corinne Taylor-Cyngiser finds joy in creating community.  As a nonprofit administrator, board member, parent educator, PTA president, and scout troop leader, she sees the gifts in each person and loves to connect people and opportunities.  She has a BA in Women’s Studies and a certificate in trauma-informed nonviolent parent education. 

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Martha

Martha Escudero (Board Chair) is a homeschooling mother of two daughters.  She has a Bachelor's of Science in Gender, Ethnicity, and Multicultural Studies from Cal Poly Pomona University.  As an activist, Martha works on housing as a human right, food justice, and prison abolition.  She lived for two years among Mapuche people in a rural community in Wallmapu (Chile).

Jade

Jade Adia is a Los Angeles–born and raised author who writes about mischievous nerds with big ideas. Her debut novel, There Goes the Neighborhood, won the 2024 Coretta Scott King–John Steptoe Award for New Talent. Her other novels include Our Shouts Echo and Batgirl: Possession. Adia holds a bachelor’s degree in Ethnicity, Race & Migration as well as a law degree with a specialization in Critical Race Studies. When not writing, she can be found teaching at a local high school everything from English and History to Creative Writing and What Sci-Fi Teaches Us About Society.

Iris

Iris Chen is an author, unschooling mom of two, anti-oppression activist, and founder of the Untigering movement whose work centers on shifting from power-over to power-with relationships with children, especially among Asian communities.  After sixteen years of living and raising her kids in China she now resides with her family in the Los Angeles area. 

Haiwen

Haiwen Chu is an educational researcher focused on expanding educator expertise to enact quality mathematics instruction for students who are learning English as a second language.  He was head counselor at the Ross Young Scholars Program in mathematics.  And Haiwen is also interested in the pedagogy of apprenticeship in the transmission of classical Japanese sword arts.

Adriana

Adriana Rincon is the newly appointed Director of the Family SourceCenters at El Centro Del Pueblo in Echo Park and Cypress Park.  Before that, she was a coordinator for the Gang Reduction and Youth Development Program for the city of Los Angeles.  She also serves on the Community Policing Advisory Board for LAPD.  Adriana's passionate about serving her community in Northeast LA.

Alexi

Alexis Burgess is chair of the Math department at Sequoyah High School in Pasadena.  He co-founded Alcove in 2020, and co-directed it for five years.  Educated at Harvard and Princeton, Alexi taught in the philosophy department at Stanford University from 2007 to 2015.  He's also held visiting appointments at schools like UCLA, Pomona College, and NYU.  

Lauren

Lauren Lee White is a journalist covering public safety and power. Her reporting has explored topics including sexual misconduct in jails, mega sporting events, incarcerated firefighters, policing, and incarceration, and has appeared in GQ, The Guardian, VICE, The New Republic, PRI, The Christian Science Monitor, and other publications. Lauren is an instructor at the USC Annenberg School of Journalism. Previously, she worked as a documentary filmmaker and media educator in New York City, focused on cities, music, and community life.