🌸 Rooted, Radiant, Relentless:
Celebrating Women Who Lead With Heart
A colorful graphic with an orange, pink, and purple background featuring doodle-style patterns. Four FEEST staff members—Jess, Heena, Hanan, and Yuna—are pictured smiling across the center.
This Women’s History Month, we’re honoring the everyday brilliance of the women on our team who lead with tenderness, purpose, and deep love for their communities.
At FEEST, we believe leadership doesn’t always look like a podium or a megaphone. Sometimes, it looks like listening deeply. Or creating space for someone else to shine. Or dreaming up the future in ways that are bold, caring, and unapologetically rooted in justice.
Heena, Yuna, and Hanan remind us that when working-class women and women of color lead, we all move closer to liberation. And with Jess, we are reminded of the importance of deep allyship—of showing up with humility, care, and long-term commitment to building a world led by those most impacted.
Meet Heena
Heena (she/her) was raised in White Center, Washington, where she has lived her whole life. As the daughter of immigrants, her identity deeply influences her perspective and the work she is passionate about. Growing up, she was surrounded by different cultural experiences that shaped her understanding of community, resilience, and the importance of empowerment.
Heena’s journey with FEEST began in 2014 when she was just 10 years old, inspired by her sister’s involvement. What started as “crashing” her first FEEST Dinner quickly grew into a deep commitment to youth organizing. By the age of 15, Heena had joined the campaign team here at FEEST, and after graduating, she played a role in the creation of Summer Stories, where she also serves as a co- facilitator for the summer program.
Now a student at the University of Washington, Heena is majoring in Informatics with a passion for making technology accessible to all. Her academic pursuits are driven by a commitment to education, health, and wellness, and she strives to uplift her peers in all aspects of her work.
In addition to her role at FEEST, Heena is the co-chair of King County Metro’s Equity Cabinet. In this position, she plays a role in advocating for equitable transportation for community.
Heena is dedicated to breaking barriers and advocating for inclusivity in every space she occupies. Outside of work and school, she loves to travel and explore the world, embracing the diversity of cultures and experiences that inform her worldview.
What does liberation look like, sound like, smell like, feel like, and taste like to you?
Liberation looks like being welcomed into spaces you’ve never stepped foot in and knowing, deep in your bones, that you belong there.
Liberation sounds like the quiet after a rainstorm, when water drips from the trees and the earth takes a deep breath, ready for new beginnings to grow.
Liberation smells like crisp autumn air and fallen leaves beneath your feet, making your way to school, knowing you have the opportunity to learn and to dream.
Liberation feels like the warmth of long-awaited hugs from loved ones, holding you close after time apart, heartbeat to heartbeat, reminding you that you’ve always been loved.
Liberation taste family recipes shared across generations, seasoned with stories, memory, and care.
Radical Joy Offering
Something that’s been bringing me so much joy lately is rewatching Avatar: The Last Airbender. There’s something comforting about going back to a show that’s full of adventure, heart, and deep lessons. It’s been a nice reminder that even in challenging times, there’s space for growth, balance, and a little fun along the way.
Meet Yuna
Yuna or “Yunz” (she/her) comes from the unsurrendered lands of the Kānaka Maoli, by way of Kumagaya City, Japan. Raised by a single immigrant mother, Yuna has experienced and navigated the violent systems that young people still face today. She is honored to be trusted with carrying the grief, hope, and defiance to do better by and for young people.
Before joining FEEST, Yuna worked in multiple capacities within the non-profit and education sectors, from looking after little ones as an after-school teacher to serving as a project manager at a tech start-up, identifying childcare opportunities across the nation. Her North Star is guided by acknowledgment, accountability, and abundance. She is ever grateful to disabled Black and Indigenous, Queer, and Trans ancestors (past and present) who lovingly pave the way to build a world where we can all feel safe, loved, and rooted in our dignity and humanity.
Outside of FEEST, you can find Yuna sitting beside bodies of water, unleashing her Gemini-rising tendencies to make her friends laugh, writing and performing songs, and petting street cats.
Radical Joy Offering
Raveena Aurora’s last album, “Where do butterflies go in the rain?”
“Be Not Afraid of Love: Lessons on Fear, Intimacy, and Connection” by Mimi Zhu
Vietnamese street fashion
Blue Eyes Tea Blend from Perennial Tea Room
What does liberation look like, sound like, smell like, feel like, and taste like to you?
Liberation is a full exhale.
It’s creativity and love in the highest form. It’s embracing the humanity and dignity of yourself, the ones you hold close, and of strangers.
It’s having the gumption to be defiant of oppressive systems, believing that you deserve more–more freedom, more joy, and more space to be your authentic self.
Liberation is the courage to step into your power to make room for growth and healing. It’s knowing that the smallest ripple can spark change because it’s a collective movement that is felt deeply.
Meet Hanan
Hanan (she/her) was raised in South Seattle where she currently lives. She loves attending poetry readings, taking walks along Lake Washington, and spending time with her friends and family.
Informed by Black education frameworks, Hanan believes that education is a potential tool for liberation. She is interested in how psychology research can help us better understand the negative impacts of systemic oppression on wellbeing, and how schools can become sites of resistance to systemic oppression instead of perpetrators.
Before joining FEEST, Hanan was involved in different non-profits that provided out-of-school support to students ranging from elementary to high school. She is excited to continue working with youth at FEEST where students are trusted to take the lead on creating solutions to issues they face at school.
What does liberation look like, sound like, smell like, feel like, and taste like to you?
Liberation sounds boisterous.
Liberation feels safe, and slow, and unrestrained. Liberation feels certain and near.
Liberation tastes sweet.
Radical Joy Offering
Meet Jess
Jess (she/her) believes that the only way to build an inclusive culture of abundance is with solutions from the people with the most to gain from our collective liberation. She loves growing, preparing, and sharing delicious food with wonderful people. She loves learning from truth-tellers of all ages and nurturing the tell-it-like-it-is attitude that comes so naturally to young people. She believes that community organizing is key to shifting power from the few to the many and to healing one another and our planet. For all of these reasons and more, she is thrilled to be a part of FEEST.
Jess was born and raised in the unceded Coast Salish territory we call Seattle. For nearly two decades, she worked in fundraising and events for community-based organizations dedicated to social, racial, and economic justice. If you are also passionate about healing our relationship with money in service of resource redistribution, ask her about fundshifting with the Coalition for Anti-Racist Whites and Social Justice Fund Northwest! If you are also passionate about the interconnection of Jewish and Palestinian liberation, ask her about organizing with Jewish Voice for Peace!
Spending time outside feeds Jess’ soul, which is why you can find her backpacking, paddle boarding, on her bike, in her garden, and in search of the best swimming lakes and rivers.
What does liberation look like, sound like, smell like, feel like, and taste like to you?
Liberation looks whacky, colorful, and surprising!
It sounds like the most beautiful song, where so many voices are singing in different languages, rhythms, and octaves. Somehow the cacophony sounds more beautiful together than any one voice could alone. (But sometimes it sounds like singing all by yourself, too, because who cares?)
Liberation smells spicy. It smells sweaty. It smells like rain has just awoken life from pungent earth.
Liberation feels fierce and fragile and hard to look at directly.
Liberation tastes so, so good. Once you have a bite, you want everyone to have some.
Radical Joy Offering
More than the fuchsia funnels breaking out of the crabapple tree, more than the neighbor’s almost obscene display of cherry limbs shoving their cotton candy-colored blossoms to the slate sky of Spring rains, it’s the greening of the trees that really gets to me. When all the shock of white and taffy, the world’s baubles and trinkets, leave the pavement strewn with the confetti of aftermath, the leaves come. Patient, plodding, a green skin growing over whatever winter did to us, a return to the strange idea of continuous living despite the mess of us, the hurt, the empty. Fine then, I’ll take it, the tree seems to say, a new slick leaf unfurling like a fist to an open palm, I’ll take it all.
These four women remind us that leadership isn’t about titles—it’s about trust. It’s about showing up, again and again, with tenderness, courage, and clarity. It’s about leading with heart.
We’re so grateful to be in community with them. 💜
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