IndyKidsTeam
In 2011, Isis co-founded and spearheaded the kid reporter program believing that the way to educate social justice issues and the next generation of critical thinkers and leaders is through peer-to-peer learning.
Isis is also the financial manager at Democracy Now!, a daily TV/radio news show. She holds a BFA from Marymount Manhattan College and studied Accounting and Finance at Baruch College. She is dedicated to consulting on finance and management in the nonprofit sector. In addition, Isis has a passion for art, and her photography has been featured in solo and group exhibitions.
Em is the director and lead instructor of IndyKids’ newswriting and podcast programs.
A graduate from The Craig Newmark Graduate School of Journalism at CUNY, Em strives to foster engagement and creativity in all of IndyKids’ programs. Em has previously worked for WNYC’s The Brian Lehrer Show and is a proud member of SAG-AFTRA’s Broadcast/News & Information division.
Raya is a writer and student based in Milwaukee. She is a lifelong IndyKids reader and became a youth writer in 2017. After working as a mentor for two years, she now assists with developing workshops.
Her short fiction has earned national recognition, including a Silver Medal in the Scholastic Writing Awards. Beyond literature, Raya advocates for social justice through her involvement in the Student Diversity Leadership Committee. She is passionate about empowering youth to express their voices through writing.
Adedayo Perkovich was born and raised in New York City. At 22, she will start her final year of a Masters of Fine Arts degree at Brooklyn College’s Feirstein Graduate School of Cinema this fall. She studied Music and Africana Studies in her undergraduate career at Cornell University, and has been passionate about both fields of study for as long as she can remember.
Adedayo was a youth reporter for Indykids from ages 9-18, and her op-ed “Why We Rise” led to the opportunity to contribute an original essay to the Penguin Random House anthology Recognize! An Anthology Honoring and Amplifying Black Life, edited by Cheryl and Wade Hudson. She has been a Youth Mentor for Indykids’ summer journalism camp, and looks forward to working with new young journalists.
She also sang in the Young People’s Chorus of New York City (YPC) for ten years, competing internationally, performing in a variety of venues, including Carnegie Hall and Lincoln Center, and on programs including The Tonight Show and Good Morning America. She studied oboe at the Mannes Preparatory Division and the Juilliard Music Advancement Program.
In 2024, she was named a Cornell Humanities Scholar, and combined her interests in Africana Studies and Music into an honors thesis project on Black women artists and social justice. She graduated with Honors in Africana Studies, and received a Bachelor of Arts with Distinction in all subjects. She looks forward to working with Indykids to help more young people feel empowered by sharing their voices and meeting new people.
Hudson is a fashion designer and student native to Manhattan, and is currently studying at Parsons School of Design. He has been with IndyKids since age twelve, where he has written and podcasted as a kid reporter, and later assisted workshops and camps as a youth mentor. He now manages IndyKids’ social media on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter.
Discovering sewing in high school, he soon adopted fashion as his favorite art form, and hopes to use it, as well as drag and other forms of publicly accessible art to inspire and enable political change.
David has been IndyKids‘ designer since 2018. He was born and raised in Bogotá, Colombia. In 2014, he moved to New York City, where he is still based.
David previously worked at Casa Editorial El Tiempo, one of Colombia’s largest daily newspapers. Then, in 2010 he began working with the local government for the Housing Authority of Bogotá. He remained in the public sector, working with the Urban Studies Institute at the National University of Colombia as a designer and visual communicator.
His experience in New York City includes serving as a Visual Design Fellow for the United Nations Foundation, working on the Foundation’s Mashable Social Good Summit 2015 and the Earth to Paris Summit 2015. In 2015 David joined Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign, interning for the Digital Team. In 2016 he started at the Global Health Department at Mount Sinai as a Lead Visual Designer and was then promoted to Senior Experience Designer. David is currently a Senior Interaction Designer at Frog Design NY.
Sarah was executive editor of All the Art magazine, an award-winning print quarterly that published stories about artists and art events taking place in the St. Louis region. She has written for The St. Louis Beacon, St. Louis Public Radio, Alive Magazine, and the Temporary Art Review and now writes for The Local Girl which publishes as Hoboken Girl, Asbury Girl, and Montclair Girl among other iterations covering people, places, and events across New Jersey. She is a member of the Deadline Club of NYC, a branch of the Society of Professional Journalists. She is also a founding member of the NYC Climate Writers Collective and is in her second year of organizing and facilitating climate writing workshops and programs in the Climate Imaginarium on Governors Island.
Lexie Neeley (she/her) joined the IndyKids mentor team in 2024. In her day job at Little Free Library, she serves as Program Manager for the Read in Color program. She works closely with advocacy organizations and volunteers across the country to increase equitable access to culturally relevant books for readers of all ages. Lexie earned a bachelor’s degree in English from the University of Wisconsin – Stevens Point, where she served as copy editor and development coordinator for Cornerstone Press. She lives and works in St. Paul, Minnesota, with her partner, Cory, and her dog, Petunia.
Soledad has been with IndyKids since she was 9 years old. She is a recent graduate from Bard College where she gained her Bachelor’s degree in Anthropology and Written Arts. Soledad first began at IndyKids as a Youth Reporter and worked her way up to becoming a Youth Mentor and joined the organization as Education Manager in 2021.
Originally from Washington Heights in New York City, she worked as a Dean for the Sadie Nash Leadership Project during summer 2022, where she cultivated a love for working with youth to nurture their leadership skills and social justice passions. Soledad is a recipient of the Sandra Cisneros Award for Creative Writing at Bard College and she continues to write poetry to this day.
Malik is a writer, poet, cook, and tea drinker from Brooklyn, NY. He first joined IndyKids as a volunteer in 2012 as a mentor for the Youth Reporter program. Since then, Malik has represented IndyKids at events with NYCoRE, acted as an outreach ambassador, and has served as an occasional editor over the years.
From 2014 to summer of 2016, Malik was an intern at Democracy Now! for the Development and Outreach Department.
Within his role as Subscription Coordinator, Malik hand delivers issues of the IndyKids’ newspaper to NYC area libraries, bookstores, and schools.
