By Alana Bittner, Amelia Delphos, Brielle Entzminger, Shea Gibbs,
and Tami Keaveny
Each summer, C-VILLE publishes the Power Issue. Traditionally, that’s meant a roundup of the same old bigwigs and string pullers—politicians, landlords, university administrators and so forth. This year, we’re taking a different tack, and focusing on the city’s next generation of leaders. Get to know these under-30 all-stars—people who are making a difference here in town, with their ideas, passion, dedication, and youthful energy.
Obviously, this list isn’t comprehensive. If you know a rising star who you feel deserves further recognition, definitely tell us about them!
(Warning: This feature might make you feel old.)
Zeniah and Zaneyah Bryant, 15
Fighting against systemic racism and injustice runs in the family for the Bryant twins. They grew up watching their mother, Zeneida Howard, stand up for Black residents in town. And you already know about their older sister, Zyahna, who has become a global powerhouse in the years since she first petitioned City Council to remove the Robert E. Lee statue.
Now, the 15-year-old activists are making their own mark on Charlottesville. Following the murder of George Floyd last year, the pair led multiple demonstations demanding justice for Black people killed by police. They also founded the Charlottesville Black Youth Action Committee to address racial issues in policing and education, like the school-to-prison pipeline.
But activism is way more than just protesting, the sisters emphasize—it’s mutual aid, too. Throughout the pandemic, BYAC has distributed free food, water, money, and other necessities to unhoused people on the Downtown Mall, as
well as paid for their hotel rooms. The new group has also hosted teach-ins on student activism, fundraisers for young Black mothers, and a Black joy festival.
This fall, the rising Charlottesville High School sophomores plan to revive CHS’s Black Student Union—started by their sister—and encourage their peers to take advanced classes. They ultimately hope to inspire other Black youth to speak up for themselves, and refuse to be silenced.
“There are generations coming after us,” said Zaneyah (standing on the right in the photo). “If we set things in place, they may not have to go through what we’re going through right now.”
Ti Ames, 26
Ti Ames’ theatrical roots grew early. Ames began singing as a child in church, and was attending Live Arts summer theater camps at age 9; by 12, they had joined the Virginia Consort, Charlottesville’s chamber chorus. After graduating from Oberlin College with degrees in theater and Africana studies, Ames returned to Charlottesville to dive even deeper into its theater and music scene. Ames is now leading those summer camps at Live Arts, and considers the Charlottesville Player’s Guild their “second home.”
It was with the CPG that Ames directed Black Mac, an all-Black adaption of Macbeth, and more recently, staged their own original radio play, See About the Girls. Ames also teaches vocal lessons, using an Africana aesthetic that plays off of call and response. As they explain in a video for the Front Porch, “The song itself is a character. It gives you things to work with, and it is your job to respond to whatever it’s giving you.”
Henry Borgeson, 28
Henry Borgeson knows his way around
a board meeting—and a charcuterie board.
The avid cook and passionate foodie has been bringing his combination of epicurean passion and business savvy to his profession since 2017, when he became an indispensable member of the team at Charlottesville-born restaurant group Roots Natural Kitchen.
The Roots empire launched in 2015 with just a single restaurant on the Corner. In less than six years, the eatery chain has grown to include three Virginia locations—in Charlottesville, Richmond, and Blacksburg—as well as further afield in Newark, Delaware, and State College and Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
Borgeson, a 2014 UVA grad, began serving as Roots’ director of finance in 2017 and quickly moved into the C-suite, starting as chief financial officer in November 2018. If you want to turn leafy greens into greenbacks, Borgeson’s your man.
Jeremiah Jordan
When Jeremiah Jordan started working at Ivy Provisions in 2017, he was a line cook with little passion for food and zero professional culinary experience.
Jordan had tasted excellence before—he went to college to play football and had a bright future ahead. But legal issues brought him home and away from his athletic career. That’s when a friend helped Jordan get his foot in the door at Ivy Provisions. In just two months, the restaurant promoted him from cook to kitchen manager. By May of this year, he had worked his way up to Ivy Provisions’ sous chef.
“Ivy welcomed me back with open arms,” Jordan says. “I love food. It’s become more of a passion because I take pride in my work.”
Shelby Marie Edwards, 26
When George Floyd’s murder sparked worldwide protests against police violence last year, actor and poet Shelby Marie Edwards felt a shift inside herself. She wanted social justice to play more of a role in her day-to-day life, but was unsure what her next move should be. She soon learned that the Public Housing Association of Residents was hiring its first-ever executive director, and—after a pep talk from activist Joy Johnson—felt called to continue the work of her mother, former vice-mayor Holly Edwards.
For years, the elder Edwards served low-income Charlottesville residents as a program coordinator for PHAR and a parish nurse for the Jefferson Area Board for Aging. Following her mother’s death, Edwards moved back to Charlottesville in 2019 from Chicago, where she’d been teaching theater and writing classes for Black youth. She began working as a development coordinator for Live Arts, and offering performance arts classes through the Boys & Girls Club of Central Virginia.
Since joining PHAR in December, Edwards has hired a leader for the nonprofit’s Residents for Respectful Research program and revamped its website and online presence. She’s also working to bring on more resident organizers, as well as expand the resident-led redevelopment of the city’s public housing.
Edwards hopes to act full-time one day, but plans to stick around at PHAR long enough to build up the next generation of young Black resident leaders. And she doesn’t rule out following in her mother’s footsteps.
“If I just so happen to be in Charlottesville for a long time, it is not outside of the possibility that I would run for City Council,” she says.
Karina Monroy, 28
Karina Monroy arrived from California a couple of years ago, and since then she’s wasted no time getting involved in the Charlottesville community. She’s the executive director of Creciendo Juntos, on the planning committee at the Bridge Progressive Arts Initiative, and co-creator of the wellness podcast Cultivando Tu Bienestar. That on its own would be enough to merit a mention as a rising star, but Monroy is also a gifted artist. Lately, she’s been creating delicate needlework renditions of figs and pomegranates, fruits she remembers from her grandmother’s home in Southern California.
For Monroy, a daughter of Mexican immigrants, a typically feminine task like needlework is an entryway to exploring the nuances of womanhood in Mexicano and Chicano culture. As she puts it in a video made for New City Arts, “It’s been my way of showing the women in my culture that the work we’re doing is appreciated and an art form.” She’s spreading that feeling of appreciation and sisterhood with La Cultura Cura, an intergenerational support group for Latinx women and femmes, that promotes “sisterhood, culture, social solidarity, and self-actualization.”
Alicia Simmons, 27
Have you had a great meal in Charlottesville recently? If so, there’s a good chance Alicia Simmons was involved. She began her career in cuisine at Tavola, in Belmont, after graduating from the Piedmont Virginia Community College culinary arts program. A standout sous chef at the Italian eatery from 2015 to 2020, Simmons left Tavola last year for a gig as the sous chef at Restoration Crozet at Old Trail Golf Club.
But now she’s back in Belmont—as Tavola’s executive chef, a job Simmons chose over several other offers.
“She got her start here, and the talent was immediately obvious,” Tavola owner Michael Keaveny says. “[We] watched her grow into a leader and are very excited to have her take on the next era of Tavola.”
Abel Liu, 21
Abel Liu is a UVA Echols Scholar, Royster Lawton Fellow, Truman Scholar, and the nation’s first university student government president who was openly transgender when elected.
Before winning the Student Council presidency in a landslide last spring, Liu served as a Student Council representative and chair of the Representative Body for two years. The rising fourth-year says he’s passionate about building systems of dual power by using an institution like Student Council alongside a counter institution, such as Young Democratic Socialists of America at UVA, Minority Rights Coalition, or the Virginia Student Power Network, to exert the maximum amount of pressure and leverage against the ideological and political hegemony of the university.
In recent months, Liu worked alongside YDSA, Minority Rights Coalition, and the Covid Action Now campaign to secure optional credit/no credit grading policies for the entire 2020-2021 school year and a tuition freeze for 2021-2022. Currently, he’s teamed up with Housing and Residence Life, the Equity Center at UVA, UndocUVA, the Black Student Alliance, PLUMAS, and the University Police Department to set up alternative sources of care in non-violent situations, such as mental health crises or alcohol poisoning. He hopes this will lead to long-term funding in Student Health and Counseling & Psychological Services.
With that many initiatives underway, it might seem like Liu is all business, but he has a more relaxed side, too. In his free time, he enjoys bird watching and hiking with Chip, his 6-month-old puppy.
Raylaja Waller, 24
Raylaja Waller has always been passionate about working with kids. Born and raised in Charlottesville, she grew up babysitting her siblings and cousins. Since graduating from CHS in 2015, Waller has served as a camp counselor for Charlottesville Parks & Recreation and a substitute teacher for the city schools. And now she is the fifth- through eighth-grade pathway coach at City of Promise, which prepares youth living in Westhaven, 10th and Page, and Starr Hill for college and careers.
Waller joined City of Promise’s first youth council as a high schooler, helping to organize free community events for
children. While earning her degree in criminal justice and political science from Virginia State University, she returned to City of Promise multiple times to speak about her college experience.
Now, as a pathway coach, Waller helps kids explore career options and extracurricular activities. She’s currently creating a curriculum of skills for students to develop before high school, including critical thinking, media and technology literacy, time management, leadership, and self-empowerment. In the future, she plans to collaborate with City of Promise to create her own nonprofit to help divert youth who are headed in the wrong direction by providing them with mentorship, jobs, and career development.
“Become that teacher, become that lunch lady or man, become that school janitor—they also make a difference,” she says. “Having that Black person in the building that cares for these kids, even if you’re not the one teaching them, is giving us a better outcome of how our kids act and what they get involved in.”
Milla Ciprian, 21
Milla Ciprian is a standout volleyball player—but also a standout for her work off the field, where she’s become an important advocate for Black student-athletes at UVA. Milla helped start an organization called BOSS, or Black Student-Athletes Offering Service and Support. BOSS aims to create and build community among Black athletes and
to create a safe space where they can authentically be themselves.
Throughout COVID, Ciprian worked to set up talks with Black alumni, and orchestrated conversations between the Black student-athlete community and the non-Black student-athlete community to figure out how they can work together to move the needle forward within the athletic community. Last fall, BOSS collaborated with the university’s Student-Athlete Advisory Committee to register all student-athletes on every team to vote. And if all that wasn’t enough, Ciprian was also chosen to sing the national anthem before the start of the UVA men’s basketball team’s 2019 Final Four appearance. Oh say can you see a bright future for Ciprian? Because we sure can.
Ibby Han, 26
Ibby Han is an organizing powerhouse—not just in Charlottesville, but throughout the commonwealth. As the co-executive director of Virginia Student Power Network, Han has supported students across the state in organizing efforts, from VCU’s campaign to get police out of mental health crises to UVA’s Covid Action Now campaign, calling for better support for students and workers during the pandemic. Han’s work centers around creating sustainable student organizing, which can be difficult when student leadership turns over every four years. VSPN spends a lot of time running training and leadership development programs for student organizers. In addition to helping students directly, VSPN does statewide legislative advocacy, and has advocated for financial aid for undocumented students and marijuana legalization.
Han says one of her proudest moments was the community’s COVID response last year. She worked with Cville Community Cares and Congregate Charlottesville to design mini-grant programs to move money quickly to those who needed it.
Han emphasizes that everything she’s worked on has been with a tight-knit team of people who have deep trust in each other. Still, it’s clear that any team with Han on it is a team that gets things done.
Alex Bryant, 28
When it comes to working for your community, Alex Bryant walks the walk. In addition to serving as the new associate director of IX Art Park, Bryant is president of the Downtown Business Association, secretary for the African American Teaching Fellows, and a board member at Bennett’s Village and Big Brothers Big Sisters of the Central Blue Ridge.
“These one-on-one connections are the ripples that will start creating a really cohesive community,” he says. “I want to do whatever I can do to help to foster and build that community. In Charlottesville it hasn’t always been that way, and there’s a lot of work to do ahead.”
After receiving a degree in music from the University of Virginia in 2015, Bryant, originally from Richmond, became the coordinator of Monticello’s Heritage Harvest Festival, highlighting the impact and influence enslaved laborers had on Southern food. He then began volunteering with the Tom Tom Foundation’s food programs before serving as the nonprofit’s project manager, operations director, and, eventually, managing director.
“It’s so easy to just give money to a nonprofit…but everyone’s got time and talents that they have,” he says. “Just showing up and asking, ‘How can I plug in and use what I know to help you guys?’—that’s what I really love.”
At IX, Bryant says he’ll work to make the arts more accessible through community outreach, educational programming, and partnerships with local art galleries and organizations. He also plans to expand The Looking Glass immersive art space this fall, as well as collaborate with diverse local artists to redo the art park’s murals and sculptures. And most importantly, he will make sure IX remains free for everyone.
Allison Wrabel, 28
If you love local news, you owe Allison Wrabel a big thank you. Over the past six years, she has written more than a thousand stories for The Daily Progress.
After receiving a degree in journalism from the University of Missouri in 2015, Wrabel, a Cleveland native, was tapped to apply to the Progress by a mentor at her school. Then-Progress editor-in-chief Nick Matthews had reached out, and was looking to hire new grads from his alma mater.
Wrabel started off at the Progress reporting on the local business community, and has been on the Albemarle County beat since 2017. In addition to covering hours-long government meetings, she writes about transportation, housing, land use, and other pressing issues that impact the county.
“I really enjoy talking to people. That’s the part I like most about it,” she says of her job. “I love helping people know what’s going on in their community.”
It’s no secret that journalism is in a period of upheaval, with layoffs and pay cuts happening at news organizations across the country. But Wrabel wants to stay in the business for good. She sees herself doing long-form investigative reporting in the future, perhaps in a bigger city.
“When will that happen? I don’t know,” she says. “But eventually someday, hopefully!”
Sabrina Hendricks, 18
School photos are the worst. The artificial pose. The forced smile. That cloudy blue background. The set up leaves almost everyone looking awkward.
Enter Sabrina Hendricks. When she chose photography as an elective in her freshman year at Charlottesville High School, she couldn’t have imagined that she’d graduate with her own thriving portraiture business—as an alternative to the corporate school picture services that create the same posed images over and over, Hendricks spent much of her junior and senior years taking photos of her fellow students.
“I created an Instagram account (@shendricksphotography), which attracted attention, and my business grew from there,” says the 2021 grad. She estimates that she’s snapped over 5,000 shots since launching in 2019, and says Sabrina Hendricks Photography will remain in business while she attends the University of Virginia in the fall.
Cabrel Happi, 22
Zimbabwe native and UVA soccer player Cabrel Happi has been a winner in the student-athlete community on Grounds. As president of the Student-Athlete Advisory Committee, he’s made it his mission to empower student-athletes and utilize the power and platform that they have. Happi says student-athletes have a unique college experience, living season by season rather than semester by semester, which makes it easy for them to forget that life exists outside their sport. He says he hopes to remind his peers that they’re students first, and that the platform student-athletes are given should be used for the betterment of society. He pointed to the Groundskeepers initiative, started last fall by Black football players, as an example of student-athletes taking advantage of their platform to empower and educate others.
You might think that a soccer player’s feet are his most valuable asset, but Happi has another trick at his fingertips. When he’s not advocating for change or speeding down the pitch, he works as a hand model—his wrists have appeared in multiple watch advertising campaigns. So watch out, everyone!
Priscilla Martin Curley, 29
If Priscilla Martin Curley tells you to drink garnacha with your margherita pizza, by god grab the garnacha. A certified sommelier and expert on little-known and indigenous Italian wines, Martin Curley is a Culinary Institute of America grad, alumnus of Boka (one of Chicago’s most successful restaurant groups, which features in its portfolio everything from Italian to sushi), former Tavola wine director, and co-owner of The Wine Guild of Charlottesville. Before arriving at Dairy Market’s Springhouse Sundries, her food and wine skills were put to good use at Monticello and The Wool Factory.
Now, she’s turned her talents to the specialty beverage and food store, which features local cheeses, artisanal olive oils, fancy jams, and the like—y’know, the good things in life.
Yas Washington, 23
Yas Washington is running for City Council. Oh, and she’s only 23.
After graduating from Albemarle High School in 2015, Washington served as an administrative assistant for the Albemarle Housing Improvement Program and as a youth counselor in the city’s human services department. In 2019, she founded Rocket Science Integrated, which uses art to raise awareness about equity issues.
Working on campaigns for Albemarle Commonwealth’s Attorney Jim Hingley in 2019 and Congressional candidate Dr. Cameron Webb in 2020, Washington came away with a passion for criminal justice reform, affordable health care, and environmental sustainability. She realized she wanted to be more involved in setting critical policies and making systemic change.
“Just because [someone] lives in a particular area and wouldn’t typically have access to certain things or opportunities, that shouldn’t cause them to be put in a predicament where they’re not able to see themselves in a different position,” she says.
If elected to City Council, Washington’s top priority is to work with the Albemarle-Charlottesville Regional Jail to allow people charged with low-level offenses or nonviolent crimes to be released before their trial with affordable bonds. She also wants to reallocate ACRJ funds to social work, education, and civic programs, and see more people diverted to alternatives to incarceration.
No matter the results in November, Washington sees herself in politics for the long run. “The true way to bring about change and break down barriers is by having more Black Americans not just in elected positions, but positions of power,” she says.