Policy and Research Associate
Parent Voices Oakland
Tanisha Payton is a Black woman with indigenous ancestry. Payton is the Policy and Research Associate at Parent Voices Oakland, where she engages critically within local political spaces to help build power within low-income, BIPOC communities most in need of social support. Payton helps PVO leaders understand and use community participatory research and advocacy to address the issues of poverty, surveillance, and resource scarcity embedded in early childhood policy through an anti-oppression lens. Payton has a BA in PsychologyHuman Development and Education, and a Masters in Cultural Anthropology- Race, Gender, and Ecology. Payton has also undertaken participatory research projects linked to diabetes prevention, oral story-telling, systemic scarcity, and identity formation within Native American communities with the Intertribal Friendship House in Oakland, California. She aims to continue using her ethnic legacies and experiences of marginality and poverty to infuse her community-driven, emancipatory work.