PROFESSIONAL STAFF
TIFFANY
DENA LOFTIN
Tiffany Dena Loftin is a nationally recognized organizer, strategist, and educator whose work centers on building power in Black and Brown communities through grassroots campaigns, leadership development, and civic engagement. Loftin is a first-generation college graduate from Los Angeles, she studied American Studies and Political Science at UC Santa Cruz, where her journey as a movement leader began organizing for the Federal Dream Act and registering voters for Barack Obama’s first presidential race in 2008.
Her work spans from the streets to the halls in government. Loftin has trained thousands of young leaders and workers, organized winning grassroots campaigns for student debt relief and police accountability. She led campaigns at the Grassroots Law Project that helped end capital punishment in two states and coordinated the coalition for the March on Wasington in 2021. She also led three racial and artist justice delegation to Palestine to connect global movements for liberation and resist state violence.
Appointed by President Barack Obama to the White House Initiative on Educational Excellence for African Americans, Loftin has held senior national roles at the AFL-CIO, NAACP, AFT, NEA, and CWA- AFA. She currently serves as Interim Executive Director of the United States Student Association, leads its national relaunch, teaches at UC Santa Cruz, and hosts How We Get Free, a podcast for organizers and changemakers. She also serves on the board of United We Dream, the largest immigrant youth-led network in the country.
With a deep belief in collective power, cultural strategy, and radical imagination, Loftin continues to equip and inspire new generations to build real power and improve people’s lives.
Elsie
Vizcarra
Elsie Vizcarra is a first-generation Latina organizer passionate about empowering students to build power and fight for equitable access to education. Born and raised in the Inland Empire, she studied at the University of California Santa Cruz and received three Bachelors of Arts in Critical Race and Ethnic Studies, Latin American and Latino Studies, and Education Democracy and Justice.
Elsie began her organizing journey with engaging education ,a student-led outreach and retention center focused on supporting students of color. Through this work, she helped develop retention-focused programming, advocated for institutional accountability and organized campus wide campaigns centered on student needs. Serving as the Latin Retention Coordinator and later as Chair, Elsie emphasized civic engagement, participatory budgeting, and student-led decision-making while mentoring and training students to step into leadership roles.
Raised in a mixed-status family, Elsie’s work is deeply informed by her commitment to immigrant justice and her lived experience navigating higher education as a first generation student. Her organizing interests center civic engagement, participatory budgeting and building student led movements. She has since graduated from UCSC and now serves as the West Coast Field Organizer for the United States Student Association Foundation (USSAF), where she supports and mobilizes student leaders across the region to build collective power for accessible higher education.