Candi CdeBaca, a Denver, CO native, is currently the Executive Director of Project VOYCE. She is a trained social worker and her experiences in the education sector include co-founding PV, developing student programming at the university level, researching and advocating policy at the national level, and advocating student voice and engagement at all levels of policy development and implementation. Candi is a fierce advocate for educational equity and has blazed a trail since day one with firsthand knowledge of inequities as a first-generation high school graduate.

 

Candi was one of the first youths to be appointed to the Denver Mayor’s Commission on Youth, Denver Mayor’s Latino Advisory Council, and she was the first and youngest dual-degree graduate from the University of Denver’s Graduate School of Social Work. She was a Daniel’s Fund Scholar and leader of inclusive excellence on the DU campus.

 

Candi co-founded Project V.O.Y.C.E. in 2006 while she was completing her master’s and bachelor’s degree at the University of Denver. Project V.O.Y.C.E. was born as a solution to the ineffective utilization and engagement of youth voice in Denver Public School’s Manual High School Renewal process. Manual High School, Candi’s alma mater, was shutdown two years after her graduation, after failed reforms. Candi was appointed to the Community Renewal Committee as a youth representative and was unconvinced that youth voice was truly incorporated into the redesign of the neighborhood school that served nearly 100% free and reduced lunch qualifying minority students. Project V.O.Y.C.E. evolved naturally from an effort to make youth voice real in school renewal through action research, community partnerships, and leadership development.

 

In 2009, Candi moved to Washington, DC as a New Leaders Intern and New Leaders Fellow with the Center For Progressive Leadership. CdeBaca returned to Denver in 2014 after leading in Washington, DC with a national nonprofit called Excelencia in Education and District of Columbia Public Schools. She consulted for Denver Public Schools, lobbied for the Colorado Children's Campaign and is currently a Latino Leadership Institute 2015 Fellow.