Cal ICH Lived Experience Advisory Board (LEAB)
Viviana Arenas
Viviana is a community advocate in Santa Clara County. She comes from a diverse background where struggle has been often, but she uses personal and professional experience to help pave way for new opportunities.
Viviana is passionate about humanity, compassion, and meeting people where they are at. She has built and maintained relationships with various community members including our unhoused, young families, charter schools, and nonprofit organizations.
Viviana’s goal is to ensure that her children and future generations can live in a world where they can have access to their basic needs without the struggle, sacrifice, and navigation of community resources. “Basic needs are the bare minimum. We shouldn’t have to fight or beg for them. They are our human right, and we need to be in dialogue with our oppressors to help them understand true humanity.”
Sara Coon
Sara Coon is a community advocate, outreach leader, program site manager for extreme weather shelter in Santa Cruz and California Certified Peer Support Specialist who specializes in serving individuals experiencing homelessness and those in crisis. With more than 20 years of firsthand experience surviving homelessness and years of professional experience serving unhoused individuals throughout Santa Cruz County and the greater Bay Area, she brings a unique perspective that bridges lived expertise with systems change, using both her personal journey and professional background to improve services for people experiencing homelessness.
After spending two decades unhoused, Sara transformed that experience into a lifelong commitment to helping others. She has worked in emergency shelters, street outreach, housing navigation, crisis response, and peer support, using her firsthand knowledge to build trust with people who are often the hardest to reach. She believes the people most affected by homelessness should have a meaningful voice in shaping the policies and programs designed to serve them.
Sara is a Peer Support Specialist with specialized training and experience in homelessness and crisis care. She specializes in supporting individuals experiencing homelessness, serious mental illness, co-occurring mental health and substance use disorders, trauma, recovery, crisis intervention, and housing stabilization. She has extensive experience supporting veterans, survivors of domestic violence, people transitioning from incarceration, individuals involved with the criminal justice system, and those living in encampments or experiencing chronic homelessness. Her approach is grounded in trauma-informed care, harm reduction, recovery-oriented practices, motivational interviewing, and meeting people where they are with dignity, respect, and without judgment.
Throughout her career, Sara has helped connect countless individuals to housing, behavioral health services, medical care, benefits, and community resources while advocating for improvements in homeless services and public policy. She is passionate about strengthening collaboration between service providers, government agencies, nonprofits, and people with lived experience to create practical, compassionate, and effective solutions.
Kia Dupclay
Kia serves as the Youth Homeless Systems Improvement Lead for the Department of Homeless Services and Housing, where she focuses on strengthening systems, improving coordination, and advancing more effective and equitable responses for youth and young adults experiencing homelessness. Her work is informed by both professional expertise and lived experience, bringing a critical perspective to the development of policies and systems intended to serve vulnerable communities.
As a double major in Engineering and Public Policy, Kia is particularly interested in the intersection of technology, policy, and human-centered systems design. She is passionate about exploring how data, emerging technologies, and innovative approaches can improve service delivery, strengthen system coordination, and create more responsive pathways to housing and long-term stability.
Kia launched Free 2 Dream Big, an initiative created to empower young people to envision possibilities beyond their circumstances and pursue pathways toward stability, opportunity, and their long-term goals. Building on that work, she also launched LEAN CA, an emerging initiative focused on elevating lived expertise and strengthening the role of people with lived experience in policy, systems change, and decision-making.
Across her work, Kia is committed to bridging lived expertise, public policy, and technology to help build systems that are more effective, equitable, and responsive to the people they serve.
Chessy Etheridge
Chessy Etheridge is the Chair of the Sonoma County Lived Experience Advisory and Planning (LEAP) Board and serves as a Street Outreach Manager for a Sonoma County grassroots non-profit. Drawing from both professional and lived experience, she is committed to improving homelessness response systems, advancing equitable access to services, and ensuring that the voices of people directly impacted by homelessness help shape policy and decision-making.
With 18 years of experience as a paramedic, Chessy brings a strong background in crisis response, healthcare, and community service. She served two terms as the Lived Experience representative on the Sonoma County Homeless Coalition and is currently serving her second term on the Sonoma County Coordinated Entry Committee. She has also served on the Funding and Evaluation Committee and currently holds an advisory role, representing the LEAP Board on the Sonoma County Homeless Coalition. In addition, she participates in countywide workgroups and subcommittees, including Coordinated Entry redesign, HMIS vendor selection, outreach standards, and permanent supportive housing standards, helping to strengthen services and outcomes for people experiencing homelessness.
Bruce D. Folb
Bruce D. Folb is a community advocate and peer leader based in Santa Barbara County, along California’s Central Coast. His advocacy is rooted in lived experience with homelessness, incarceration, behavioral health systems, and recovery. The struggle to escape the cyclic existence of “surviving without living” inspired his deep commitment to advancing policies that serve people in need with equity and compassion.
Bruce has collaborated with his local Continuum of Care in a rotating Representative LEAB seat and serves as a Core Group Member with the Santa Barbara LEAB Leadership Council. He is also a Medi-Cal Certified Peer Support Specialist. His work promotes the expansion of outreach programs and peer networks, identifying gaps, barriers, and systemic impediments that affect the continuity of warm handoffs and transitions from shelters, institutions, and sober living into paths of healing and stable housing.
Bruce’s advocacy emphasizes harm reduction, cultural humility, and the integration of lived experience voices in policy and program design. He continues to mentor peers and support community initiatives that build pathways toward dignity, safety, and belonging for all.
Nicole Green
Nicole Green is a systems leader, social worker, consultant, and advocate whose work is informed by both lived and professional experience navigating homelessness, re-entry, behavioral health, and substance use systems. Her personal experience of falling within the “missing middle” of fragmented service systems shaped her commitment to advancing coordinated, human-centered, and “no wrong door” approaches to care.
Nicole serves as Chair of the Contra Costa County Council on Homelessness and Chair of the Contra Costa County AB109 Community Advisory Board. She also brings experience from her service on the Contra Costa County Alcohol and Other Drugs Advisory Board. Nicole holds master's degrees in Social Work and Business and Project Management and is the founder of N.M. Green Consultations. She partners with community organizations to build strategic capacity, develop operational models, and enhance supportive housing programs. She is committed to advancing policies and systems grounded in dignity, equity, accountability, and the expertise of people most impacted by homelessness.
Mindy Harrod
Born in Modesto and shaped by communities across California, Mindy Harrod serves as CalPride Stanislaus' SUD Specialist and Community Health Worker. She shows up with a steady, heartfelt commitment to supporting people navigating substance use, accessing care, and finding affirming resources in our region. Mindy is deeply dedicated to advocating for transgender rights and building pathways that make daily life safer, kinder, and more accessible for our trans and gender-expansive neighbors. Her work is grounded in compassion, cultural humility, and a belief that everyone deserves care that honors who they are. In every space she enters, Mindy brings warmth, lived experience, and a clear focus on lifting up community.
Timothy Heavin
Timothy Heavin is an artist, musician, and local radio disc jockey whose work is grounded in a mission of compassion, community healing, and service. (His music is available on all streaming platforms). He is a humanitarian leader, homelessness systems expert, and certified Community Health Worker with deep lived experience in homelessness, reentry, recovery, and system navigation.
For several years, Tim has worked directly with unhoused individuals across Monterey and San Benito Counties, meeting people where they are and supporting access to housing, health care, and supportive services through person-centered, trauma-informed approaches. He is a strong advocate for individuals with lived experience and is widely recognized as a trusted voice for those most impacted by homelessness.
Tim serves on multiple local and statewide advisory bodies, including the Monterey/San Benito County Continuum of Care Leadership Council, where he also serves as Co-Chair of the Monitoring and Evaluation Committee, a member of the Governance Committee, and the founder and chair of the Lived Experience Advisory Directive (L.E.A.D.). He is a consultant to the Corporation for Supportive Housing's California State Policy Advisory Committee and the Bring California Home Coalition. He also serves on the San Benito County Community Action Board. Professionally, he works full time providing Enhanced Care Management services to older adults through Senior Network Services.
Tim has played a key role in advancing Cal AIM implementation, advocating for sustained HHAP funding, advocating for peer support implementation, and supporting the development of permanent funding streams for homelessness and housing solutions. He is the founder of Heavin Helps, an initiative focused on outreach, care coordination, and system navigation for people experiencing homelessness - particularly individuals impacted by incarceration, disability, and substance use disorders. Through Heavin Helps, Tim developed and provides a lived-experience-rooted training curriculum for organizations, covering Housing First, trauma-informed care, cultural humility, meeting people where they are, and motivational interviewing. Recently Mr. Heavin was awarded the community hero award at the local Lead Me Home Summit on homelessness.
As a LEAB member, Tim brings a deep commitment to elevating lived experience in policy development, advancing Housing First principles, and ensuring that state strategies are grounded in dignity, accountability, and real-world impact. He is committed to leading the fight to end homelessness through any means and strategy.
Brenda Mack
Brenda Mack is on both the full San Luis Obispo (SLO) Homeless Services Oversight Council and executive seat for lived experience. She is a board member for a local homeless outreach organization SLO Grassroots. She is involved with her local league of women voters housing and homeless committee. She advocates for mental health and is involved in political organizations, chairing her local DSA. She is also an executive committee member with NAACP SLO and participates with Mujeres de Action, a Latino women's empowerment group. She also volunteers with other groups serving marginalized folks.
Alex Sánchez
Alex Sánchez (he/él) is a Mexican-American community advocate who grew up in rural parts of Fresno County. He started his work in housing justice and reform when he was a youth experiencing homelessness in rural and metro Fresno County. Alex experienced chronic homelessness and housing instability for several years. Along his journey, Alex used his lived experience to advocate for others who were also experiencing discrimination and violence within systems that were supposed to help those of us in need.
After three years of serving as LEAB Chair, Alex has recently accepted the position of Lived Experience Coordinator for the Fresno Madera Continuum of Care (FMCoC). This work is committed to restructuring the FMCoC system wide for the integration and incorporation of people with lived experiences of homelessness on all levels of the Continuum. Prior to this work, Alex had worked in Street Medicine providing people experiencing homelessness with mobile health services and enhance care management within Fresno & Madera County.
Alex's advocacy work also includes educating and advocating for policy changes on: equitable access to health care, anti-discrimination practices, reproductive health education, gender-affirming health care, and accessible mental health care. He served as a board member and Chair of Trans-E-Motion, the only trans specific organization within the Valley, offering resource navigation, low barrier emergency rental relief, support groups, gender affirming services, and many other resources. Alex has worked with young men of color to create safe spaces for brown and black queer men to learn, connect, and access health resources within California's Bible Belt, the Central Valley.
Lawrence Winston
Dr. Lawrence Winston, M.O.L., M.B.A. is a nonprofit executive, former foster youth, and nationally recognized community advocate from the City of Los Angeles who has dedicated his life to ending homelessness, empowering vulnerable populations, and building pathways to self-sufficiency. He is the Founder and Executive Director of Wise Up Ministries, a California 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization, and Wise Up Incorporated, a Nevada (Las Vegas) 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization. Through both organizations, he leads innovative initiatives focused on transitional housing, workforce development, youth mentorship, health and wellness, community leadership, and economic empowerment.
In 2026, Dr. Winston was selected to serve on the California Interagency Council on Homelessness (Cal ICH) Lived Experience Advisory Board (LEAB) after being chosen from 97 applicants for one of only six available seats. His appointment recognizes his unique combination of lived experience, professional leadership, and unwavering commitment to advancing statewide solutions to homelessness.