Our Team

Hey, I’m Jade,

I’m community-rooted social worker, doula, educator, creative, and survivor. I created The JoyCore Project as an act of reclamation—of joy, creativity, and collective healing. I believe healing doesn’t happen in isolation or in sterile spaces; it happens in community, through art, through story, through building something new together.

My work is shaped by lived experience, including complex trauma and years of personal healing. I’ve spent the last decade weaving together frameworks from disability justice, reproductive justice, abolitionist care, and expressive arts therapy to build something that feels radically whole. I hold a deep commitment to people of the global majority and believe joy is not just medicine—it’s our birthright.

This belief is the heart of my framework of Joy Access, which recognizes joy as both a vital sign of well-being and a strategy for liberation.

Joy Access is a healing justice framework that treats joy as an embodied need—especially for those impacted by systemic harm. It centers cultural and creative practices not just as complementary, but as core interventions in building thriving communities. It asks: what becomes possible when joy is prioritized in policy, care, and design?

For many years, I considered myself a “closet creative,” unsure if I had the right to claim space as an artist. But art—especially poetry, storytelling, and expressive practices—became the most powerful tools in my healing. Over time, they became my method, my offering, and my map.

Through JoyCore, we’re reclaiming an arts-in-health model rooted in social prescribing, cross-sector collaboration, and economic justice for culture-bearers. We work at the intersection of public health, abolition, and creative placemaking—bringing together artists, youth, healers, and system-impacted communities to co-create long-term pathways toward joy access and recovery. We don’t believe healing happens in silos—it happens in vibrant, messy, art-filled, justice-rooted community.

We’re building a world where joy is accessible, where artists and culture-bearers are supported, and where care is creative, consent-driven, and community-centered. I’m currently completing my MSW and expressive arts therapy training, and my happiest moments are when I’m dreaming with others, painting big visions, and laughing loudly in rooms filled with possibility.

Let’s build something joyful, together.