People

S T A F F

Alexis Burgess spent the first half of his adult life doing philosophy.  He was an undergrad at Harvard and earned his PhD from Princeton.  As a professor, Alexi taught at Stanford for nearly a decade, and held visiting appointments at schools like NYU, Pomona College, and UCLA.  He's been volunteer tutor of the month at 826LA, a counselor at the Ross Young Scholars Program in mathematics, and led courses at Urban Homeschoolers.

Alexi

Lonnie

Noelani del Rosario-Sabet is a recent graduate of UCLA with a degree in international development studies.  He worked as a tutor for several years, and has extensive mentoring experience through programs like UCLA's Mental Health Initiative, Peer Mentoring, and a Junior Youth Empowerment Program he founded at fifteen. At Alcove, Lonnie's led offerings in mythology, activism, sex-ed, psychology, and more.  

Benni

Benni Quintero is a multimedia teaching artist from South Central Los Angeles.  They primarily work with hand-centric arts: sewing, crochet, stop-motion animation, sculpting, etc.  But Benni does also get a kick out of digital compositing, digital drawing, and video editing.  They have an Experimental Animation degree from CalArts stored in a box somewhere.

Corinne

Corinne Taylor-Cyngiser finds joy in creating community.  As a non-profit administrator, board member, parent educator, PTA president, and leader of an all-gender scout troop, she sees the gifts in each person and loves to connect people and opportunities.  She has a BA in Women’s Studies, is a certified parent educator, and has expertise in real estate.

Hayden

Hayden Daigle is a third-year unschooler and intern at Alcove.  When not dreaming big about becoming a jazz performance professor, he pursues passions like writing poetry, producing music, acting, and exploring the world of physics.  Hayden is a seeker of knowledge and always looking for new ideas he can bring to the Alcove community.

Jade

Born and raised in Los Angeles, Jade Adia is a reader and writer.  She's the author of the YA novel, There Goes the Neighborhood, among other upcoming works.  She holds a bachelor’s degree in Ethnicity, Race & Migration, and a certificate in Human Rights.  She recently survived law school, graduating with a specialization in Critical Race Studies.

B O A R D 

Adriana

Adriana Rincon is the newly appointed Director of the Family SourceCenters at El Centro Del Pueblo in Echo Park and Cypress Park.  Before that, she was a coordinator for the Gang Reduction and Youth Development Program for the city of Los Angeles.  She also serves on the Community Policing Advisory Board for LAPD.  Adriana's passionate about serving her community in Northeast LA.

Cary

Cary McClelland is a writer, filmmaker, lawyer, and human rights advocate whose work has taken him around the world.  His award-winning film Without Shepherds documented the lives of six different people fighting extremism in Pakistan.  His book, Silicon City: San Francisco in the Long Shadow of the Valley, was chosen as one of Stanford University's Three Books of 2019.

Chris

Christopher Hunter was an English professor at Caltech before taking a job as Director of STEM Leadership with the Ron Brown Scholar Program, a nonprofit dedicated to supporting talented and civic-minded African American high school and college students.  Chris  was born and raised in Los Angeles and educated at the LA Center for Enriched Studies, Harvard, and UPenn.

Haiwen

Haiwen Chu is an educational researcher focused on expanding educator expertise to enact quality mathematics instruction for students who are learning English as a second language.  He was head counselor at the Ross Young Scholars Program in mathematics.  And Haiwen is also interested in the pedagogy of apprenticeship in the transmission of classical Japanese sword arts.

Will Slocum was a regular Alcove staff member from the very day it opened in early 2020 through 2022.  During that time he had the privilege of teaching classes and tutoring individual members in a variety of subjects including algebra, chemistry and Japanese language.  Highlights of the job for him included seeing Alcove get off the ground, survive the Covid-19 pandemic, and thrive when in- person learning returned.

Will

Zeba

Zeba Savage is an unschooling Mom and Co-Founder of Savage Learning Environment.  With a degree from U.C. Berkeley in American Studies and Minorities in Math Education, she worked for years as a middle and high school math teacher.  Zeba's currently leading professional development sessions for elementary educators in LAUSD, in partnership with the UCLA Mathematics Project.