Patrice Hill Email and Phone Number

Patrice Hill is a poet, public speaker, youth advocate, host, curator, community-based educator, and Scholar Activist who has over two decades of experience teaching in urban classrooms. While studying Pan-African Studies at CSU Sacramento, Patrice made a personal commitment to focus her personal and professional work on serving the youth of her community. Patrice currently serves as the Director for Sacramento Area Youth Speaks (SAYS). Founded in 2009 at UC Davis, SAYS strives to change the world through education and empowerment. Building on a foundation of critical literacy and spoken word performance poetry, SAYS breaks the chains of underachievement by elevating the voices of young people and creating spaces for students to become authors of their own lives and agents of change. Patrice specializes in providing direct service to students, developing culturally relevant curriculum as well as developing and facilitating teacher/youth practitioner professional development trainings. In her current role at SAYS, Patrice has had the opportunity to travel extensively around the nation demonstrating the effectiveness of using spoken word performance poetry inside classrooms to deeply engage students, foster safe student-centered writing spaces, while aligning culturally relevant curriculum to meet Common Core State Standards. SAYS has recently been recognized as a national leader of social justice-based arts in education organizations. Patrice has worked extensively with national partners like Urban Word NYC and Youth Speaks Inc. to bring programs like the Sacramento Youth Poet Laureate to the Capital City. Patrice has been honored with several awards and recognition including the Sacramento Kings Martin Luther King Jr. Community Impact Award, the California Equity Summit Social Justice Award; Ubuntu Award for Inspiring Social Change, Outstanding Service in African American Community Award; University of California Davis and the Points of Pride Award; UC Davis Division of Student Affairs. Among all her recognitions and achievements, Patrice is honored and most proud to have received the Black Girls Rock Award from Grant Union High School, the We See You Award from Luther Burbank High School, the Inspire Award from Twin Rivers Unified School District, and the Most Valuable Partner Award from San Juan Unified School District. As the Director of Sacramento Area Youth Speaks, Patrice Hill’s greatest victory is serving and standing alongside the beautiful and brilliant youth in Sacramento, and beyond.