Joy-Ann Reid
Joy-Ann Reid has a connection to Denver that stretches back to 1970, when as a two-year-old, she left her birthplace of Brooklyn, New York and arrived in Denver with her father, Congolese immigrant Sebastien Ibeke Lomena, her Guyanese-born mother Philomena Carryl Lomena and her year-older sister June Lomena. The family moved into a house on Vine street, where Mother Douglas, the austere grandmother figure who lived across the street, became the watchful eye over Philomena’s daughters while she worked at a federal agency as a staff nutritionist. Soon came a younger brother, Oren, a parental divorce, and a move to the Montbello neighborhood, where the now family of four first lived on the working class side of town on Sable Street, where the girls went to Ford Elementary School and then moved across town to a larger house on 47th Avenue Circle, where they transferred to McGlone Elementary.
Montbello in the 1980s was an “upside-down town,” meaning its tidy homes were filled with working class and black residents redlined out of other parts of Denver proper. In those days there were two predominantly black neighborhoods in Denver: middle- and working-class Montbello, and struggling, urban, predominantly black Five Points, which in the early decades of the 20th Century had been known as the “Harlem of the West.”
Resistance to desegregation meant painful experiences for black students, including a seventh grade June, who was among the last class bused to white schools in Denver. The resistence of white Denverites and the ugly experiences black students experienced, even in the late 1970s pushed Denver Public Schools to build a neighborhood school for Montbello students. In 1980 Joy-Ann was among the inaugural seventh class at Montbello Junior and Senior High School.
In Denver, the Lomena family revelled in adventures: from car trips to the Rocky mountains and to Four Corners Park and around the American West, and even to Oaxaca, Mexico, to supporting Oren’s participation in outdoor youth sports and June’s participation in Five Points’ Miss Juneteenth pageant. Five Points seemed to the Lomena kids to be a world away; the forbidden downtown kingdom of black magic — of nightclubs and theaters and a black culture that to a group of immigrants’ kids seemed mysterious and intriguing. In 1986, Joy-Ann graduated from Montbello High School and headed off to Harvard University. But the Lomenas were now a family of three, after Philomena succumbed to breast cancer that same year.
Joy-Ann Reid has had a 20-plus year broadcasting career that includes local and cable TV news, radio and columns. She hosts “AM Joy,” which airs Saturdays and Sundays from 10 A.M. ET to noon ET. She is the author of three books: Fracture: Barack Obama, the Clintons and the Racial Divide, We Are the Change We Seek: The Speeches of Barack Obama, which she co-edited with Washington Post columnist E.J. Dionne, and her latest book: The Man Who Sold America: Trump and the Unraveling of the American Story — published in 2015, which spent four weeks on the New York Times best-sellers list. Reid also co-hosts a podcast: Reid This-Reid That with veteran journalist Jacque Reid. She has worked in local and national TV news, talk radio and as a press secretary during two presidential campaigns, including for Barack Obama’s campaign in Florida in 2008. Her columns have appeared in The New York Times, The Guardian, The Miami Herald, New York Magazine and The Daily Beast.
Reid and her brother Oren have a dream: of creating something new and accessible, that also gives honor to the old, and that gives life and laughs and opportunity to a neighborhood that’s constantly in the midst of change.
Oren Lomena
Oren Lomena is a writer / producer / filmmaker and musical artist born and raised in Denver. He attended Montbello Junior and Senior High School, and received both a Certificate in Radio/Television Broadcasting and Bachelors of Arts degree in Communications from Colorado Mesa University. He then spent twelve years working as a producer and on-air personality in sports broadcasting, for ROOT Sports / formerly FOX Sports-Net (2002-2010), FM 104.3 The FAN (2006-2011), where he co-hosted The Night Guys and DMac & Oren in the station’s late night timeslots, and Mile High Sports Radio.
Beyond sports broadcasting, Oren has worked as a show-runner for Free Speech TV, as a location assistant in Denver for the Netflix show “Happy Madison” and as an independent content creator for his own production company, Graux Creative, which conceives and executes ad-supported content related for the video and video podcast market. His most recent creative collaboration is with Meow Wolf, an art collective based in Santa Fe, New Mexico, on a narrative for the multi-million dollar company’s Denver installation.
As an artist and emcee with the Denver based hip hop collective “The Foodchain” for more than 10 years, Oren interacted with the city’s vibrant scene of both musical and visual artists, including co-producing and directing the group’s music videos and working closely with the artists and photographers who visually realized the musical work. Having witnessed the effects of gentrification on Denver’s eastside, Oren has made it his mission to preserve affordable living and working opportunities for creatives like himself.
Jason Reid
Jason Reid was born in London, England, and moved to the U.S., to Queens, New York to live with his grandmother at 13 years old. His tri-cultural background: British, Jamaican and as a black New Yorker, have fed his ambition to help tell the stories of all of the many people whose realities co-exist and often collide in America.
Jason attended Andrew Jackson High School in Queens and then the School of Visual Arts in New York, studying video production. He then began his career at post houses in New York like Tape House and Click 3X, where he worked as an Avid editor on projects ranging from feature films to television commercials and music videos, including for artists LL Cool J, and Naughty By Nature.
Moving to Miami, Reid worked for Manhattan Transfer (formerly Post Edge) as an editor and senior editor before moving to the Discovery Channel, where he spent 15 years as a senior editor for the company’s Latin America division, working for internal clients including The Discovery Channel, TLC, Discovery Kids and Animal Planet. At Discovery, Reid edited series and network promos, creating creative campaigns, on-air promos and cinematic trailers for popular programs including “Toddlers and Tiaras,” “Pit Bulls and Parolees” and “River Monsters.”
Returning to New York, Reid worked as a freelance editor for clients including NBC News’ Peacock Productions, working on such shows as “Caught on Camera,” and edited documentary projects for Moguldom Media Group/Moguldom Films.
Reid is the co-founder with Joy-Ann Reid, and the president of ImageLab Media Group, which is currently in pre-production on documentary film projects on the history of dancehall music, and on the life and death of Arthur Miller, a case reflecting the tragedy of Eric Garner. Reid also directed principal photography for interviews with Harry Belafonte and Dionne Warwick for the upcoming Big Beach Films documentary “The Week That Was,” which chronicles the week that actor and civil rights activist Belafonte guest-hosted The Tonight Show in February 1968.
And in 2019, he joined the board of COMMUNITYx, a startup company whose goal is to bring activists together by using technology to find community and make meaningful change.
Development Partners
Norman Harris III
Norman Harris III is the business development manager of the Five Points Development Corporation, and a major player in the redevelopment of Five Points. The Five Points Development Corporation is the co-developer of the historic Rossonian Hotel, in partnership with Washington D.C. performance space Busboys and Poets, and a leading developer downtown.
Harris has also been at the forefront of restoring the historic neighborhood’s cultural past. Since 2012 he has served as president of the Juneteenth Music Festival—the largest annual event in Denver celebrating African-American music and culture. The festival attracts hundreds of vendors each year, and has helped to reignite the economic possibilities of Five Points. He also spearheaded the revival of the Miss Juneteenth Pageant, and has committed to re-engaging the local community regarding the historical significance of the Juneteenth holiday. He worked to secure new sponsors for the annual summer events, including major corporations like Moet Hennessy, CenturyLink, US Bank and Janus.
Harris’ family roots run deep in Denver. His grandfather, the late Norman Harris Sr. was a legendary local businessman who moved to Five Points during the 1940s after fighting in World War II, and faced down banks who refused to lend to African Americans during the late 1900s. “He went to Congress to lobby for a HUD loan to redevelop his property to a 21 unit apartment complex that served low-income tenants and retired veterans,” historian Brother Jeff told Channel 9 News in 2017, following Harris Sr.’s passing. “During the era of Mr. Harris, it was very important for the black community to have a cultural center that was rooted in economics.” His grandson is carrying on that tradition.
Charles “CJ” Johnson
Charles, “CJ,” Johnson has built a legacy of leadership and community since before he was old enough to vote. Charles showed tremendous poise and leadership on the football field, quarterbacking the 1990 Colorado Buffalo football team to its first national championship. Even then, he had a style of quiet leadership that was about getting things done. That season, the team won the Big Eight Conference for the second straight year at a perfect 8-0 and beat Notre Dame to claim the national title.
Charles left coaches and players shocked when he announced he would not use his final year of college football eligibility. He’d accomplished all he dreamed of as a Buff football player and had other ambitions. Charles wasn’t quitting football—he was using his experience to inspire young, at-risk kids of diverse backgrounds to strive for greatness.
At the age of 22, he was coaching football for the Aurora Lions, a group of at-risk kids while most of his peers were thinking about their own livelihoods. He leveraged that experience and his passion for helping the larger community by founding the Green Valley Ranch Giants Youth Sports League in 1998 where he is the Chair of the Board. Under his leadership, the league has exponentially grown to include a wide array of sports for low-income boys and girls living in Green Valley Ranch.
More recently, Charles led the charge as President of GenX7, a marketing and advertising agency focused on bridging the gap between corporate brands and multicultural communities. Some of Charles’s notable projects included work with Pfizer (World leading pharmaceutical company) and Kaiser Permanente.
Charles retains the discipline of an athlete and the ability to rally others around great ideas. His other successes, include:
- Founder & CEO @lightspeed,LLC, a Colorado Start-Up Business of the Year finalist in 2001.
- Emmy Award-Winning television and radio personality
- Associate Director of Athletics University of Colorado, responsible for 30% increase in ticket sales and 37% increase in corporate sponsorship
- Director of Business Development JD Edwards
- Award-Winning motivational speaker
Charles continues to fill a wide array of leadership roles in the community, helping to transform what looks like nothing, into something that matters. He is an innovative, collaborative and inspirational leader who still wears that CU National Championship ring with great pride and as a reminder of what is possible.