stefanie lyn kaufman-mthimkhulu

Founder & Executive Director

stefanie (they/she) is a white, queer and non-binary, Disabled, neurodivergent care worker. They show up for their communities as a Disability Justice and Mad Liberation educator and organizer, parent, doula, peer supporter, writer, and conflict intervention facilitator. Their work specializes in building non-carceral, peer-led mental health care systems that exist outside of the state, reimagining everything we’ve come to learn about mental distress, and supporting care workers to get in alignment with the genuine roots of healing work. Stefanie sits on the Lived Experience Advisory Council for the Psychiatric Services Academic Journal, in addition to serving on the Board of Directors for IDHA. They are the editor of Abolition Must Include Psychiatry, and the author of We Don’t Need Cops to Become Social Workers.

Contact: stefanie@projectlets.org

Helya Azadmanesh-Samimi

Community Care & Resource Coordinator

Helya (they/them) joined Project LETS’ team during the winter of 2021, and were drawn here because of shared commitments to building anti-carceral community support structures, as well as the values of disability justice, healing justice, and mutual aid. Helya is grateful to be able to work alongside their team members at Project LETS and to take part in processes of community power-building and dreaming of futures that center access and healing for everyone. Helya holds lived experiences that include being working class, neurodivergent, non-Black Iranian, and an immigrant, and they are excited to have found a place of work where they feel affirmed, and can access a sense of safety, belonging and dignity. 

heena sharma

Director of Operations & Capacity Building

heena (they/she) is a mad trans himbo, an anti-caste upper-caste indian, a youth co-conspirator, an aquarius abolitionist facilitator striving towards collective liberation via radical care, a fumbling political educator trying to learn and unlearn. they are based in lenapehoking (first staten island, now harlem)

Contact: heena@projectlets.org

Es Leso

Oral History Project Coordinator

Es is a mad, mutltiply-disabled, queer, second-gen, mixed-race (/ jew-rican jersey special!), non-binary femme. Es's life/work/praxis/magic is deeply informed by their experiences as a life-long psych & sexual violence survivor and as a immuncomprimised lupus queen. They've had the privilege of dreaming and building queer/trans/disabled community spaces in NYC for the last decade and a half. Es has also worked as a social worker for the last 10+ years, co-creating care & access maps with other mad & disabled folks navigating the system. Es is an abolitionist who believes the revolution will not be systematized and views social work as a relatively flawed practice of harm reduction that is sometimes useful in surviving our Collective Dystopia. Es's interests include poetry, graphic novels, practices of the occult, and the New York Public Library. Es is a fervent believer in the power of human connection, resilience, & the sacred art of oral story-telling.