About the Team

San Francisco is the diverse and progressive home of Youth Speaks, the founding organization behind the Brave New Voices movement. Youth Speaks works with 45,000 teens per year in the Bay Area alone.

First time coach Lauren Whitehead facilitates egalitarian workshops where everyone's voice and opinion is heard. She empowers the San Francisco team, an eclectic group of young teens, to make many decisions for themselves. Heated emotional confrontations and personal conflicts become a large part of their workshops and Lauren struggles to get the most from her poets. What is she fighting for? San Francisco didn't make it to the finals last year for the first time in five yearsthis year, Lauren is determined to take them all the way.

Website: www.youthspeaks.org

About the Coach

Lauren Whitehead knows how hard it can be for young people to speak in public. "People fear speaking in front of people more than they fear death," she says. "So a 14-year-old doing it with very little inhibition and calling out his entire city and saying we need change to a crowd of 3,000 people is heroic." Whitehead, who is closer in age to her team than most coaches are, understands how her poets overcome anxiety. "I still get nervous every time I get in front of people," she says. "What's different is that these young people feel an urgency. They need to say something that hasn't been said, so they are willing to overcome their fear [in order] to be heard."

The Contenders

Simone Crew, 17
Devin Murphy, 18
Bryant Phan, 15
Ericka Sheppard, 16
Mike Taylor, 19
Jacqulyn Whang, 19