Jude-Laure Denis is a Haitian-American woman of Catholic and Jewish heritage, with a passion for justice for all people.  Leaving behind a successful career in corporate event management for Merrill Lynch to become a community organizer on the 2008 Obama campaign, she has been working diligently to create spaces for both individual and community transformation ever since.

A graduate of Oberlin College (BA, Government & French, Minor: Black Studies) and Drew University’s MFA program in Poetry and Poetry Translation, Ms. Denis was born in Port-au-Prince, and raised in Philadelphia, by her maternal grandmother, Laura, herself a closet poet.  

Ms. Denis is the Executive Director of POWER (Pennsylvanians Organized to Witness, Empower & Rebuild) Northeast, a faith-based but not faith exclusive, nonprofit organization committed to interrupting oppressive and inequitable systems that have historically, negatively impacted African-American, Latinx and poor white communities in the Lehigh Valley. Her work focuses on both short-term and long-term solutions, aimed at disrupting the status quo through effective grassroots organizing rooted in personal and collective transformation. 

She is committed to fostering truly healthy, inclusive and just communities across the Lehigh Valley, by building a multi-racial justice movement that is predicated on a clear understanding of both how white supremacy and white domination operate at a systemic and individual level, and how oppression negatively impacts us all. 

A music-aholic and a sucker for good marketing, Ms. Denis was also the founder of Onyx Entertainment Group Inc., an events marketing and production company that created customized entertainment properties for Fortune 100 clients. She began her career at renowned jazz impresario George Wein’s Festival Productions.