Meet Our Team

CEO and Founder
Samantha Joo is the CEO and founder of Platform and the academic advising center coordinator and ADA accommodations officer at the Iliff School of Theology. In her past life, she has taught a range of Bible and religion courses at universities and theological graduate schools and founded Dding Dong, the LGBTQ Youth Support Center in Seoul, Korea. Her community consists of her rambunctious canine boys (Kimchi, Benji, and Cooper), niblings, siblings, most beloved friends, mother, immigrant youth in the city of Aurora, and progressive Christians and spiritual Nones at Iliff. She loves to cook, travel, and walk everywhere and anywhere.

Youth Program Director
Dafne Ruiz Tinoco is the Administrative Assistant for the Mile High United Way (MHUW); she was previously the Child Care Specialist at the MHUW 2-1-1 call center under their partnership with Colorado Shines. As a first generation Latina college student, she graduated from Community College of Aurora with her Associates of Arts-History in 2021. She is now pursuing further education in Early Childhood Education. She has a passion for educating youth and their parents as they try to navigate the transition between high school and college. Dafne loves to spend time with her family and friends, but she especially loves spending time with her little Chihuahua Bonbon!

Youth Team Leader
Tsion Hundie is currently pursuing a Bachelors of Science in Public Health at the University of Colorado Denver (UCD) in hopes to become a physical therapist. She enjoys working with youth to develop their understandings of identities and explore how they can become great activists! In her free time, she likes to workout, play video games, and read books.

Youth Team Leader
Ximena Ruiz Tinoco is a sophomore at the Community College of Aurora, pursuing a degree in Psychology. She is also currently working full-time at the Mile High United Way as a 211 Community Navigator Specialist.

Meet our board

Kristen Payne is a Senior Associate in Program Solutions for a national non-profit, the Center for Employment Opportunities, a re-entry organization that serves formerly incarcerated or otherwise justice impacted individuals. Along with providing direct service to its clientele and training for colleagues, she is also integral in co-creating the organization’s robust diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives and trainings, and has been an Affinity Group Leader for multiple Affinity (also known as Employee Resource) Groups. Kristen is a courageous leader in social justice both at work and in her community. When Kristen is not on long walks or hikes with her sweet pup, Pixel, she is often planning her next adventure, either on the ski slopes in Colorado or traveling both across the US and abroad, often with her son or her twin sister, who also resides in Colorado.

Mariam Rauf is a New York-based advocate and consultant driven to build deep community-centered partnerships and affect equity-centered organizational practice. She spent a decade in the gender violence field before becoming a consultant focusing on gender and racial equity. Mariam brings empathy, leadership and innovation to create support systems paired with informed perspectives and thoughtful approaches to complex societal and cultural challenges. Mariam is a proud Baloch feminist who spends her free time biking and photographing the streets of New York.

Yohana Liben is a sophomore at the University of Denver majoring in Analytics & Accounting. She loves community building which has led her to some of the best engagements and people she has ever met! A fun fact about Yohana is that she loves to try new things. For example, she skied for the first time and absolutely LOVED it. She is looking forward to making meaningful changes at Platform.

Lexianna Salazar is currently a senior in high school. She identifies as a Hispanic, Native American woman. Because of her diverse background, she has a unique perspective but believes that as humans, all of us can always learn more to help others and our environment. She hopes to help others as well as herself grow into better activists and people.