NationSwell is proud to announce our pilot NationSwell Fellows Accelerator Program, sponsored by Jon & Wendy Stahl. The Accelerator provides young leaders the strategic support, connections and leadership development needed to turn their interventions into sustainable and meaningful interventions, so they have the foundations they need to continue building on their work long after they complete the program.  The four key areas the program will focus on are: building and refining a theory of change, building organizational structure and presence, stakeholder engagement  and storytelling. We are honored to announce the fellows who will be joining our first ever accelerator program. Meet our fellows!

ALEX ANG | Mental Health Mailboxes


ALEX ANG (SHE/HER)

Alex Ang is a content creator and mental health advocate living in Saint Paul, MN. Through her work, she is dedicated to increasing access to mental health resources and developing storytelling around cultural competency, anxiety awareness and workplace mental health. She currently sits on the NAMI StigmaFree Advisory Board for Workplace Mental Health, and is the host of a mental health podcast, a is for anxious. 

Her accelerator project, Mental Health Mailboxes, is a community-based campaign aimed at increasing access to free mental health resources and acts as a catalyst for mental health awareness, using the power of collective aid and resource exchange to curate a source of mental health stories and resources. The idea is a simple one: Place a Mental Health Mailbox in your community and watch as community-members populate its shelves with an abundance of resources, suited to each community’s culture and location.

JORGE ALVAREZ + JAZMINE ALCON | Bridging The Generational Gap


JORGE ALVAREZ (HE/HIM)

Jorge Alvarez is a first-gen Latin Social Impact Strategist, Mental Health Advocate, & Creator who has taken his mental health advocacy from lecture halls on his college campus, to millions online, and even to The White House. After being recognized by MTV as 1 of 30 participants to be part of the inaugural Mental Health Youth Action Forum at The White House where he spoke alongside Selena Gomez, the U.S. First Lady, and the U.S. Surgeon General, Jorge went on to consult companies and nonprofits alike on campaign messaging, program development, and BIPOC/youth engagement strategies. Most recently, he advised MTV and Active Minds, a youth mental health nonprofit, on their national mental health campaign called A.S.K.– the stop, drop, & roll for young people to emotionally support their friends! Online, he uses his love for storytelling to spark dialogue for collective reflection, unlearning limiting beliefs, and breaking cycles leading to his community of +130,000 across social platforms. While he loves creating, Jorge works directly with communities by speaking at venues, universities, and institutions across the U.S. to empower and educate young people and allies about mental health, social media, advocacy, and more. 


JAZMINE ALCON (SHE/HER)

Jazmine brings over 7 years of experience in the mental health advocacy space and is dedicated to transforming the mental health narrative to be more culturally relevant, engaging, and accessible. Her work has been rooted in empowering BIPOC communities, which she has executed through health equity, community, and marketing initiatives in the non-profit and corporate sectors. Jazmine is an Ilocana immigrant who believes that storytelling is fundamental in creating systemic and collective change in how we address youth mental health. Jazmine holds a Bachelor of Science in Public Health with a minor in Health and Society. She is also the co-founder of AAPI Mental Health, a digital platform dedicated to redefining the mental health conversation in the Asian and Pacific Islander community. In her free time, Jazmine likes to create art, hang out with her friends and cat, and be outdoors!

Together, Jorge and Jazmine are working on a project titled, and it’s a campaign consisting of a non-scripted interview-style video web series featuring difficult yet sincere intergenerational dialogue between BIPOC parents or guardians and their children (ages 18-26). Given the impact of cultural, ethnic, and racial nuance, each episode will spotlight how vulnerable and intimate conversations between parents and children of color can lead to a place of understanding. This campaign will not only invoke emotion and demonstrate that having intimate and vulnerable conversations between different generations is possible and why it’s important to do so, but it will also inspire others to have these same conversations. Ultimately, our goal is to use digital content to drive traffic toward culturally relevant resources with actionable next steps with viewers to continue the conversation.

ERICKA KAMANOU-TENTA | Agents of Change


ERICKA KAMANOU-TENTA (SHE/HER)

Ericka Kamanou-Tenta is an American-Cameroonian purpose-driven Social Entrepreneur who firmly believes in the transformative potential of decolonization to drive positive change and foster community development. She is a recent graduate of NYU where she studied Global Public Health with a minor in Social Entrepreneurship, and a current MPH Candidate at Yale University. Her fervor for African development has led her to start building a Pan-African movement, dedicated to nurturing leadership within Africa and its Diaspora through entrepreneurship.

Her project focuses on developing an entrepreneurial training ground or program that empowers African and Black young adults to see themselves as agents of change and overcome the mental limitations caused by centuries of colonialism.   

To learn more about the NationSwell Fellows Accelerator and how to get involved, please reach out to Minna Son (Director of Programs & Strategy, NationSwell Studio).