Our Team
Angela Lewis-Morrison - Program Coordinator
Ms. Morrison wears many hats with Talent All-Stars, Inc., and Program Coordinator happens to be another one of the hats that she wears with great pleasure. She has been dedicated to working with young people since the age of 26 as a youth director for many years at her church, and other organizations in the community where she has served as a parent liaison. Ms. Morrison often says the gift she has been blessed with is helping people, especially our young people.
She begun her journey with performing arts through her daughter being in the dance program for 10 years. When she saw parents financially struggling to keep their kids in the dance program, she wanted to do something to help the parents and children.
Angela along with six other parents were able to create Talent Allstars Nonprofit. This nonprofit was created to provides financial assistance to the students in this dance programs. When the creative director move on to start another program, the board begun working with local artists that had performing arts programs with no financial support.
Angela often says it has been an honor to work with the children and watch their talents grow as they grow into adulthood. It gives her the greatest joy to see some of the artist who have come through Talent Allstars program leave and start their own company. The legacy she hopes that comes from her hard work is in the words of Maye Angelou “I’ve learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel”. l hope that people will always remember how we made them feel in our program.
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Jesse Byrd Jr. - Storyteller
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Jesse Byrd is a 33-year-old African-American children’s book creator and dual-native of California and Louisiana. At 6 feet 8 inches tall, Jesse paid for his college education playing basketball at one of the top 10 Public Academic Universities in the country (UC Santa Barbara). After 3 years working on a secret project for Google at their headquarters in California, Jesse decided to pursue his true love of creating stories for readers young and old. Jesse’s debut novel, King Penguin, was highly praised and won awards at both the Los Angeles and Paris Annual Book Festivals, placing top 10 for the year in its category. His two picture books: “Sunny Days” and “Real Jungle Tales” have received awards in four major competitions worldwide. Jesse’s favorites are French toast with sliced strawberries, reading, writing, film, video games, and freshly popped popcorn. You can purchase Jesse’s stories on Amazon.
Lilla Pittman, Choreographer
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Lilla’s love for dance began at the young age of 5yrs old in the world of West African dancing as a little "African Queen". She grew to love and master in the art form, and eventually evolved into a young woman through the eyes of the stage. She went on to study other genres of dance (i.e. Hip-Hop, Jazz, Ballet, etc.), in which she grew to love them just as much!! It is through life's experiences and obstacles that she came to realize that she not only wanted to be an advocate for young ladies, but also wants to share her craft and love of dance with them as well; while substituting as a constructive outlet during troublesome times.
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Currently Lilla is the Director/Choreographer of the Feline Finesse Dance Company, est 2014, a youth sisterhood stemming from the origins of the Bayview-Hunters Point community, San Francisco. Their mission is to create a safe haven for all young ladies to freely, creatively, and artistically express themselves through dance while empowering them to reach their full potential, goals and dreams.
