Our Team
Marissa Perez, MLS
Marissa is Oglala Sioux, Mexican, and British-American and has been involved in gender-based violence awareness, prevention, and advocacy for over ten years. While serving as a certified Sexual Assault Response and Prevention victim advocate in the US Army, she saw firsthand the devastation this type of violence has on women and their communities. After several years of working in the Seattle Indigenous community on issues of gender-based violence, she was hired in 2019 as the program manager for the Cedar Rising Coalition, a coalition of Native-led organizations in King County dedicated to ending all forms of gender-based violence in Native communities.
In 2021, she founded The Yarrow Project, a nonprofit working to encircle and support Native survivors of violence and MMIWP Families. Her extensive background in policy and systems advocacy and expertise in the fields of human trafficking, sexual assault, domestic violence, and intergenerational trauma have led her to speaking engagements with organizations such as the National Council of Juvenile and Family Court Judges, testifying in the Washington State Legislature, and guest lecturing with the University of Washington Dept of Sociology.
Marissa serves as the Executive Director of the Seattle Human Services Coalition, a coalition of over 200 agencies representing community issues such as homelessness, food equity, gender-based violence, community health care, senior services, and early childhood education. In 2024, she founded Sage Consulting, offering her years of expertise to nonprofit organizations and agencies across the region. She currently serves on the Washington State Access to Justice Community Advisory Board, the Board of Directors for the South Park Senior Center, the United Indians of All Tribes Native Veterans Advisory Board and was selected as part of the 2022-2023 Native Action Network’s Legacy of Leadership Cohort.
Marissa is a graduate of Seattle Pacific University and holds a Masters of Legal Studies in Indigenous People’s Law from the University of Oklahoma. She recently left the US Army Reserves after serving for 14 years as a Logistics Officer. Sage, a seven-year-old Certified Mutt, accompanies Marissa whenever she can, bringing her special brand of love to meetings, talks, conferences, and classes. Constantly reading and sewing, Marissa makes regalia, ribbon skirts and quilts while at home with her fiancé in the South Park neighborhood of Seattle. She is a proud daughter, sister, and a full-time auntie to six nieces and nephews.
Jourdan Gaub
With over 20 years of IT experience, Jourdan has been building, repairing, and learning about computers and tech systems since he was a child. He is passionate about adapting technology to fit the lives and careers of everyone, a passion that shows up in his ability to teach people of every background how to make the most of their computers. He is an expert in a wide variety of computer systems, virtual reality, audio engineering, cloud computing, and data privacy.
As a teenager, Jourdan translated his love for music and technology into work as an audio engineer, starting his own company at 25 years old. Bookr, a software start-up that offered simpler, faster event ticketing that lowered the cost for everyone, grew to support 15 employees with over $2 million in investment. His expertise and leadership supported his rise to become the lead technical support engineer at an IT company, spending thousands of hours working alongside teams at companies large and small, building, troubleshooting, and training on every major operating system and computing platform. Working as a consultant, he developed a reputation for excellence and drive that led to being hired at a small boutique VR company working on the forward edge of virtual reality and cloud-based computing.
In 2023, he began working alongside Marissa, his fiancé, to support her efforts in the nonprofit and Indigenous rights field. He discovered a need for skilled IT services and began offering his time to organizations in the community, supporting the 2023 Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and People March, The Yarrow Project, Seattle Human Services Coalition, and other organizations with graphic design, audio-visual set up, cybersecurity, and IT services. They launched Sage Consulting in 2024 to meet the continued need for decolonized IT services, focusing on data sovereignty and autonomy and working to bring professional, cost-effective IT services to organizations across the region.
He lives in South Park, Seattle, with Marissa and their dog Sage, dreaming up gadgets to 3D print and staying on the cutting edge of current gaming and VR trends. He shares his joy and excitement for technology with everyone he meets, teaching his nieces and nephews how to explore virtual reality, patiently adapting video games for every ability level, and finding ways to make technology easier, faster, and more fun for everyone in his life.