Saa’un Bell (she/her) is Executive Vice President at Power California, leading one of California’s largest youth civic engagement efforts and building political power in the Central Valley and rural inland California. She leads policy, narrative, and electoral strategies, and has built an artist and storyteller network. Saa’un believes in lineage over legacy: building leaders and institutions that communities can carry forward.
Saa’un spent a decade at Californians for Justice, rising from organizer to Senior Strategy Director. She organized Black and Brown youth, helped establish a requirement for student voice in the Local Control Funding Formula, co-developed the Relationship-Centered Schools framework adopted by 20 school districts, and founded a statewide education narrative strategy table.
Across her work, Saa’un sees how trust, place, and relationships build community power. She researches young Californians’ political participation through annual polling and explored these questions as an inaugural Democracy Policy Fellow at UC Berkeley’s Goldman School of Public Policy. She weaves artists, local voices, and place into civic infrastructure to build trust, renew democracy, and expand economic opportunity. Saa’un serves on the executive committee of the Million Voters Project.
A daughter of a Black Southerner and a Bisayan immigrant, Saa’un’s working-class, Black Southern, and Filipino roots inspire her work. Saa’un studied philosophy and sociology at UC Riverside.
For joy, she writes fiction, reads the New Philosopher and sci-fi, collects art, and fishes along the California coast.