Gabriel Cortez is an afro-panamanian-american spoken word poet and workshop facilitator. Since 2008, he has worked alongside a number of organizations, including the Flourish Foundation, Get Lit, Youth Speaks and College Track, using spoken word poetry as a tool for empowering youth voice and literacies.

Gabriel’s poetry has been featured on Upworthy and the Huffington Post and he has performed in such venues as the Oracle Arena, the Nourse Auditorium and Zellerbach Hall. He has shared the stage with Big Sean, J. Cole, Selena Gomez, Seth Rogan, Laila Ali, Orlando Bloom, Reggie Watts, Martin Luther King III, and Magic Johnson. Selections of his work are currently published in the second edition of “Rapsodia Antillana, Selección de Poesía Afroantillana de Panamá” (2014). At Cal, he Co-Directed the UC Berkeley’s spoken word organization, CalSLAM, for three years. Gabriel represented UC Berkeley at the 2010, 2011 and 2012 College Union Poetry Slam Invitationals (CUPSI), placing third amongst top universities in the nation in 2012. Along with Natasha, he is the co-founder and co-facilitator of UC Berkeley’s only student-led class on slam poetry.

For more, please visit gabrielmbortez.com