Jaime Balboa is a Los Angeles-based poet, writer, and educator who believes language can be both shelter and signal fire. He serves as the Executive Director of 826LA, where his leadership has expanded access to free literary arts education for more than 8,000 young people each year, inviting students across the city to claim their voices with courage and care. He has launched the organization’s Black Writers Initiative and the integration of trauma-informed, mindful pedagogy. A published author and poet, Jaime’s writing often combines the genres of poetry and short story, offering insights from liminal spaces. An open-water swimmer and the son of a Filipino immigrant father and working-class Irish American mother, he understands endurance as both a physical practice and a moral one—learning when to breathe, when to press forward, and when to adapt to the current. He lives in Mar Vista with his husband and their son, and where he continues to mentor emerging writers and advocate for poetry as a public art form that belongs to everyone.