Our Team
Barbara Andrea Garza Guzman, LCSW
(she/her/ella)
Executive Director – Culture, Services & Programs
Barbs (she/her/ella) is Co-Executive Director of the Transformative Justice Project of Colorado, where she oversees programs, services, staff culture, and operations. She is a fierce advocate for system-impacted youth and a visionary leader committed to dismantling oppressive systems.
Rooted in both Matamoros, Tamaulipas, and Brownsville, TX, Barbs moved to Colorado to pursue her Master’s in Social Work at the University of Denver. She is a Licensed Clinical Social Worker (LCSW) and over the past decade has dedicated herself to working at the intersections of child welfare, education, mental health, and the criminal legal system—always centering youth of color and pushing the work beyond surface-level reform toward true transformation.
As a late-diagnosed neurodivergent person with dyslexia, Barbs understands firsthand the barriers young people face in systems designed for conformity rather than liberation. Fluent in both Spanish and English, she builds deep, authentic relationships with youth, guardians, and community members, creating spaces where people feel seen, valued, and empowered.
Barbs is a bold, big-picture thinker who connects dots others overlook, seeing both the harm caused by systemic injustice and the possibilities for something better. She leads with love, fights with conviction, and stands firm against those who seek to uphold oppressive systems. She has co-authored articles on antiracism and abolishing whiteness and is deeply committed to healing, racial justice, and community care.
Barbs lives in Colorado with her husband and their two tuxedo cats—despite being highly allergic.
Erin Pier, Ed.S
(she/her)
Executive Director – Communications & Court Advocacy
Erin is Co-Executive Director of the Transformative Justice Project of Colorado, where she oversees development, fundraising, communications, and partnerships. She also provides court advocacy and case management support through the Community Cares program.
Prior to joining TJP, Erin spent 14 years as a school psychologist in Aurora and Denver Public Schools, where she became passionate about the need for systemic change in education. She earned her undergraduate degree in Special Education from Saint Louis University, began her teaching career at Savio House in Denver in 2007, and holds an Education Specialist degree in Child, Family, and School Psychology from the University of Denver.
Throughout her career, Erin has been guided by a core belief: there are no bad kids, only unmet needs. As a mother of three neurodivergent children navigating dyslexia, ADHD, and hearing loss—and as someone late-diagnosed with ADHD herself—she understands how systems prioritize conformity over creativity, often leaving neurodivergent individuals feeling ill-equipped or unseen. She recognizes the privileges that enabled her own success despite these challenges, privileges too often denied to system-impacted youth.
As a co-founder of the Community Cares program, Erin has led efforts to dismantle the school-to-prison pipeline by providing holistic support to system-impacted youth. Her leadership integrates her background in mental health and education with an unwavering commitment to decentering whiteness and advancing antiracist practices in youth advocacy.
Erin lives in Denver, where she enjoys camping, traveling, hiking, baking, running, snowboarding, and playing drums with her husband, three kids, and two dogs.
Elie Zwiebel
(he/him)
Director of Legal and Education First
Prior to attending law school, Elie Zwiebel taught a variety of subjects in the Detroit Area, Chicago, Portland, Shenzhen, and Nanjing. Through these experiences, Elie developed a passion for student and family advocacy. During law school, Elie engaged in experiential learning opportunities as often as possible: with movement and power-building nonprofit organizations, where he learned the importance of holistic and interdisciplinary approaches to legal advocacy; with the United States Department of Education Office for Civil Rights, where he gained experience and familiarity with special education law and other statutes regarding discrimination in schools; and with the United States Department of Justice Civil Rights Division, where he contributed to investigating police departments, prisons, and mental health facilities for patterns and practices of discrimination.
While in the University of Denver Civil Rights Clinic, Elie successfully petitioned President Obama to grant clemency to two individuals serving life sentences for nonviolent drug offenses. After spending one year as a Judicial Law Clerk for Judge Norma A. Sierra in the 20th Judicial District, Elie is thrilled to now zealously represent students and their families in Colorado schools and courts.
Elie has represented students, parents, and guardians in educational and youth justice matters as Education First’s Director since 2018 and has been honored to serve as Executive Director (focusing on operations and legal matters) at TJP since August 2023.
Tiera Brown
(she/her)
Tiera Brown, a dedicated public servant, has previously worked in Special Education Law with the Colorado Department of Education’s Dispute Resolution Unit. She was selected as the 2022 Gault Center Fellow where she helped strengthen the quality of legal representation for system-impacted youth. Tiera previously worked at the Colorado State Public Defenders Office, assisting in the representation of youth with felony and misdemeanor cases. Presently, Tiera provides pro bono legal representation to victims of domestic violence through Volunteer Legal Advocates, and to Colorado youth in need of expungement and deregistration assistance through TJP’s Believe in Youth program. She also provides legal research support to the Office of Alternate Defense Counsel.
Tiera currently serves as the Officer of Community Action and Advocacy for the Colorado Women’s Bar Association. She also volunteers for Learn Your Rights in the Community (LYRIC), a new program of TJP’s; LYRIC is led by passionate attorney volunteers that donate their time to educate and empower Colorado youth to exercise their constitutional rights. Tiera graduated from the University of Denver Sturm College of Law in 2020 after receiving her bachelor’s from Boston College.
Tiera lives in Denver, Colorado with her son, their ball python, Kyle, and their growing collection of over fifty houseplants.
Anna Harvey
(she/her)
Anna attended law school at the University of Virginia, where she was a Fellow in the Program in Law and Public Service, and a member of the Lambda Law Alliance, the campus organization for LGBTQ+ lawyers. While at UVA, Anna fostered a commitment to tackling the school-to-prison pipeline through holistic defense. As a student in the Youth Advocacy Clinic, she worked alongside students and their families to advocate for restorative alternatives to suspensions and expulsions, and to enforce robust disability accommodations that enabled each client to thrive at school. She brought these skills to the Holistic Youth Defense clinic in her final year, where she worked with incarcerated young people to get the services they needed to successfully defend their cases in court and to facilitate their return home. During the summers, she interned at the Charlottesville-Albemarle Public Defender’s Office and at the National Center for Youth Law, the latter of which introduced her to Elie and to the landscape of youth justice in Colorado. Before law school, she worked as a higher education researcher in Washington, D.C.
Our Leadership Philosophy
Our Leadership Model
Historically, nonprofits concentrate power in a single executive director, creating inequitable hierarchies that value one person’s decision-making at the expense of collective wisdom and diversity.
At TJP, we challenge this model. Erin Pier and Barbara Garza serve as Co-Executive Directors, sharing strategic leadership and organizational decision-making. Erin focuses on development, communications, and external partnerships, while Barbs oversees programs, services, and operations. Together, they lead in collaboration with the Board of Directors and in accountability to the communities we serve.
Our co-executive model is an intentional step toward decolonization and shared power—countering the racialized, gendered, ableist concentration of authority that Western leadership structures have historically embodied.