Known primarily as a physical and digital zine writer in the beginning of publishing in their social sciences career, a selection of j. nyla’s collaboratively or self-published works are available among the world’s largest BlPOC-focussed open submission zine distributor. Brown Recluse continues to table select zines across the country, giving 100% of its proceeds back to Black writers and creators.

Currently serving as a grantee liason, j. nyla got involved with The BIZ Stoop enterprise as a 2022 California Youth Rising Seed Grant winner in order to fund a garden space for a generous community member. The BIZ Stoop serves BIPOC community and cultural workers serving youth creating youth-serving services and arts, intergenerational programming, urban planning, empowerment work, and more.

j. nyla has trained to facilitate Conscious Classrooms and Building Bridges Racial Justice Camp with CCEJ, who believes that everyone has a role to play in transforming our schools, workplaces and communities to be more just and equitable. They became a lead training facilitator for Racial Justice Camp in Summer 2024.

j. nyla became an At Large member of the first inaugural Long Beach Youth Advisory Council on Tongva Land, working for the advancement of the Youth Strategic Plan in 2022. They completed a post-graduate, then post-DIY-doc internship with the City’s Office of Youth Development, assisting with the Council and the disbursement of youth-centered Measure US funds. Through this work, they were appointed as Commissioner on the board for Equity and Human Relations in July, 2024.

j. nyla has joined the first cohort (2024-2025) of community-based consultants who interface with systems leaders and decision makers across LA County; help shape policies and practices that impact families; and give/receive in-depth learning and development through an antiracist, community-oriented, healing-centered lens to help strengthen the ability to serve as effective advocates for children and families.

School for the Ecocene offers an online platform and programs for connecting to self, community, and planet. In 2021-2022, the entity transitioned into a worker-owned cooperative, in which j. nyla mcneill’s services have had a pivotal role in, alongside a Stewardship Council of dedicated, owner-members of self-directed, community-held, outdoor and online education. j. nyla has served as a Community Design Steward since 2023.

j. nyla holds an accountability partnership in conversation with facilitators of a seasonally offered “… month-long series designed for white and white-passing people committed to dismantling the systems of oppression in ourselves and in the world around us, as well as in our communities of practice and in the bodies of work we carry.”

Made up of academics and members of the community, the Trans Counseling Advocacy Research and Education (CARE) Collaborative conducts research to affirm transgender, gender non-conforming, nonbinary, and Two-Spirit folks, in which they have been supporting and assisting since 2016. From research training and design, zines, apparel, to the design of a logo, j. nyla offers an array of skills to the laboratory-turned collaborative effort.

Watershed is an outdoor education K-12 focussed on returning to interconnection via four literacies: academic literacy, ecological literacy, communal literacy, and inner literacy. j. nyla is one of the advisors of this school who helped to shape its vision and core goals alongside four fellow community and education-focussed colleagues of founder Brendan Sloan Clarke, M.A.T.