GRAPPLE

MEET THE TEAM

DIANE LUBY LANE

DIANE LUBY LANE

CEO/ FOUNDER

Diane Luby Lane is the Founder/CEO of the global nonprofit GetLit - Words Ignite, whose mission is to amplify student engagement and literacy through the power of Spoken Word. In 2025 she Created and Co-produced the sold out multimedia show "If I Awaken In Los Angeles," which premiered at the FORD Theater in partnership with the LA Phil. In 2024 Get Lit was one of 300 organizations that received $1M+ from Mackenzie Scott's Yield Foundation (of more than 6,500 applicants.) In 2023 Get Lit was voted Nonprofit Organization of The Year. It is a 2020 and 2023 Library of Congress international best practice nominee for “doing exemplary, innovative and replicable work that promotes literacy.” (1 of 15 in the world.) Since 2006 the Get Lit in-school curricula has been taught in over 150 schools, with over 100,000 graduates. The Get Lit Players teen poetry troupe have performed at the White House 3 times, Kennedy Center, and opened for John Legend. Their online videos have over 300 million views and 29 Get Lit Players co-wrote and starred in the feature film SUMMERTIME, which opened Sundance in 2020. Diane co-produced SUMMERTIME as well as OUR WORDS COLLIDE, a documentary featuring 5 Get Lit Poets, which premiered at the Santa Barbara Film Festival and won the Anti-defamation League Award. Diane’s book, Get Lit Rising (Simon & Schuster), is the winner of the 2016 Nautilus Award. She has led workshops at Yale, USC, UCLA, and the Library of Congress. She has appeared on CNN, NPR, Kelly Clarkson Show, and ABC.

Ollie Miccio

OLLIE MICCIO

Creative Director

Ollie Miccio is an award-winning writer, performer, and multidisciplinary artist that hails from Los Angeles, whose work lives at the intersection of poetry, film, and social impact. Some of their accomplishments include performing at the United Nations National Day of Peace, as well as opening up for Emma Gonzales at The March for Our Lives in DC and collaborating to make original art for the march, of which 50,000 posters were distributed. Their collaborative list is extensive: from Teen Vogue, Goldie Hawn and TOMS, Ollie turns vulnerability into power and language into movement, through honest storytelling, that uplifts and inspires all, especially the trans community which they are proudly a part of. Ollie co-wrote and acted in Summertime, directed by Carlos López Estrada, which premiered at the Sundance Film Festival in 2019. They also co-starred and performed original poetry in Better Things alongside creator and star Pamela Adlon. They are a proud alum of The Get Lit Players, the most-watched poetry troupe on the internet, a former LA Youth Poet Laureate Ambassador, and a published poet with Button Poetry. When they’re not clocked in, they enjoy spending time with their Cat, Beige, and proving that in terms of book-buying, more is more.

Kellie Barbour

KELLIE BARBOUR

Executive Assistant

Kellie Barbour has the eye of an artist. Her mom still owns a picture of the rainbow beta fish she drew in steady detail at age two. Now with the same hands she works in the background, studying the scene the way a painter studies a portrait. Paying close attention to balance and the little details others may pass over. Fixing what's out of place and what's unfinished. When managing teams she can spot infinite possibilities in early ideas. A future full of promise in the soft structure of a detailed deck built for your company's success. She develops creative systems to solve problems, shaping day-to-day operations with intention so the work moves smoothly like colorful oils across canvas. Seeing the messy sketch, the hustle and bustle of workplace culture she is able to slow down and zoom in to make sure the bigger picture is a full scale masterpiece. An artist can look at a field of dead flowers and see an abstract landscape. Kellie brings that same perceptive clarity to an office space transforming chaos into elegant systems, keeping the company running in tip-top shape while preserving Grapple’s resilient creative spirit. Kellie is a teacher and writer. She has taught at UCLA three times, workshops at CAAM, and at The Academy of Motion Pictures Museum. She has performed at Fire Drill Fridays with Jane Fonda, Joaquin Phoenix, and Rainn Wilson. She graced the stage at Artists for Amazonia opening up for artists like Morgan Freeman, Barbera Streisand, Dave Matthews, Ricky Martin & Jane Goodall. Kellie has hosted, coordinated talent, and wrote for the Guadalajara Film Festival for the past five years. Working with film makers, actors, and writers to celebrate BIPOC cinema, she has been able to give a Tree of Life award to her hero Patricia Aquette & Rodrigo Prieto cinematographer of the Barbie movie & The Wolf of Wall Street. Kellie taught the all-star cohort of youth poets the GLP’s. Training superstars who have performed at the White House and opened stadiums. She personally has trained the previous United States Youth Poet Laureate Salome Agbaroji, the past three California Youth Poet Laureates: Salome Agbaroji (2023), Dilinna Ugochukwu (2024), Summar Hamzah (2025), and the past three LA Youth Poet Laureates: Sierra Leone Anderson (2023), Summar Hamzah (2024), Samantha Rios (2025). In her free time she manages a youth lead newsroom Piute Tv who has thousands of views in the first few weeks on Instagram. Prepping for the future she is studying for the CALDRE exam. She hopes her years in alignment with humanitarian efforts will lead her to property management and helping those in low-income communities to give back to the systems that gave her adolescent life structure and stability.

Lukas Lane

LUKAS LANE

Head of Production

Lukas Lane is an actor, filmmaker, and playwright who recently earned his MFA in Dramatic Writing from NYU Tisch. He has directed and produced viral award winning short films for brands such as Ford, Vans, and the Golden Globes Foundation. In 2020, he collaborated with a group of LA-based poets to write the feature film Summertime, which premiered on opening night at Sundance. Recently, Lukas served as Media Director for If I Awaken, a multidisciplinary performance event at the Ford Theater in Los Angeles that blends film, poetry, and live performance. Lukas’s latest project, El Rebote, a Barcelona-based short film he wrote and directed, starring Emmy Award-winning actor Jim O’Heir (Parks and Recreation), is slated to premiere on the international festival circuit.

GRIFFIN FLOWERS

GRIFFIN FLOWERS

Lead Web Developer

Griffin Flowers thrives in motion: drawing inspiration from skate culture, surf lifestyle, and the ever-evolving energy of LA’s street art scene. With a degree in Graphic Design and a background in coding, he has collaborated with a range of businesses, including the legacy brand Anderson Surfboards, as well as The Black Surfers Collective, blending heritage with contemporary design, inspiring and fortifying important brand identities. Griffin has also partnered with a range of smaller businesses, including Rony’s Autobody Shop, where he revitalized the company’s identity for its 50th anniversary, giving the brand a bold and modern refresh, as well as developed a distinctive brand identity and logo for Zenlife Massage Studio, proving that if there’s one thing Griffin is, it’s local. During his time at ASU he became a pro at HTML, CSS, JavaScript, and marketing and even made a few video games along the way.

SAMANTHA RIOS

SAMANTHA RIOS

Social Media Coordinator

Samantha Rios discovered poetry the way a lot of people do: through heartbreak, bad guitar playing, and the realization that words could do what her fingers on fretboards couldn't. Once she let poetry in, it changed everything. Her notebook became the place she could be honest in ways that felt impossible anywhere else. She thinks radical authenticity is how strangers become connected, that sharing your scariest moments with someone you've never met can actually set you both free. In 2023 and 2024, Samantha competed in the GetLit Words Ignite Classic Slam with her team from Mark Keppel High School. They won first place both years. During those competitions, she started to understand what her poetry could actually do in the world. In 2024, she and her team wrote a group poem about social media's grip on young girls and the slow work of learning to love yourself anyway. After the video was posted on TikTok it immediately took off, receiving 5 million views, and a comment section flooded with girls who had been feeling the same pressures. That's why Samantha writes. She knows someone out there is dealing with the same thing and just needs to know they're not alone. In the summer of 2024 Samantha competed in the National competition Brave New Voices, in addition to becoming Get Lit Player, a position she still holds. She's performed at the Anderson Paak House, the Ford Theatre, Guadalajara Film Festival, and high schools all over Los Angeles. Her work digs into social justice, family, and what it means to be a girl right now. In June 2025, Samantha was named Los Angeles County Youth Poet Laureate for 2025-2026, chosen from thousands of applicants. For her, the title wasn't about the recognition. It was about having a bigger microphone. In August, she starred in the Grammy-eligible production "If I Awaken in Los Angeles", part love letter to the city where she's been born and raised, part rallying cry for people trying to survive political chaos. Maybe someday Samantha will show up on your radio singing a song while playing phenomenal guitar. But for now, she hopes you'll listen to her poetry instead.