At heart, Twlia Laster is a visionary who thrives on health equity and public policy initiatives that improve the overall health of African Americans while leveraging practical communications skills to establish meaningful relationships that inspire change. Her expertise includes public relations, project execution, program implementation, community engagement, public health policy and event coordination within unique tobacco-control programs. 

As Project Director for Saving Our Legacy, African Americans for Smoke Free Safe Places – The SOL Project, Ms. Laster is responsible for overseeing grassroots organizing, training, collaboration and providing technical assistance to county, local and regional agencies to develop relationships that influence public policy. Since 1996, Twlia is the sole employee that has served on each African American priority population grantee contract funded by the California Tobacco Prevention Program (CTPP) directly engaging community residents in education and information sessions, focus groups, cessation classes and trainings for volunteers, employees, and young adults interested campaigns that inform decision makers at the local, state and national level. 

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Her most recent work focuses on advocating for policies that restrict the sale and use of menthol and flavored products, updating smoking definitions, ending the sale and use of commercial tobacco and new emerging smoking products. As a pioneer for community building, she is a catalyst for organizational, political and institutional change on a state, local and national level. In addition, Ms. Laster prides herself on being able to hack motivation and provide a continuous learning environment for teams at all levels.
Twlia has been more than fortunate to exercise her greatest strength in saving Black lives through successfully influencing pivotal decision-making on adopting life-changing tobacco control policy in 5 local jurisdictions, executing educational concepts for PSAs and events for multiple tobacco-control programs that impacted hundreds of BIPOC communities across the United States.