Alanna’s Journey

Alanna was a high school senior when she was first introduced to The David’s Harp Student Studio program through a family friend.

Alanna was excelling academically but was looking for an opportunity to take her musical skills to the next level. She found a home amongst the creative teens in the program and began her musical journey, developing quickly as an artist.

Alanna joined the BizPod program in 2019 as an intern where she was paid to grow her multimedia production skills and learn how to apply them to build a career. After joining the program, Alanna received hands-on experience with production equipment within the first week. During her first year, she became exposed to a different side of the creative process, collaborating with peers and producing several of her own projects.

Although she was naturally gifted at creating visual media, Alanna decided to leave the BizPod program and pursue her passion for music as an Artist Mentor at DHF. “For us, it’s about the person and their journey. There are multiple off-ramps here at DHF so when Alanna decided that she wanted to switch out of the BizPod program, we were all supportive of it” (Evan Yamada, BizPod Director). Alanna began to develop mentoring relationships with young people in our community while receiving hands-on experience as an audio and sound engineer.

In 2020 Alanna experienced a pivotal moment when she released her first album entitled OUT. Alanna’s album represented her transformation into a young adult who had discovered her voice. Yet as COVID-19 put the entire world on lockdown, Alanna fell into a deep depression which paused her music career for 6 months. But her DHF family hadn’t gone anywhere, and Alanna chose to work on herself and strengthen relationships with her community. In May of 2021, Alanna rediscovered her desire to create music and the DHF community was there to support her journey.

More recently in 2022, DHF connected Alanna with an opportunity to create original content for companies. Alanna was commissioned by ZScaler, a technology company, to create an original song called “In the Cloud” which debuted at their company conference. This was the first time that Alanna was paid for creating music. She continues to grow as an artist and chooses to use her gift to build impactful relationships with young people.

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Alanna’s Journey

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