Rabia Abrar

I am an experienced communications and marketing professional, with a BBA and a Master of Sustainable Urban Management. Following a personal challenge of #100DaysOfClimateAction, I've transitioned my career to influence sustainable business, urban policy, economic system change, and behaviour change. Working to become bilingual (English / French).

Cate Fox

Cate Fox (she/her/hers) is Director, AmbitioUS. AmbitioUS is CCI’s national pooled fund program that invests in alternative economic paradigms of and federated infrastructure by those most dispossessed—primarily African American and Native American communities—who are seeking financial self-determination in order to preserve and support their cultural identity and artistic expressions on their own terms. Prior to joining CCI, she spent nine years at the John D. & Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation leading and co-leading arts and institutional grantmaking; participating in and advising interdisciplinary initiatives that center artists and creatives as change-makers (such as Envisioning Justice); and supporting the Foundation’s racial equity and racial justice work. Additionally she brings more than a decade of experience in nonprofit consulting, strategic planning, and fundraising. She has served as an advisory board member of the Center for Cultural Policy (University of Chicago), Arts for Illinois Relief Fund, and the Urban Manufacturing Alliance. Cate is a creative writer, trained mediator, mother of three, and nonprofit nerd.

Cate has an M.A. in peace and development studies from the University of Limerick (Limerick, Ireland) and a B.A. in interdisciplinary studies from Hollins University (Roanoke, VA).

Torie White

Torie is a somatic practitioner, mental health coach, and community organizer with experience moving people with wealth and class privilege to redistribute their excess resources to movements led by folks on the frontlines of systemic oppression. Building off of years of study and practice around anti-racism and uprooting white supremacy, Torie is an aspiring anti-racism facilitator, working to assist white people to transform their embodiment of white supremacy and step into collective action in solidarity with BIPOC-led movements.

Liza Mueller

Liza Mueller is the Vice President of Thought Leadership & Knowledge at Echoing Green, a global nonprofit that finds, invests in, and connects visionary social innovators advancing racial equity globally. Over her tenure, she has transformed the organization’s systems, guided strategic planning, and launched the knowledge function to leverage data and insights to deepen Echoing Green’s impact. Her team's best known work is the 2020 report Racial Equity and Philanthropy: Disparities in Funding for Leaders of Color Leave Impact on the Table. Liza believes that social change can happen only when deep trust, respect, and community voice are centered across the board — from sharing resources, to program design and implementation, to research and thought leadership. Previously, Liza’s career focused on furthering the mission of remarkable organizations, entrepreneurs, and artists. Liza holds a degree in biology from Hendrix College and was awarded a Thomas J. Watson Fellowship.

Jennelle Ramdeen

Jennelle Ramdeen (she/they) is a Black queer healing justice practitioner, social justice educator, and founder of Lavender Veil, a consulting organization stewarding healing spaces as the foundation to liberation and systemic change.

In the youth work world, they currently lead the Youth Action Institute, a youth policy research and advocacy program in NYC. Over the years, they have studied and created spaces for politicized healing using their reiki practice to transform relationships to accountability and harm. They are currently the Trauma Stewardship Facilitator at the Northwest Network. Jennelle previously served as the healing and safety committee co-chair of the New York City chapter of Black Youth Project 100 (BYP100).

Maria Ta

Maria Ta currently serves as the Program Director for Ujima Company, Inc, a non-profit professional theater located in Buffalo, NY. She is a graduate of Canisius College where she earned a Bachelor’s degree in International Relations and Political Science. She has just started her own event and wedding planning business, Meep Time Events, in 2021 and is looking forward to growing it into a workers cooperative in the future. Maria is dedicated to sustainable practices, intentional living, and making her world as just as she can. In her free time, Maria dabbles in voice and stage acting, enjoying her role as a pup and plant mom, and puzzling into the wee hours of the morning.

Peter Masters

I’ve had the chance to participate in a variety of sectors including nonprofits in East Africa, tech startups in Silicon Valley and organic farms in Colorado and California. As different as they were, all of these opportunities seemed to be directed by forces and systems that didn’t align with what I value and believe in. I know there are others that feel the same way and I hope to tell a different story and help bring healing to a very broken world.

Ana Martina

Media maker, facilitator, builder of bridges, mother and community organizer. Founding member of Colmenar Cooperative Consulting https://colmenar.coop. Her experience as Membership Director for 5 years at the U.S. Federation of Worker Cooperatives granted her a great understanding of the workplace democracy landscape across the country. The experience contributed to her learning process to best practices for democratic processes and accountability. She has coordinated the support network of the Immigrant Movement in Cooperatives, and participated in the Racial and Economic Justice Council at the national level via the USFWC. Currently she is the Technical Assistance Project Manager for the USFWC.

Alisha Foster

Alisha was born in Nashville, TN to a Tamilian mother and Floridian father. She was always disappointed in the narratives presented to her about who she was and what the world was like, and has always felt a deep desire to build pathways out of these limiting narratives. She studied philosophy in college and has spent six years coaching, strategizing, writing, and launching projects in order to make the world better. She most recently launched and ran a transformative $500K wraparound services & community-building program in San Francisco centered around unhoused people.

Kerry OConnor

As the first Chief Innovation Officer for the City of Austin, Texas, Kerry helped teams identify and test solutions to complex challenges. Her teams focused on homelessness, displacement due to gentrification, racial profiling, re-imagining public safety, achieving zero waste, and application of emerging technologies, such as an MVP distributed ledger platform for people experiencing homelessness to store their identity documents.

As a former diplomat with the U.S. Department of State, she established an innovation unit in the Office of the Secretary of State, developed and managed an employee idea generation program, helped architect sustainable management reforms, coordinated logistics for the Pittsburgh G20 Summit, served as an executive staffer, and improved programs and operations at two U.S. Embassies.

Alison M. Chopel

I'm a public health researcher-practitioner who pursues health equity and social justice by collaborating across boundaries. My focus is on social determinants of health and I'm particularly curious about relationships between economic structures and population wellness. I strive to bring systems into focus and center the agency of people who are often marginalized by those in power. My primary tools are participatory and applied research, designed and implemented in partnership with people who contribute diverse experience and expertise. I’ve worked in several places and on varied issues; my current focus is on disaster recovery as a place of opportunity for building more equitable, ecologically sustainable systems and structures.

Steve McCoy

Hi! I am from Malaysia by birth and current address, and am a Social 5 wing 4 by. personality (Enneagram) 🤪 ! I spent the majority of my formative adult years (30 of them) in Europe (mainly in the UK, but I also worked for 8 years in Poland). I came back to this part of the world to help found a natural disaster relief non-profit following the 2004 Asian Tsunami. In the early days, we a lot of help from friends in LA, and later also helped us with our Katrina project in Mississippi! As my thinking shifted from natural disaster recovery to addressing natural disaster vulnerability and risk factors (ie my journey into sustainability consulting), I found that my core influences were coming mainly from the Pacific Northwest (Cascadia…?!!), rather than from Europe which would have been my natural inclination had it not been for these high profile natural disasters! I've been a member of the ISSP (International Society for Sustainability Professionals, based in Oregon) since its beginning and have been an ambassador for the Living Future Institute's LBC programme. I am Dad to a wonderful 14 year old human child and 6 of the fur variety (3 dogs 3 cats).

Adrian Gershom

Adrian is a marketing leader and uses his experience and commitment to elevate purpose-led companies and organizations. His goal is to help the companies that have committed to climate justice, racial equity, and stakeholder governance succeed. Adrian also currently serves as the Chair of B Local Illinois--the organization that represents businesses that have obtained B Corp Certification in Illinois.

Michael Mezzatesta

Michael is a thinker & communicator working to bring ideas from alternative economics into the mainstream American political conversation by leveraging social media, community building, and marketing technologies. As an independent consultant, Michael helps socially conscious startups establish the strategies & processes they need to achieve sustainable organic growth. Prior to his recent move to Berlin, Michael spent 5 years in the LA tech startup scene after graduating from Stanford with a BA in Economics.

Julia Ziegler-Haynes

I have an arts and culinary background and those paths have converged in my latest project: Moiré, an ethically and sustainably sourced bean-to-bar chocolate company hoping to launch in early 2022. What makes Moiré unique is that the chocolate is sweetened only with dates and the line of products is entirely plant-based. The most integral aspect of the company is our commitment to promoting agroecology while fostering deep and meaningful partnerships with the farmers we work with in our strive for a more equitable future. I am seeking a better understanding of alternative business models that support and uphold the values at the core of Moiré.

Jessa Carter

As a child my list of future occupations were fairy, potion maker, geologist and set designer. Although I studied in visual arts and communication those initial interests are an ever present filter on my lens. I became enmeshed in Seattle’s cultural landscape as a founding member of LOVECITYLOVE, a DIY arts collective praised for its unparalleled diversity, now recognized by the city as a cultural landmark. There I produced exhibitions and activations in partnership with the wider community. I am currently exploring the alchemy of disciplines and mediums; the collapsing of categories; the intersections of modalities via still image, motion, sound, durational performance, ceramic sculpture, printmaking, natural building, permaculture, systems thinking and collective healing. My work/play is a practice in externalizing internal queries about phenomenology and human constructs such as value, ownership, authorship, identity, time, performativity, language, labor. I feel most compelled towards the union of opposites and the notion of the emergent third. At present I am drawn towards pattern literacy and narrative intelligence as it pertains to the ecosystem and the egosystem. My perpetual passions trace back to the life/death/life cycle and the mysterious wild feminine. For the past 7 years I’ve been collating research and engaging in experiments related to community living, land stewardship and collective governance with the intent of establishing a space for friends and family to take refuge and develop the resilience needed to transmute our future hardships into potential future flourishing.

Jenn Calloway

For 15 years, I’ve worked in the public and private sectors. Currently, I’m the chief program officer for Genuine Foods. We’re a food service management company focused on cooking from scratch and leveraging our buying power to benefit local food systems. I’m grateful for this opportunity to learn a new paradigm and apply it to my day-to-day work and beyond. In my free time, I enjoy food with family and friends and being outside.