Brianna is a writer, curator, and organizational design strategist based in Los Angeles, CA where she currently works for the Los Angeles County Department of Arts and Culture and Charlie James Gallery. She recently designed and is managing the launch of Public Artists in Development (PAiD), a County-led program which seeks to promote the career growth and economic empowerment of underrepresented artists across LA. Through a multi-year grant she received from the Mellon Foundation, the program will seek to dismantle structural barriers to participation and advancement in the public art field and private art market, offering artists apprenticeship-style training, mentorship, professional development, and new small-scale project opportunities through a mix of public and private partnerships. Most importantly, PAiD will seek to center artists’ perspectives in all areas of the program plans and priorities, with opportunities for artists to propose new policies and best practices, act as program ambassadors, and test out new project models to ensure the long-term sustainability of the arts industry in LA County is a place where all artists can truly thrive. Brianna is passionate about advancing diversity, access and inclusion; exposing constructions of value; and creatively rethinking traditional organizational structures and resource distribution models to achieve equity. She hopes to apply new economy tools to establish the framework for an artist cooperative platform as part of PAiD’s highest vision.
Michela Fitten
Michela is currently recovering from a decade spent in capitalism building profit and wealth for "mission driven" tech companies as a growth marketing leader and systems builder. Currently, in the very early stages of building a company embodying with Next Economy ethos. Radical Vans is a green campervan conversion company focused on collective liberation. I'm an adventurer, lover of earth and it's miraculous beings, insatiably curious, and determined to hone my gifts to be of services to the greater whole. Desiring to connect and create with beings so we may move upwards together into the spiral of life.
Magda Yoc
I’m a descendant of mixed Hispanic and Indigenous Mayan from Guatemala, born & raised in Canada. I live, work and play on the Musqueum, Tsleil-watuth & Squamish nations aka Vancouver, Canada. Currently, I’m employed at a small & local recycling company that focuses on education and innovation to reduce waste. My passions are farming and learning about agroforestry & syntropic agriculture, natural earth building, waste reduction, living & creating resilient communities, rock climbing, empowering womens sexuality, and reconnecting with my indigenous ancestry. I’m wanting to create a business that blends my overlapping passions and benefits the wider community.
Esmeralda Herrera
A first-gen American raised in the Bronx, Director of Programs and Community Relations, Esmeralda manages an accelerator in the South Bronx for local social entrepreneurs. She is passionate about empowering and connecting POC and women entrepreneurs with resources to revitalize the local economy.
Kerry Smith
My name is Kerry and I am a full-time engineering student at Santa Rosa Junior College and hope to transfer to UC Davis next year (Civil & Environmental Engineering). I am The Engineering Club (TEC) president this semester again at SRJC and currently unemployed. I hope to start a business called "Park KEEN Community" that focuses on serving students with low income by providing various services and (tiny) housing. Eventually I would like to have an RV community/park as well. I need to develop the business further which is why I am here!
Kat Steele
Kat Steele is a passionate changemaker and the Director of OrcaSong Institute. From 2008-2015, she managed the Sustainable Development Program at Esalen Institute in Big Sur, Calf. A creative and well known Permaculture teacher, she founded the Urban Permaculture Guild in Oakland, CA in 2000. She has designed and facilitated eight Transition trainings and dozens of workshops and programs on sustainability, permaculture design, and eco-conscious leadership.
Mote Keatinge
I grew up in North Wales at the end of a long lane, overlooking the Menai Straits, listening to church bells on clear mornings and the wind and the sea on stormy nights. With two brothers.
I picked up guitar, running and music composition against the grain of what school asked of me, perhaps not by coincidence, and they stay with me. Composing music, playing guitar, making amateur comedy took precedent over lessons. Other sports, football and windsurfing were important. Few, good companions has always been my way.
Averse to learning in restrictive structures and doing what I'm told.
Briefly trained as a guitarist, became instead a composer of music for media and had the most fun writing for absurd fringe comedy in London. For the last five years I have run a neglected country estate in difficult circumstances, often alongside attempting to be a composer. That was, in hindsight, wishful.
Here now. Drinking coffee, listening to music.
Mazin Jamal
I am the founder of Holistic Underground, our mission is to support the success and integrity of social movements through personal and professional development. That currently takes the form of a lot of consulting/Training around DEI, Culture and leadership. I have an intention to use media and technology to make this work I love more accessible. I love making music and story telling. I grew up between the Bay, Sudan and Dubai. I love throwing events. I am a ritualist, and a do a lot of dancing.
Anish Johnson
I am a queer South Asian emigrant to the Bay Area, with 11+ years of experience building and growing innovative analytics and artificial intelligence driven software products for enterprises. Across the 5 venture capital funded companies I have worked at, I saw how their business models did not prioritize the long term interests and sustainability of local communities, customers, and employees.
Through this program, I am interested in learning more about Next Economy principles, and finding collaborators for a sustainable venture that puts people and planet first.
Anna Shneiderman
Anna Shneiderman is an artist, entrepreneur and cultural strategist. After an early career in public school teaching, Anna co-founded Ragged Wing Ensemble, a multidisciplinary theater company, and The Flight Deck, a shared performance venue in Oakland, CA. She has worked on incubator programs for creative entrepreneurs and researched alternative arts business models. Anna is fiercely committed to shifting conditions so that under-resourced artists can thrive. Her current work is to forge a cooperative and regenerative economy for the arts, deeply rooted in racial and social justice.
Josh Van Vliet
Josh is a Professional Certified Coach, Course Leader, and Senior Coach with the Academy for Coaching Excellence (ACE). As a member of the leadership team of ACE, he helps guide direction, brand, and strategy, orchestrates program development and coordination, and maintains the financial metrics tracking systems for the organization.
He has served as a co-founder and co-director of Coaching for Social Change, a coach and trainer for social entrepreneurs with Move The Crowd, and a dancer, teacher, and musician.
For more information about professional coach training certification, personal and professional development trainings, and free resources, visit: acecoachtraining.com
Jenn Schindel
I am pivoting to holistically restructure my relationship to productivity, value, worth, income and investment. This restructuring is guiding me toward imagining and creating new cooperative entrepreneurship ventures grounded in equitable, collaborative, and regenerative economic practices. I am leaning into a beginners’ mindset embracing the opportunity to learn next economy regenerative economic principles, impact and direct community investment structures, and innovative equitable financial models while leveraging my existing strengths and passion for organic business development, strategic and intentional relationship-building, community engagement, strategic planning and being a catalyst connecting people, ideas, and resources within this renewed focus on the next economy, social entrepreneurship and community investment.
Deirdre Greene
I have worked with start-ups in various industries and capacities, most recently having closed a publishing company that I founded in 2005. I have been working with mak-‘amham/Café Ohlone since 2018; working with Vincent and Louis has clarified my vision of what healthy, sustainable businesses look like. I am a collaborative collaborator, but also quite ambitious. Throughout my professional life, I have placed a high value on a sense of balance and passion for one’s life work, and I have striven to impart this value, along with a sense of community, to my 3 (now grown) daughters. I live in the SF East Bay.
Thea Nguyen
I'm a recent BSc Anthropology graduate from UCL, London, with a special interest in environmental co-housing communities. I'm skilled in project and event management, as well as in coordinating and managing teams. As an aspiring social entrepreneur, my aim is to create a social enterprise that seeks to support vulnerable young people by providing a safe space that encourages personal growth and allows for people to thrive. I'm particularly inspired by 'Row New York', which empowers and supports young people by offering a unique programme of combining competitive rowing and academic support.
Gregory Akinbiyi
Greg is the Founder of Solution Finders, a Strategy & Innovation Consultancy focused on helping companies harness the power of "Collective Intelligence" to identify hidden opportunities and performance variations quickly.
He has a track record of delivering results in various industries where he combined quantitative and qualitative approaches to innovation, customer discovery, and process improvement.
He earned his bachelor at Duke University, where he was voted captain by the coaches under David Cutcliffe. He finds joy in reading, bike rides, working out, and investing in his community. He is also working on a book reflecting on the intersections of leadership, death anxiety, and identity formation.
Marie Gunter
Marie is a solar developer with a decade of experience in for-profit and non-profit renewable sectors, and another decade in high-tech. An active Equity, Inclusion & Diversity representative, Marie enjoys learning, speaking, and writing on these topics. Her lifetime commitment to community awarded her the honor of Special Recognition for Outstanding Community Service by the U.S. Congress, and was named one of Oakland’s top diverse leaders in the renewables industry. Favorite hobbies include travel, and VERY long walks, while inspiring others to co-create healthy human-to-earth connections. Marie studied Economics, and attended the California Institute of Transpersonal Psychology, Wholistic Living Systems.
Kirshan Murphy
I am a digital marketing expert with 15 years experience. I started out by teaching myself how to build websites and then learning how to market them. Over the years, I have worked with over a hundred companies and have expanded to broader business consulting. My background also includes work in politics, community organizing, and social justice. I am now working to use my business and social impact experience together to help the economy be more inclusive and sustainable via https://amplifyprogress.com/, and in the future, The Black Empowerment Lab.
Eric Ferrer-Vaughn
Big Tech defector who moved back home to create a more equitable society. My background is in product development and technical design. I am constantly looking at the intersection of complexity theory, game design, social justice and technology.
Itoah Scott-Enns
Itoah is a citizen of Tłı̨chǫ Nation based in Yellowknife, Northwest Territories, Canada. She owns Įdaà Strategies, a business that supports communities to identify trails into the future that are rooted in Indigenous languages, cultures, and ways of life. Previously, she supported philanthropic funders to become more effective and responsible partners to Northern Indigenous communities as Executive Director of the Arctic Funders Collaborative.
Itoah holds an H.B.A. in Indigenous Studies and Ethics, Society & Law from the University of Toronto, and has a background in Communication Studies. She enjoys spending time on her cultural education such as tanning hides and promoting her language through #SpeakTłı̨chǫToMe.
Michael Partis
Michael Partis is the Executive Director of the Bronx Cooperative Development Initiative: a nonprofit focused on increasing shared wealth and community-based planning with working class Bronx residents. He is also co-founder of The Bronx Brotherhood Project, a community-based college success program for Black and Latino teens at the New Settlement College Access Center. Formerly, he was the Director of South Bronx Rising Together (SBRT): a collective impact initiative dedicated to improving health, grade-level reading and math, and post-secondary outcomes in the neighborhoods of Morrisana and Crotona Park West. For 8 years, Michael lead community-informed policy development and partnership at the Young Movement - a New York-based, grassroots nonprofits focused on social entrepreneurship.