Nicole Ektnitphong is an educator, organizer, youth worker, and trainer based in Minneapolis, Minnesota with roots in Thailand and Laos. She dreams of intergenerational building and ways to continue centering healing in movements. Raised in Southwest Minnesota, Nicole’s organizing community has grown + blossomed through her relationships and work with youth of color in her hometown of Worthington, the Divestment Student Network, the broader climate justice movement, Voices for Racial Justice, and Asians for Black Lives. Rock climbing, eating noodle soups, writing, and planning adventures are nourishing ways of being for Nicole’s soul.

Heidi Maria Lopez is a first generation, queer, Quiskeyana who believes in people and our power to shape our lives, heal and create new possibilities. Heidi Maria builds relationships that change this world so that Black and Brown people, particularly poor Black and Brown people, take back was has been taken from us, (re)claim our history and shape our own lives without the intervention of racist and oppressive systems.

Heidi Maria has had paid work in a variety of settings from youth development to higher education and city government; she brings organizing, healing, love and liberation into all the settings she’s in. Ms. Lopez has a GED and an MSW. Heidis’ current organizing is as a racial equity and liberation facilitator all over the world and in the gatherings she hosts in her hometown of Washington Heights that center ancestral wisdom, racial equity, healing and building community.

Nico Fonseca is a gender variant disabled fat femme nuyorican from Brooklyn. They’re a cultural worker and brujx with deep commitments to ancestral work, legacy and knowledge and connecting those to political strategies towards liberation. Their pronouns are they, them and papi. They practice healing, resilience and resistance through laughter, dancing and learning from their peoples in struggle.

Cleopatra (aka Cleo aka Cleopatra From The Bronx) is an African-American Femmeboiant Queer who was born, raised, and lived in The Bronx, New York for 28 years. As a first-generation born child of Ghanaian immigrants, education and access has always been a huge focus in Cleopatra’s life and she aims to make both priority issues in all areas of her life. Cleopatra hopes to collapse universes that hold our collective oppression and trauma in effort to make space for truth and new galaxies that build our values of resiliency and abundance. Cleopatra’s pronouns are She, Her, and Sir. She describes her facilitation persona as a Top Femme Daddx. When Cleopatra isn’t organizing, she can be found not finishing her Cosplay* for the comic book convention that is two days away.

AG is a movement organizer and trainer focused on working at the intersections of racial and economic justice. They are an Atlanta-native, but have spent the last few years invested in growing community power across the state of Florida with the Dream Defenders. This includes campaigns like Kids Not Criminals, focused on ending the school-to-prison pipeline in Hillsborough and Pinellas County. They cut their teeth in movement building as a student organizer at Rollins College, fighting for LGBTQ safety and inclusion on campuses in Central Florida. From there, they had a brief stint as a political organizer, working on local, state, and national campaigns, including the successful campaign to re-elect President Barack Obama in 2012. It’s in their work with Dream Defenders, and in the Childs Park community, that they’ve found their greatest sense of purpose. They remain steadfast and committed to building a world where black and brown youth can see their dreams and aspirations fully realized, free from fear of jail cells or the trap of poverty. Ashley is also a life-long lover of comic books and hopes to one day run a Black-centric novelty shop.

Rachel Gilmer is a Black feminist organizer with nearly 10 years experience in advocacy, programs, leadership development, research and writing on issues of racial and social justice. Rachel has been with the Dream Defenders since 2015.

Prior to this, Rachel served as the Associate Director of the African American Policy Forum (AAPF). During her time with AAPF, Rachel helped to develop national advocacy and research campaigns to call for the inclusion of women and girls of color in racial justice frameworks organized under the hashtags #BlackGirlsMatter, #SayHerName, #HerDreamDeferred and #WhyWeCant. Through this effort, Rachel helped to establish a national town hall hearing series focused on creating public opportunities for women and girls of color to break the silence on the challenges they face across a range of issues, including criminalization, school pushout, sexual assault, domestic violence and poverty.

Rachel has organized on issues of racial and social justice in a variety of settings, including schools, prisons, community based organizations and government. In 2013, she led a campaign against the forced removal of Portland’s historically Black neighborhoods which resulted in the allotment of 20 million additional dollars towards affordable housing and the establishment of a right of return policy for former residents of the community.

Rachel graduated from Vassar College in 2010 with a degree in American Culture and Africana Studies. As a fourth year student, she received an award for her thesis, a critical analysis of the rise of Barack Obama as both an emerging hero of the African Diaspora and the new face of American hegemonic power. While researching the project, she received a grant to conduct fieldwork in France, where she worked with various civil rights organizations in Paris, studying the impact his presidency has had on Black French people’s view of themselves and America.

Nico Amador is a poet, cat lover and taco enthusiast. From 2008-2015, he served as Co-Director of Training for Change and is the founder of the Judith C. Jones Fellowship. Nico has over ten years’ experience as a community organizer, trainer, educator, and coach for other activists. He has led over 300 trainings and trained over 7000 people in skills for movement-building and social change. His prior work includes grassroots efforts to reprioritize spending for education over prisons, win a living wage, support urban farming, and defend the rights of conscientious objectors, among others. In Philadelphia, Nico helped direct a successful grassroots campaign to end a public transportation system policy that discriminated against transgender passengers, and was a part of taking on the casino industry in a community-led campaign to keep predatory gambling out of residential areas. Nico currently lives in Vermont and works on issues concerning mass incarceration and racial justice.

s​hreya s​hah, mph, is a south asian facilitator/trainer with over 11 years experience in supporting grassroots groups and movement work- often integrating creative approaches as an activist coach, visual data tools designer,​ artist, and writer. shreya was first politicized as a youth worker, building and implementing sexual health and transformative justice, anti-violence programming for LGBTQ and homeless youth of color at a one-stop health center. in collaboration with other artists, healers, and organizers, their work lies at the intersections of racial, gender, and economic justice.

s​hreya’s art and facilitation opens up space for embodied trauma-healing and resiliency practices and processes for self- and community-determination. shreya works across the states with training for change as well as saltwater social justice training- with homes in Oakland, CA; Michigan; and Philadelphia, PA. shreya loves singing, visiting with the ocean and woods, and laughing loudly with loved ones. Check out www.saltwatertraining.org for more information!