Brienne “BC” Colston (they/she) is a queer and genderqueer Black feminist, musician, guest lecturer, and community healer hailing from the South Bronx. She serves as both the Co-Director of Community Healing & Transformation at the United States Department of Arts & Culture (USDAC) and the Founder and Executive Director of Brown Girl Recovery, a Black and queer-led healing justice practice space founded in 2017. BGR creates grassroots healing spaces for Black and Brown community members living in the Bronx and northern Manhattan. Through her work with Brown Girl Recovery, Brienne builds power amongst community members using a two-tiered strategy: (1) cultivating a membership base that facilitates community programming and (2) serves as a collaborative think tank to develop community organizing practices that are centered on healing and transformative justice to serve uptown areas. Brienne, affectionately known in the community as “BC,” divides her time between her daily work as a healing justice practitioner and racial equity facilitator through her role as member and facilitator with the Seachange Collective, and her consulting collective, Sunflower Strategists Consulting LLC. She serves as a social justice consultant for an array of mid to high-level organizations, colleges, and universities such as the NYC Department of Mental Health & Hygiene, The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, The Indianapolis Public School District, Columbia University School of Social Work, among others.

Brienne attended Lawrence University in Appleton, Wisconsin as a Posse Foundation scholar, graduating with a Bachelor’s degree in Gender Studies and History. A proud alum of the Young People For Social Justice Fellowship, Brienne received the 2019 YP4 Innovation Award for her activist work with Brown Girl Recovery. She continues to support the program through her position as board chair of the alumni council. In 2020, Brienne was awarded the Lawrence University Alumni Association 2020 George B. Walter ’36 Service to Society Award for her commitment to building power amongst community members in the Bronx. She is eager to create magic with Black and Brown folks everywhere!

Liam “LiLi” Dale (she/they) is an educator, organizer, and social movement strategist from Topeka, Kansas. As the grandchild of Irene Franz and Sandra Stuebe, Liam brings their fierce resilience, radical sense of care, and hearty casserole recipes into their role as Co-Founder and Principal Consultant of Sunflower Strategists, LLC — an organization dedicated to growing successful social change organizations stewarded by skilled, principled, and equity-centered leaders.

Massive education budget cuts in Kansas City activated Liam to join a coalition of faith organizations advocating for a community voice in the school funding process in 2011. That struggle showed Liam what building broad, people-based power could achieve and inspired them to return home as a member of the Topeka Public Schools Equity Council. They worked alongside fellow Topekans to broaden the district’s equity programs, enhance the core curriculum’s cultural relevance, and expand P-12 ELL programs. After moving to Seattle in 2014, Liam joined Service Employees International Union (SEIU) and mobilized child care providers and education workers across Washington State to win fairer scheduling, equitable raises, and better benefits in the “Fight for $15.” In 2017, Liam left SEIU to start graduate studies and conduct community-based community health research, which informs Sunflower Strategists’ data-informed and participatory approach to systems change. In 2023, Liam returned “home” to the Midwest and the education sector when they became a public school teacher at Lincoln College Preparatory Academy in Kansas City, Missouri.

Liam draws on 13+ years of experience in training, facilitation, differentiated instructions, and community engagement in their leadership and organizational development approach. Their seasoned facilitation skillset offers clients high-impact DEI workshops and equity-based coaching to equip leaders across the education, nonprofit, and governmental sectors with the skills and strategies to drive systems change. 

Most importantly, Liam spends their free time singing queer karaoke, exploring what it means to be a Taurus in the (apocalyptic) age of Aquarius, dreaming/scheming up new worlds that exist beyond supremacy.

Promiti Islam (she/they) is a New York-based writer and educator whose work is rooted in education, youth advocacy, and feminism. They have created liberatory pedagogy and programming focused on human rights, equity, and restorative justice for organizations at home and abroad, including Sadie Nash Leadership Project, Girls for Gender Equity, Visions Global Empowerment, The Posse Foundation and the YWCA of the City of New York. They have also worked extensively to develop participatory programs and practices with diverse communities, that include the launch of a citywide public education campaign with the NYC Mayor’s Office for Immigrant Affairs in 2013, a participatory action research project on supporting alternatives to incarceration programs with Community Connections for Youth in 2019, as well as a community grantmaking process for local leaders in Atlanta with Mailchimp’s The Forward Project in 2021.

The daughter of Bangladeshi immigrants, Promiti learned early on of the power of language for community mobilization and in amplifying narratives pushed into the margins. They seek to uplift the nuanced ways in which we experience the world through culture, diaspora, alienation, and a sense of belonging through their writing and work. Promiti has a BA in Anthropology and American Studies from Wesleyan University and an MA in Transcultural and International Education from Columbia University – Teachers College. They have received support from Kundiman, The Hambidge Center, The Peter Bullough Foundation, and Asian American Feminist Collective.

Sawdayah Brownlee (she/her) is a Gullah woman living in Weeksville (Crown Heights), Brooklyn, NY, by way of Detroit, MI and South Carolina, and is a farmer, educator, and artist. She is an alum of Howard University where she received her BA in Africana Studies. Sawdayah teaches and builds community members' capacity to organize for community needs in her work as the manager of Community Organizing and Special Initiatives (COSI) at the DreamYard Art Center in the South Bronx. As the inaugural manager of the COSI Department, Sawdayah has pioneered programs that empower parents and community members via political education, open forums to share and build organizing and communication skills, and pathways to food justice organizing.

As the former Board President of the Brooklyn-Queens Land Trust, an organization that preserves and conserves open space as community gardens in Brooklyn and Queens, NY, Sawdayah was responsible for representing the mission and vision of the land trust in various city and state level policy workgroups, managing the internal relationships between gardeners, board members, staff, and partner organizations, and guiding the team in safeguarding our gardens through capacity building. In her work as a farmer and agricultural/environmental student and educator, she has taught classes and workshops in sustainable agriculture, botany, agricultural history in the African Diaspora, and food systems to intergenerational groups at D-Town Farm in Detroit, MI, The Youth Farm (formerly located in E. Flatbush, Brooklyn), Farm School NYC, the DreamYard Project, and in less formal community spaces since 2011. Sawdayah has also taught and organized in food and land justice spaces and brokered relationships with organizations, grassroots organizers, community members, funders, and elected officials to obtain resources needed for community identified objectives.

Maribel Valdez González (she/her/ella) is an Indigenous Xicana educator and mother of two. She resides in occupied Duwamish territory, also known as Seattle, WA. She is from occupied Somi Se’k land, also known as San Antonio, TX. Maribel has been honored to work with youth and adults to decolonize and humanize pedagogical practices, social structures, and belief systems in classrooms and beyond. She is a founding leader of the Education Amplifier program which began in the fall of 2017. She has since served as Amplifier's educational consultant for multiple national public art campaigns to bridge the gap between social change movements and education by providing educators with teaching tools created by Amplifier partners to guide students toward action. Maribel has collaborated with and offered curricular guidance to non-profit organizations such as the Women's March, March for our Lives, Earth Guardians, Families Belong Together, IllumiNatives, She Can STEM, Protect the Sacred, Free Migration Project, and many more.

Maribel uses her experience as a former middle school ELAR and World Culture teacher and Project Based Learning Transformation Coach for Technology Access Foundation to serve as Oji:Sda’ Sustainable Indigenous Futures’ Education Specialist where she is facilitating the co-construction of Land-based curriculum for the Center for Intergenerational Learning in upstate New York. Her goal as an educator is to help create academically engaging learning experiences through a culturally sustaining environment that fosters empowerment, healing, and radical kindness. Maribel is also a National Faculty member at the Buck Institute for Education, focusing on school-wide PBL implementation.

Committed to creating systems centered on equity and justice, she is a member of the Antiracist Arts Education Task Force for Visual & Performing Arts for Seattle Public Schools. She has co-authored the Roots Framework which is used to create antiracist and culturally responsive classrooms using the decolonial act of reflection accompanied by comprehensive professional development and coaching. Additionally, she is the author of the forthcoming book series for children, Social Justice and You (Capstone Publishers, 2023). Maribel received her Bachelors of Arts in history at the University of Texas at San Antonio and her Masters of Education in educational leadership at Concordia University-Portland.

Candace Milner (she/her) is a Black woman with a passion for racial, gender, and economic justice born and raised in Columbus, Ohio. Candace serves as a Contributing Strategist with Sunflower Strategists Consulting, LLC, where she brings her unique expertise in management practices, knowledge of progressive policy making, facilitation experience, and community centered work experiences to inform the group’s vision. Prior to Sunflower Strategists, Candace worked as the Strategy & Policy Associate at the National Women’s Law Center.

In addition to consulting, Candace is a third-year dual degree JD/MPA student at The Ohio State University's Moritz College of Law and John Glenn College of Public Affairs. She is a Michael E. Moritz Scholar, has participated in the Civil Law Clinic, and has served as President and 3L Advisor of Moritz's Black Law Student Association. In addition to her extracurricular commitments, Candace was the inaugural Thomas W. Weeks Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Fellow where she spent 10-weeks working at the Ohio Poverty Law Center on gender and racial disparities related to unemployment. Candace was also named the inaugural Amy E. Kellogg Fellow in Public Service and spent a summer interning with the Economic Justice team at the Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights Under the Law.

Candace earned her B.S. in Business Management, Leadership, and Innovation from Georgetown University while minoring in sociology and African American studies. Throughout her time at Georgetown, Candace was involved in numerous student-led movements for change, participated in the Kalmanovitz Initiative Organizing Fellowship, and co-founded B.R.A.V.E, an annual conference centering Black Women. She concluded her time on the Hilltop serving as the president of the Georgetown University Chapter of the NAACP and the logistics coordinator for the Black House.

When she's not nerding out on policy news or reading for class, Candace enjoys spending time with her family, trying out new recipes, and watching makeup tutorials on YouTube. She looks forward to being able to enjoy live music and in-person shopping again once we can safely gather in larger groups.