Ciku Kimeria
Ciku Kimeria is an author, journalist, communication and strategy specialist, adventurer and travel writer. She writes both fiction and non-fiction focusing on African stories that need telling. She is the current Quartz Africa Editor and a longtime contributor to Quartz, having authored almost 60 articles for the site, on topics as wide-ranging as the perils of traveling with an African passport to the optimism inspired by Africa’s first non-fungible token (NFT) art collections. She is the author of two mystery novels (Dance of the Monkeys and Of goats and poisoned oranges), and has written for a variety of outlets, including African Arguments, OkayAfrica, and The Africa Report. Ciku has a wealth of communication and project management experience, having worked for and served as a communication advisor to Dalberg Advisors, Open Society Initiative of West Africa, and The Africa Agriculture and Trade Investment Fund. She has traveled to 56 countries, 23 of them in Africa. She has a bachelor of science degree in management from MIT and speaks English, Swahili, and French.
Paul Kuhne
Paul Kuhne is the Roundtables Program Manager at the Center for Open Data Enterprise (CODE). In this role, Paul oversees CODE’s high-level Roundtables which convene stakeholders and industry experts to identify opportunities for better open data use for federal agencies, nonprofits, and community organizations. He has planned and facilitated over 10 Roundtables on topics related to data in healthcare, climate, and criminal justice. He also co-leads CODE’s Open Data for Racial Equity program, which has convened Roundtables on Open Data for Racial Equity in Healthcare and Improving Data for Racial Equity in Policing. Paul has over ten years of professional experience in community and stakeholder engagement, programs development, and partnership building. He has a Master’s degree in Global Policy Studies at the LBJ School of Public Affairs where he studied open data, transparency, and migration. Paul also received his Project Management Professional (PMP) certification in 2023 through the Project Management Institute.
Brian Zuluaga
Brian Zuluaga is a Senior Associate supporting the Centre for Public Impact’s Government Legitimacy & Innovation teams. In this role, Brian has worked with local governments across the United States to build trust in government, embed design-thinking and innovation techniques into government processes, and to foster more inclusive economies. Previously, Brian was a Legislative Fellow for Senator Jeremy S. McPike of Virginia’s 29th District. He has also worked at the National Hispanic Caucus of State Legislators, a non-profit organization, representing over 300 elected Hispanic State legislators throughout the United States, Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands. Brian holds a BA in Public Policy and Leadership from the University of Virginia. He currently serves on the National Advisory Council for the National Conference on Race and Ethnicity in Higher Education, the Batten Alumni Advisory Board, and the UVA Hispanic/Latinx Bolivar Network. Brian is also the proud founder of the Batten Latinx Network at the Frank Batten School of Leadership and Public Policy. Brian is an abolitionist, a believer in mentorship, a bibliophile, a part-time DJ, and a firm believer in radical systems change. Within the public and social sector, Brian works toward a future where everyone flourishes in life and systemic racism is eradicated from our society.
Carmen Franco
Carmen Franco is passionate about co-creating transformative experiences with her clients, helping organizations and leaders explore their potential to increase their impact. Using her varied background and experiences in start-ups, Fortune 500 corporations, academic institutions, and non-profit organizations. Carmen is committed to enhancing organizations, your practice, team, and/or company via 1:1 and/or team coaching — be it face-to-face or virtual. Having lived and worked in other countries, like Puerto Rico, Hong Kong, Singapore, and Saudi Arabia, speaking multiple languages, Carmen also has a unique awareness and sensitivity to coach effectively in cross-cultural business environments. Her coaching approach draws on her keen understanding of leadership, organizational culture, business, diversity, equity and inclusion, social justice, teams, and individual change. Carmen embraces diversity and is a champion for psychologically safe, respectful, inclusive workplaces. In addition to clients across the U.S. She has clients in many countries, including China, Singapore, France, Germany, India, Philippines, and Saudi Arabia.
Stefanie Singer
Michelle Helman
Michelle Helman (she/her/ella) is committed to transforming the way people solve complex problems by integrating a trauma-informed and equity-centered data justice approach that results in improved social trust, peace, and health outcomes. For over twenty years, Michelle has worked with global leaders across public and private sectors to design, facilitate, and evaluate community-driven change strategies on projects such as supporting the Colombian peace process, public health education initiatives in Nicaragua, a US-nationwide Climate Science Adaptation initiative, and Community Safety & Violence Prevention efforts in Portland, Oregon. Michelle is a trained mediator, Rotary Peace Fellow, and Center for Public Service Senior Fellow who holds a MA in Peace and Conflict Studies and BA in Anthropology. She is bilingual in English and Spanish which she learned through serving as a Peace Corps Volunteer in Perú. [more info. Here: https://www.michellehelman.com/speaking.html]
Mia Y. Anderson
Mia Y. Anderson is an actress, director and writer. A native of New York, she was born and raised in the Republic of Brooklyn. She spent over 10 years in Boston, where she founded, directed and produced the all-female cabaret troupe Drag Kings, Sluts & Goddesses, which ran for a decade and was profiled in the Boston Globe, Color of Change, Bay Windows and the winner of the Fresh Fruit Festival Audience Favorite in New York. In Boston as an actress, she performed with companies like RadioDisney, Commonwealth Shakespeare, Boston Theatre Works, Boston Playwrights Theater and Theater Offensive. Since returning to New York, she has been featured in several films like award-wining films Queen of Glory, A Chance, Productionamong many others. She has worked with theater companies like The Civilians, The National Black Theater and Poetic Productions. As a director she has worked with several theater companies including The Rising Sun Company, The Road Company of LA, Culture Project and she was a 2014 directing fellow with New Perspectives Theater and an alum of the 2015 Lincoln Center’s Director’s Lab. As a writer, she has shared at the Nuyorican Poets Café, New York Public Library, Fresh Fruit Festival Poetry Night and The New American Theatre and has published essays in the Lambda Literary award nominee Pinned Down by Pronouns andGetting Bi. She was a 2016 BarnArts Hamilton Project writing resident. In 2017, her first solo work “her, him, prince, michael, and marvin aka love is love is love” was featured at the 2017 Failsafe Festival , a workshop production in 2018 produced by the Dirty Blondes Theater and was a 2019 QuickSilver Theater POC Summit Finalist work. She has worked with Improvscience as the Performer Director for the past 12 years where she has co-facilitated workshops on Professional Presentations with founder Dr. Raquel Holmes for Boston University, Harvard University, University of Connecticut and The Chemical Society. She was presenter at the Cestemer17 conference, her workshop “Better Version of You” focused on Professional Presentations for scientists. Their ground breaking work at Harvard University was chronicled in The Applied Improvisation Mindset collection published in 2021.
Malcolm Glover
Dr. Malcolm Glover is a global leadership scholar and humanitarian who travels the world helping people solve problems. As a crisis manager, communication analyst, educator, and award-winning journalist, Dr. Glover has worked with governments and grassroots organizations in over twelve countries on five continents. He is CEO of Glover Global, an innovative consulting firm offering comprehensive strategies that yield successful results for individuals, communities, and institutions. Dr. Glover is also an Assistant Professor of Public Administration at Webster University. He has completed research on the interrelated nature of gendered leadership, conflict management, and cultural identity at global organizations and examined the ways leaders manage a multicultural workforce in an interdependent world. Dr. Glover has worked with NPR, MSNBC, MTV, the United States Agency for International Development, Winrock International, the Conrad N. Hilton Foundation, Heifer International, the United States Patent and Trademark Office, and several other institutions. In every endeavor, he strives to build coalitions and improve outcomes for initiatives in the public and private sectors.
Rachael Reichenbach
Rachael’s work in the world is to create and hold space for the healing that allows groups to co-create the stories of the new world. Operating from a healing-informed, anti-oppression framework, Rachael’s current experiment in weaving together personal transformation & collective liberation is Resist Reimagine. Through participatory process, dynamic facilitation, and peer coaching, Rachael supports groups of all shapes and sizes across the South (and beyond) to catalyze change in ways that center strategic systems change, collaboration, and equity. Rachael understands clear seeing, strategic thinking, and personal healing to be inextricable in the work of shifting systems in ways that advance transformation toward love, equity, trust, dignity and justice. Rachael is committed to living an undivided life, acknowledging that we simply cannot create externally that which we are not cultivating internally. Rachael is currently living off the grid at Wild Hydrangea, an intentional community in northern Alabama, on the ancestral land of the Cherokee, Shawnee, and Yuchi. Here she is practicing the arts of community, patience, sharing, emergence, and avoiding poison ivy.
Bridget Brown
Bridget K. Brown is a public speaking, storytelling coach, instructional designer and master facilitator who specializes in making the complex clear and coaching the right story out of people. She is an expert in science communication, especially in the area of technology, data and cyber security. Bridget has worked for three different Fortune 500 companies including Monsanto and a small beer company called, Anheuser-Busch. She has trained at the Alan Alda Center for Communicating Science at Stony Brook University, is a former Adjunct Instructor in the School of Engineering and Applied Science at Washington University in St Louis where she taught Public Speaking, and has coached three TEDx talks. She combines her background as an actress, and writer, with over 18 year as a corporate trainer by using elements of improvisation and storytelling, making her workshops a lot of fun. She is the owner of StoryMatters, LLC a clarity company which provides communications training that focus on coaching powerful stories which create organizational connection and uncovering hidden stories which create bias and disconnection.