Collaborators

Kara Wright serves as Managing Director of Envisioning Equity. She brings more than 18 years of experience as a strategist, facilitator and trainer. She helps organizations to create race equitable, diverse and inclusive workplaces . Kara’s superpower is assessing organizational strengths and challenges and curating client solutions while ensuring equity is closely linked to the overall business. Kara is a Leadership Illinois Fellow and Racial Equity Fellow for Chicago United for Equity (CUE). She is also a co-founder of Envisioning Equity: Strategic Planning For Inclusive Organizations. Kara volunteers with various community organizations focused on education, economic, gender and race equity. She is a storyteller and performer and co-founder of S.O.L.: A Storytelling Collective for Womxn of Color. Kara began her consulting career at a global management consulting firm where she served as Implementation Manager and Senior Consultant.

Prerna Abbi-Scanlon

Prerna is a problem-solving doula, caring for you and your obstacle until the right solution is found. After a decade of working for a variety of organizations, she now guides organizations on how to handle issues related to equity, diversity and inclusion and to implement long-lasting solutions rooted in care. Prerna’s portfolio of work cuts across sectors, including religious, year of service programming, nonprofit, philanthropy, corporate and community groups. She is a founding member of Moxie Consultancy Collective, a consultancy run by queer women of color. 

J. Israel Greene

J. Israel Greene is a sought after speaker, leadership trainer, coach, and founder of Lead U Academy and host of Growth Zone Podcast. For the past 20 years, Israel has held a variety of leadership positions in companies ranging from startups to Fortune 500 companies. He served as a Global Director for one of the industry’s fastest growing e-commerce consulting firms and leading cross-functional teams distributed across North America and Europe. J. Israel is a certified member of The John Maxwell Team and a Certified International DiSC Practitioner.  He is often called upon to work with emerging leaders.

Rachel Pate

Rachel is an Impact Coordinator at The Chicago Community Trust, where she carries out strategic initiatives by developing and implementing grant tools, tracking data and managing relationships with stakeholders. At the Trust, Rachel co-created the Committee for Racial and Ethnic Equity, a group that aims to leverage best practices from trainings and lessons learned to embed racial equity into all processes. After a term as a Racial Equity Fellow with Chicago United for Equity, Rachel was the inaugural Alumni-In-Residence Fellow, working alongside change-makers, researchers, artists, organizers and policy makers to advance racial equity in Chicago. Pate earned a Bachelor of Science from Colorado State University and a Master of Arts from The University of Chicago School of Social Service Administration.

Alexios Rosario-Moore, PhD 

Dr. Alexios Rosario-Moore brings over 20 years of experience in education, including curriculum and program design, professional development and evaluation, mixed-methods research and policy analysis. Alexios began his career as an English teacher in Brooklyn where he designed portfolio assessments and co-created a community-engaged and culturally responsive curriculum. Alexios has led education programming and advocacy for Children’s Aid Society, the Center for the Urban Environment, Bard Early College and Generation All. He has held leadership roles in dual-enrollment programs at colleges in New York and New Orleans where he founded a college bridge program for opportunity youth. He is a former CUE Racial Equity fellow and holds an MFA from The New School, and a PhD in Policy Studies in Urban Education from the University of Illinois at Chicago.

Dr. Gordon Govens

Dr. Gordon Govens has blended his 30 years of experience as a lawyer and business executive into his current vocation as a higher education teacher and administrator. Formerly a Senior Fellow at The Center for the Study of Law and Religion at Emory University and an Adjunct Professor teaching Intellectual Property Law for their Law School, Dr. Govens holds a Ph.D. in History and Ecumenics (Reformation) from Princeton University. His most rewarding achievement has been co-founding a not-for-profit that empowers women to achieve safety, education and economic empowerment within the Democratic Republic of the Congo – Woman Cradle of Abundance. 

Nella Coleman

Nella is a researcher and relationship builder who collects, analyzes, and reports on data that describe the ways people interact with one another and their environments. She has spent years conducting interdisciplinary research in academic, corporate, nonprofit, and community-based settings across the country.  Nella is creative, flexible, and skilled at connecting with individuals across dimensions of identity. She centers people in her work and recognizes research participants as collaborators and experts of their own experiences. Nella earned Bachelor’s degrees in Political Science and Legal Studies from University of Illinois Springfield and a Master’s degree in Criminology, Law and Society from University of California Irvine.

Megan Brand

Megan Brand is an educator, organizer, parent and community builder with 20 years of experience working alongside children and families. As a teacher in Chicago Public Schools, Megan created anti-bias and culturally relevant curricula and co-founded an Early Childhood Leadership Team to promote developmentally appropriate practices and social justice education. In 2018, Megan co-founded Speak Up, which provides teacher professional development, parent education and consulting focused on racial equity and anti-bias education in an effort to disrupt racism by engaging children in explicit conversations about race and taking anti-racist action. Megan is a 2019 CUE Racial Equity Fellow.  She received her Bachelors of Science in Human Development from Cornell University where she began her studies of anti-racist theory and practice She completed her Masters of Science in Early Childhood Education from Erikson Institute where she was awarded the Harris Excellence Scholarship.

Vanessa Smith, Esq.

Vanessa L. Smith is principal and National Managing Director of Vantage Solutions LLC, a national human resource and workplace strategies consulting firm. Prior to founding Vantage Solutions LLC, Vanessa practiced law, developing an expertise in litigating employment practice lawsuits, counseling large and small employers on compliance with laws affecting the workplace and preparing employment-related policies, procedures and contracts. Vanessa is active in the human resource community, and has served as a board member of the National Human Resources Development Committee for the Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM) and on the Human Resources Advisory Board of Northern Illinois University.  She speaks frequently on the legal and business aspects of workplace issues and has taught courses related to Human Resources and Employment Law. Vanessa received her Juris Doctor from the University of Michigan Law School.