alicia sanchez gill (she/ella) is a queer, afrolatinx survivor and organizer from Miami, who for twenty years has been living and loving on Piscataway Land, also known as Chocolate City (and to some: Washington, DC). She stepped into the role of Executive Director of the Emergent Fund in June 2019. alicia believes another world is possible—and trusts the leadership of the people most affected by harmful policies to bring this world to bear.

alicia comes to Emergent Fund from her role as Interim Executive Director of Collective Action for Safe Spaces (CASS), a grassroots queer and trans people of color-led organizing collective that uses comprehensive, community-based solutions through an intersectional lens to eliminate public gendered harassment and assault in the DC metropolitan area. Under alicia’s leadership, CASS organized across multiple issue areas impacting women and LGBTQ people of color in DC including the decriminalization of fare evasion, Black trans and queer sex worker-led organizing and the implementation of the landmark Street Harassment Prevention Act. She also deepened CASS’s commitment to a practice of transformative justice for survivors of gendered violence with survivor safety and anti-carceral praxis at the center of the work by leading the creation of DC’s first queer and trans people of color-led Transformative Justice working group for survivors of interpersonal and state gendered violence.

alicia has fifteen years of experience in cross movement organizing firmly grounded in Black, queer feminist theory and lived experience. She is deeply connected to local and national movement spaces, having worked, volunteered and organized with The DC Rape Crisis Center, HIPS, The Women’s Collective, The Diverse City Fund, Black Mama’s Bailout, INCITE!, YWCA USA, DecrimNow DC! and the Black Alliance for Just Immigration. She knows we can organize ourselves into freedom and is thrilled to help ensure that those on the frontlines have the support they need to build power and transform our world and ourselves in the process. No matter which orbit she’s organizing in, her work is to bring a survivor-centered and intersectional praxis to building collective power and transforming systems. You can reach our team at info@emergentfund.net.

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angela vo (she/chị) is a queer left Việt organizer and strategist living on Lenape land (Brooklyn, New York) by way of North Carolina. She joined Emergent Fund in September 2020, and is honored to resource frontline movement work at this pivotal moment. She believes in our power as the people and that we will win.

Angela brings a decade of experience across racial, immigrant, and gender justice organizing. The roots of her politics come from Black, Indigenous, and women of color feminists; kitchen table conversations with her working class Southeast Asian refugee family in the South; and, her multiracial organizing experience. She started as a racial equity teaching fellow in Durham, NC and Boston, MA, and detoured into amazing adventures in national digital campaigns, local politics, education, research, and development. She’s proud to find a political home in Southeast Asian organizing and is inspired by the Southeast Asian Freedom Network, Việt Solidarity and Action Network, and many other constellations of change led by our people. She nerds out on how we can center healing and pleasure as winning movement strategies; what freedom and love feel like in the personal and collective body; and, putting sriracha or fish sauce on all the things. In another life, Angela would be living off the grid surrounded by turquoise water and snacks, but otherwise you can find her stirring up good trouble in the kitchen, in the streets, or on the interwebs.

At Emergent Fund, she is committed to Black queer, trans and women leadership, our collective liberation, and building new worlds where we all thrive. Everyday she strives to embody her values, honor the refugee magic in her veins, and to be in right relationship with others, the land, and the water. Come build with our team at info@emergentfund.net.

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