OUR TEAM
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.
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.
OUR ADVISORY COUNCIL
By design, Emergent Fund is for and by movement. We are known for our collective, shared power decision-making model which allows us to make quick, intentional and strategic investments tightly attuned to the pulse and needs of the moment.
Our participatory grantmaking is led by our trusted Advisory Council who all come from organizing and movement resourcing work and from directly impacted communities. Their role is to connect us directly to organizers on the ground or by referring their networks to us. They diligently convene each month to review every proposal, in addition to mobilizing resources when our communities need us most.
Ola Osifo Osaze (any pronoun) is a formerly undocumented trans masculine queer of Edo and Yoruba descent who was born in Nigeria and is now based in NYC. A co-founder and former director of the Black LGBTQ+ Migrant Project, Ola now serves as the Lead Advisor for the Black Migrant Power Fund and is the incoming Cultivation Strategist at the Trans Justice Funding Project. Ola has amassed decades of organizing, movement building, organizational development, and resource mobilization experience within, and on behalf of, LGBTQ+ BIPOC and migrant communities. As a funder-organizer, Ola is most invested in co-creating and sustaining movement-led funding initiatives which utilize a Black, Queer and Trans liberatory lens. Among other things, Ola is also a writer, perpetual traveler, foodie, afrobeat enthusiast and dog parent.
Malkia Devich-Cyril is an activist, writer and public speaker on issues of digital rights, narrative power, Black liberation and collective grief. Devich-Cyril is also the founding and former Executive Director of MediaJustice — a national hub boldly advancing racial justice, rights and dignity in a digital age. After more than 10 years of organizational leadership, Devich-Cyril now serves as a Senior Fellow at Media Justice and is a contributing writer to various publications including The Atlantic, Wired Magazine, TechCrunch, The Washington Post, Truthout and We Will Not Cancel Us — a book by adrienne maree brown, among others. In 2002, Malkia Devich Cyril helped coin the term “Media Justice”, and in 2019 declared that one significant goal of the Media Justice movement was to “fight for a future where we are all connected, represented and free.” For more than 20 years, Devich-Cyril has championed the media and technology rights of communities of color and other under-represented groups to demand and win equity in a digital age. Devich-Cyril remains a veteran leader in the movement for digital rights and freedom, and in the movement for Black lives.
Yasmin Yonis is a Black Muslim Womanist born in Somalia and raised in the Deep South who cares deeply about God, justice, and her people. Yasmin is the Movement Chaplain for Justice for Muslims Collective where she leads the Healing Justice project and cares for the spiritual and emotional well-being of organizers, activists, and DC community members. A network consultant and facilitator, Yasmin also helps justice-driven networks and groups learn how to do the work of reimagining, practicing, and building a more just, liberatory world. Yasmin was a Prison Re-entry Chaplain at Osborne Association in Brooklyn, served as a Senior Associate at Human Rights Watch, and worked as a Organizing Fellow for the Black Alliance for Just Immigration (BAJI). In addition, Yasmin helped lead the Old Money, New System equitable philanthropy-focused collective and served on Solidaire Network's R&D Fund Committees. Yasmin has a Master of Divinity in Christian Social Ethics from Union Theological Seminary, the home of Black Liberation Theology and Womanist Theology, and Bachelor degrees in Journalism and International Affairs. She is currently practicing into the words of the late Womanist Renae Gray who reminded us, “Slow down, we don’t have much time.”
Tynesha is a Black Feminist that engages her work fueled by the desire to see the ideals of truth and justice actualized in the lives and conditions of every person that she encounters. She brings over fifteen years of experience advocating for racial and gender justice in movements and organizations. Tynesha is the founder and principal of Black Harvest LLC, a consulting firm that provides philanthropic strategy and consulting services. She is also the co-founder of the Black Feminist Fund, the first global vehicle singularly focused on resourcing Black Feminist movements in Africa, the Americas and Europe. She most recently designed NoVo Foundation’s portfolio for girls of color in the United States, a 90 million dollar investment, and the first of its kind in the sector. Before joining NoVo, Tynesha served as Director of Programs at the Brooklyn Community Foundation, where she led community engagement efforts and helped the foundation design and implement its new core program strategy. She also served as Director of Programs at the Newark Trust for Education, a pooled fund focused on education justice and school innovation. As a practitioner, she has expertise with young people who’ve experienced juvenile and adult incarceration and has also led work for survivors of gender based violence.
Mijo Lee (she/her) is a philanthropic consultant with deep experience and commitment to organizing and funding organizing. For the last 9 years, Mijo was in leadership of Social Justice Fund NW, the largest public foundation funding grassroots community organizing in the Northwest. As executive director and program director, she helped to develop the innovative Giving Project model, which combines political education, leadership development, grassroots fundraising, and democratic grantmaking to fund social justice movements more accountably and sustainably. She is also proud to serve on the board of Grassroots International, supporting people’s movements around the world through solidarity, advocacy, and grantmaking. Before SJF, she was involved in organizing in a variety of movements, including fair trade, police accountability, and immigrant rights, and practiced as an appellate defense attorney. She holds a JD from New York University and lives in Seattle.
Maurice is the Co-Executive Director of ACRE. He works with community organizations and labor unions on campaigns to create equitable communities by dismantling systems of wealth extraction that target Black and Brown communities. Maurice has many years of community organizing experience on issues such as housing, revenue and budgets, policing and incarceration, corporate accountability and education justice. He is an alum of the Alliance of Californians for Community Empowerment and the Center for Popular Democracy. Maurice currently serves on the board of Black Organizing for Leadership and Dignity, National Institute for Money in Politics, Investors Advocates for Social Justice, National Black Workers Center, 482Forward and the Rucks Society. If he had a magic wand, he’d abolish the police, prisons, hedge funds, pharmaceutical companies, corporate landlords and white supremacy. Until then, he runs campaigns to fight for a world where those things no longer exist. Maurice believes deeply in a Black Liberation a Homes Guarantee, Medicare for All, Public Medicine, a Green New Deal and free migration. A native of Newark, NJ, Maurice now lives in Detroit, Michigan and he’s never going to leave. He graduated from Swarthmore College and has a Master of Arts in Economics from the University of Detroit Mercy.
Deepa Iyer is a Senior Advisor at Building Movement Project and Director of Solidarity Is, a project that provides trainings, narratives, and resources on building deep and lasting multiracial solidarity. Iyer is a South Asian American writer, lawyer, strategist, facilitator, and activist whose areas of expertise include the post 9/11 America experiences of South Asian, Muslim, Arab and Sikh immigrants, immigration and civil rights policies, and racial equity and solidarity practices.
Iyer has worked at various national and local organizations with a focus on immigrant and racial justice. She served as executive director of South Asian Americans Leading Together (SAALT) for a decade, and has also held positions at Race Forward, the US Department of Justice’s Civil Rights Division, the Asian Pacific American Legal Resource Center, and the Asian American Justice Center. Iyer’s first book, We Too Sing America: South Asian, Arab, Muslim and Sikh Immigrants Shape Our Multiracial Future (The New Press 2015), received a 2016 American Book Award. An immigrant who moved to Kentucky from India when she was twelve, Iyer graduated from the University of Notre Dame Law School and Vanderbilt University.
Anathea Chino (Acoma Pueblo) is a queer Indigenous woman working to create pathways that ensure women of color, queer people, and Indigenous people are visible and represented in the U.S. political landscape. Anathea has more than 17 years of experience as a political strategist, fundraiser, and operative at the tribal, state, and national levels. Anathea co-founded and is the Executive Director of Advance Native Political Leadership, the first and only national Native organization aimed at addressing the underrepresentation of Native Americans in local and state elected leadership. She was selected for She The People's 20 for 2020, a list highlighting women of color in politics to watch in 2020. She currently also serves on the national Board of Directors and Advisory Boards of Americans for Indian Opportunity, California Native Vote Project, and Inclusv. Anathea is a Co-Principal for the Women’s Democracy Lab, Co-Founder of Indigenous Women Rise, 6; and a founding Board Member and former President of Emerge New Mexico. She also serves as a Mentor for the Fannie Lou Hamer Fellowship through the Sandler Phillips Center. During rare free moments, you can find Anathea adventuring with her partner, their six year old, and their adorable dog.
Many hands have shaped the collective work of resourcing movements over the years with Emergent Fund. We are grateful to the guidance and support of the following leaders: Women Donors Network, Leena Barakat, Donna Hall, Laurel Potter Huerta, Judith LeBlanc, Lisa Farmer, Chrissie Castro, Gina Acebo, Jenifer Fernandez Ancona, Kat Conour, Margery Goldman, Cristina Jimenez, Lateefah Simon, Charlene Sinclair, Shireen Zaman, Janis Rosheuvel, Betsy Fairbanks, Loan Tran, Leah Hunt-Hendrix, Sam Vinal, Eugenia Lee, Esther Morales, and many more brilliant thinkers and doers.