Ashlin received her BA in Political Science and Social Change and Development, and her MA in International Conflict Resolution. She lives in Sacramento with her husband Theodros and her 2 children Kayden and Davin. 

Read more about her work here.

For the last 25 years, she has offered healing modalities grounded in Sacred Rootwork. As yoga practitioner and creator of the Rootsong™ practice, she shares the process of somatic improvisation to facilitate personal and communal healing and transformation. She is a Founding Member of The Wind & The Warrior, a healing arts collaborative. As poet, composer, performer, and teacher, Karma brings the same reverence for the Mystery to each modality. She has travelled across the U.S. and internationally, working in the theater with directors including Robert Wilson and Bill T. Jones, and with musicians including Toshi Reagon, Lizz Wright, Vernon Reid, Meshell Ndegeocello, and The Roots.  She is composer/librettist of Indigo, a Blues opera.  Her poems have appeared in Nocturnes (re)view of the literary arts, Cave Canem’s Gathering Ground, and elsewhere.  Her work has been supported by The Field, the D.C. Humanities Council, and the Astraea Lesbian Writers Fund (for Fiction). Her newest play, Race Card, was deemed 'powerful, political theater' by the New York Times. Karma is currently a member of the cast of Octavia E. Butler's Parable of the Sower, the opera.

Currently residing in occupied Somi Se’k Territory of Yanaguana, (San Antonio, TX) she's recognized for her canon of healing-informed praxis intersecting performance art, ancestral knowledge systems and restorative/transformative justice practices as tools for personal and collective transformation. She holds a BA in International Relations and Latin American Studies and a MS in Organizational Leadership and is currently a Southwest Folklife Fellow and Intercultural Leadership Institute Fellow focusing on Participatory Action Research and Cultural Leadership. She co-leads, Kalpulli Ayolopaktzin, a transnational inter-tribal group of families preserving Nahuatlaca teachings, leads Teoaxictli Activation Movement Practices, is a veteran Bgirl/Hip Hop dancer, a wife, and most importantly a mami passionate about healing intergenerational/colonial trauma through matriarchal leadership, cultural resilience and folklife preservation.  Laura is a Co-Founder and Visionary behind De Corazón Circles, a consulting and capacity building firm that envisions a safe and equitable world where restorative interactions transform individuals, relationships, communities and systems through the prevention, repair and deep healing of harm.

Mush is a Harvard University Project Zero Fellow, a featured poet on HBO’s Def Poetry Jam and a Cultural Affairs Commissioner for the City of Oakland. She is a graduate of the University of California, Berkeley. At her core, she is an artist of color and child of voluntary immigrants, who has thrived by telling, and retelling, her own story.

Learn more at the Whole Story Group website.

As an artist and facilitator, she works with grassroots organizations and community groups that are working to create arts and culture programs, decolonize spaces and justice movements, and to develop and expand accountability practices. As a therapist, Nana Fofie provides culturally resonant, narrative, arts, and movement therapy to individuals, families, and groups, with a focus on marginalized populations. A spiritualist (okomfo paynin) and healing practitioner trained in the Akom tradition of West Africa, Nana Fofie is one-quarter of The Wind & The Warrior, a collaborative that works with spiritualists and practitioners, organizers, and artists to co-learn and integrate cultural and traditional practices for deeper integration and greater impact of our missions. 

Visit The Wind & The Warrior website to learn more about her work.

LaDuke’s many honors include nomination in 1994 by Time magazine as one of America’s 50 most promising leaders under 40; the Thomas Merton Award in 1996, the Ann Bancroft Award for Women’s Leadership in 1997, and the Reebok Human Rights Award in 1998. In 1998 Ms. Magazine named her Woman of the Year for her work with Honor the Earth. She was inducted into the National Women’s Hall of Fame in 2007, and in 2017 she received the Alice and Clifford Spendlove Prize in Social Justice, Diplomacy, and Tolerance.

Winona LaDuke was an active leader as a Water Protector with the Dakota Access Pipeline protests in 2017 at Standing Rock, where the Sioux Nation and hundreds of their supporters fought to preserve the Nation’s drinking water and sacred lands from the damage the pipeline would cause. Over the years her activism has not deviated from seeking justice and restoration for Indigenous peoples.

Biography from the Schumacher Center for a New Economics.

Ashley creates and circulates belonging educational materials, amplifies belonging practices in motion, and uses her understanding of the Institutes frames of Belonging, Bridging and Targeted Universalism to support initiatives. Ashley engages in complex considerations of how belonging moves with and positively contributes to our world's biggest necessary shifts like that of global human rights, climate justice, cross-movement alignment and much more. Ashley is one of three co-facilitators at Belonging a Weekly Practice, a free, low barrier virtual belonging space open to all. Registration information for the sessions is available here

Before working with OBI, Ashley worked within public health and healthcare to advance health equity and racial equity in application. She directed state wide equity coalitions and believes in the power of network models to co-create momentum beyond any one entity's capacity.

While born in Southern California, Ashley was raised in Belen, NM, grew as an adult in Denver, CO, and found her way to the place where her spirit feels aligned in Oakland, CA. In her free time, Ashley enjoys spending time with loved ones, building community, experiencing and contributing to the arts, reading, being near water and maintaining a spiritual groundedness.

Mc Neal has over 30 years of senior leadership experience and flexibly negotiates the intersection between creativity, new technologies, and professional learning. He has trained in multiple culturally responsive practices including; restorative justice techniques, social-emotional learning, and Teaching Tolerance curriculum (from the Southern Poverty Law Center). He is an accredited Integrated Learning Specialist and a certified Oral Historian. A frequent and sought-after conference presenter, Mc Neal has lectured on arts, education, social justice, multiculturalism, and equity for The Edinburgh International Festival, UC Berkeley, Stanford University, and Harvard Graduate School of Education.

Mr. McNeal is the first-ever Director of Diversity, Equity and Community for the San Francisco Opera. A pioneering leader in the field of arts, McNeal is ostensibly the first director of diversity for an opera company in the United States. Mr. McNeal has operationalized a new department in a major arts organization for the second time. In his role, he leads internal and external initiatives aimed at developing diverse audiences, creating a safe, and diverse working environment and facilitating the further advancements of the organizational mission. He is tasked with creating a culture of belonging and acceptance, we’re diverse peoples on value and inspiration in the arc of Opera. He is guided by the goals and objectives outlined in the 2019 Strategic Plan – to place develop diversity, and equity inclusion at the core of arts and business practice. Mr. McNeal works organization-wide to advise, consult, and mentor on diversity and equity initiatives.

He also continues training teaching artists, conducts arts research, develops novel initiatives, and advises on artistic content, culturally responsive pedagogy, creative collaboration and more. He designs and curates accredited professional development training for credentialed educators who partner with the San Francisco Opera.

A celebrated dance educator, Mr. Mc Neal is the former Director of Education for San Francisco Ballet where he established the distinguished, San Francisco Ballet Center for Dance Education, engaging over 30,000 people annually through 1,500 culturally diverse events.

Mc Neal served as a Transformative Learning Coach, Leadership Advisor and Arts Integration Specialist for Alameda County Office of Education where he developed culturally responsive, inquiry-based, social justice curriculum. He is a founding member of the San Francisco Unified School District’s Arts Education Master Plan Advisory Committee. McNeal is on the Leadership Council of Create California, a statewide-advocacy consortium, where he Chairs the Equity Committee – working to creating a sustainable, equitable, arts learning eco-system for the state of California.

Mr. Mc Neal holds two bachelor’s degrees – in psychology, and sociology from Excelsior University, and a master’s degree in education from Lesley University. Dr. Mc Neal holds a Ph.D. in Transformative Studies in Education from the California Institute for Integral Studies in San Francisco. Mc Neal’s research focuses on Critical Pedagogy, Culturally and Linguistically Responsive studies, and Artistic Inquiry and lies at the intersection of arts, cultural responsiveness, and educational equity as he devises solutions to the pressing issues of education reform and racial equity in the arts.