Collaborators
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Noel Didla is an immigrant from Guntur, South India making Jackson, MS home. She is invested in people and people, people centered movements and systems change work in Jackson, Mississippi, the Deep and Gulf South, and the Global South. Noel is committed to a lifetime of principled struggle with people and places that she calls home.
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Siddhartha Mitter writes often about art, artists, and creative communities, and how they engage and activate social change and civic life. These days you can find his work in the arts section of the New York Times. Past primary outlets include the Village Voice, the Boston Globe, and WNYC public radio. His words also grace the pages of Artforum, Art in America, The Atlantic, Diptyk, Even, Foreign Policy, The Guardian, Hyperallergic, The Intercept, Al-Jazeera, Popula, Quartz, Le Quotidien de l’Art, and more. Siddhartha previously taught in the MFA Art Writing program at the School of Visual Arts.
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Galia Binder is an alchemist, culture bearer, and swiss army knife. They work at the intersection of arts intervention, healing justice, and collective liberation. Galia holds a BA in cultural anthropology from Tulane University in New Orleans, Louisiana, where they studied Afro-Latinx communities of resistance. They also hold an MFA in media production, with a focus on social practice art. They have embraced many roles throughout their fluid journey, including organizer, teacher, producer, director, and manager. All that they do is in service of the next seven generations, and is in pursuit of right relationship with each other, our earth, and more-than-human kin. Galia is currently stewarding a regenerative homestead on Eastern Band of Cherokee land, in the Blue Ridge Mountains of North Carolina, with their partner.
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Tory Stephens is a resource generator and community builder for social justice people, movements, and infrastructure projects. He has created national and statewide individual giving campaigns and has been a major donor relationship manager for the past 13 years before joining the Deep South Solidarity Fund. He believes deeply in the power of storytelling to raise funding and advocate for people and issues, and has done so for HIV/AIDS, medicaid and medicare defense, and to protect the Affordable Care Act. He also owned a kick-butt streetwear company in another life and he would have gotten away with eating the last cookie too, if it weren't for his three meddling kids.
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Cory Henry is an architectural practitioner and educator based in Los Angeles. He is the son of Jamaican immigrants and raised in The Bronx, New York. Cory founded his eponymous interdisciplinary design studio, Atelier Cory Henry, and has developed a reputation as a contextually sensitive designer, with a strong commitment to addressing contemporary urban conditions through a combination of poetic design solutions, artistic sensibilities, and socially conscious ideals. Prior to Atelier Cory Henry, he worked with several renowned architecture firms including Michael Graves and Associates, and has contributed to award winning designs in residential, commercial, institutional, and urban planning projects that spans 3 continents. Along with practice, Cory is active in academia; awarded the Kea Distinguished Professor at the University of Maryland, and has taught at Syracuse University, The University of Pennsylvania Graduate School of Design, The University of Southern California, Penn State University, and is affiliate faculty at The University of Oklahoma. Cory received a Bachelors of Architecture degree from Drexel University, conducted design research in new media art, immersive environments and emergent technologies at the Southern California Institute of Architecture, and earned a Master's Degree of Architecture and Urbanism from Cornell University.
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Alex Lawson is a financial services and community economic development professional passionate about helping marginalized communities reach their full potential by shifting norms in economic policy, social innovation, and business strategies. He is currently the Corporate Project Manager for HOPE (a family of nonprofit community development financial institutions consisting of Hope Enterprise Corporation, Hope Federal Credit Union, and Hope Policy Institute). In this role, Alex manages enterprise-wide projects related to affordable housing, healthy food access, small business development, corporate innovation, and disaster recovery. Prior to his current role, Alex helped HOPE raise more than $60 million as a member of the Investor Relations team where he played an integral role in developing the company’s blight elimination strategy for the Mississippi Delta and worked extensively with local, regional, and federal funders. Before joining HOPE, Alex was the Founding Director of Operations for a middle school in Jackson, MS, a Financial Analyst for a social media technology firm, and a higher education professional at his alma mater, Millsaps College.