Prentis Hemphill (they/them) is a political organizer and was the Healing Justice Director at Black Lives Matter Global Network. They are the author of What It Takes To Heal and an expert embodiment practitioner who has partnered with Brené Brown and Esther Perel, among others. Their work focuses on dismantling systems of oppression and fostering inclusive communities. With a deep understanding of intersectionality, Hemphill has a remarkable ability to connect with diverse audiences and has worked with individuals and organizations to navigate leadership transitions, support community accountability, and inspire transformation.

Elected in 2016, Congresswoman Pramila Jayapal is now serving her fifth term in Congress representing Washington’s 7th District, which encompasses most of Seattle and its surrounding areas including Shoreline, Vashon Island, Lake Forest Park, and parts of Burien and Normandy Park. She is the first South Asian American woman elected to the U.S. House of Representatives and one of only two dozen naturalized citizens currently serving in the United States Congress.

Jessica Byrd is a nationally recognized political strategist who has spent the last 18 years intentionally focused on representative leadership Democracy and leading high-impact groundbreaking electoral strategies. She is the President of Black Campaign School and the Chief Camp Counselor of Black Camp, an immersive leadership school on 100 acres of Black owned land. Known for her joyful, people-powered approach – and Electoral Justice framework – where she expands the limitations of the ballot box into benchmarks for longterm political, cultural and social transformation.

Sloan Leo Cowan (they/he) is a community designer, facilitator, educator and artist. They are a leading thinker in community design, or facilitation design—the art of helping people work better together. To Cowan, design is a way of orienting toward creating change, and he creates strategies and practices to find shared language and frameworks that allow organizations to be more intentional about community design, strategy and engagement. They are the founder and CEO of FLOX Studio Inc, a community design and strategy studio that supports organizations and formations as they navigate change and reweave, one conversation at a time. 

Alexandra Acker-Lyons has worked at the intersection of electoral politics, the nonprofit sector, and philanthropy for over 20 years. She is the President & Founder of AL Advising, a philanthropic and political consulting firm specializing in female donors. She is also the Political Director for Electing Women Alliance, a network of 17 (and growing) giving circles. Alexandra is a recognized political commentator, author of The Political Ladder: Insider Tips on Getting a Job in Politics, and serves on several Board of Directors including the WDN Action Board.

Sonali Sangeeta Balajee enjoys being an artist, a proud mother, organizer, facilitator, mindfulness/yoga instructor, and emerging health practitioner who works at the intersection of spiritual practice, organizing, belonging, ecological wellbeing, and deep transformative change. She has recently founded and co-directs SSoMA (Spiritual Social Medicinal Apothecary), a space that gathers and protects the medicines of our times, as well as the people and living organisms that tend to such antidotes.

Deborah is an organizer and attorney who has worked with progressive candidates, not-for-profit organizations, social-justice networks, and foundations. She started her career as an organizer, worked as a journalist, and practiced law. She is the executive Director of a multi-entity organization: New Left Accelerator and NLA’s affiliated 501(c)(3), The Capacity Shop. NLA and TCS provide capacity-building support to innovative organizations that use a mix of legal entities to build power and win key battles. She serves on the boards of Women Lawyers On Guard and Action Squared.

Cynthia Beard is a musician and musicologist who is passionate about grassroots-led political organizing in Colorado, where she currently lives, and her home state of Texas. She is on the board of WDN Action, Texas Future Project and the Ambassadors Council for NextGen America. She focuses much of her advocacy work on anti-racism, climate change, progressive faith-based organizing, and building a more equitable world for all.. She currently teaches piano lessons and serves as an independent editor for academically oriented writing projects.

ilise benshushan cohen is a Sephardic scholar-activist on Israel/Palestine and is a Phd in Social and Cultural anthropology, research focused on Israeli state violence on Mizrahi Jews and Palestinians. Co-founder and former co-leader of JVP-Atlanta, Jews of Color, Sephardi and Mizrahi Caucus in partnership with JVP, and served on the board of Fellowship of Reconciliation, Interfaith Peacebuilders (now Eyewitness Palestine), and SEDQ Global Jewish Network for Justice. ilise serves on several boards and is a teacher and a writer. She joined WDN in 2023 where she is on the leadership teams for Mobilize for Palestine peer community and Jews for Justice affinity group.

Kate Bertash (she/her) is the Executive Director of the Digital Defense Fund, leading a team that provides digital security resources and front-line support to autonomy and liberation movements. She brings together a background in nonprofit fundraising, venture-backed startups, and more than a decade of experience bringing together movement workers and technologists to build and create community technology solutions. In her free time she designs fabrics that fool surveillance systems, and co-organizes the Cryptography & Privacy Village at DEFCON, America's largest hacker conference.

Rajasvini Bhansali is the Executive Director of Solidaire Network and Solidaire Action. She is a passionate advocate for participatory grassroots-led power building and a lifelong student of social movements. In a wide-ranging career devoted to racial, economic and climate justice, she has previously led an international public foundation that funds grassroots organizing in Asia, Africa and Latin America; grown a national youth development social enterprise; managed a public telecommunications infrastructure fund addressing the digital divide in the Southern United States; and worked as a community organizer, researcher, planner, policy analyst and strategy consultant.

Sarah DeLuca is a Money and Philanthropy Coach with Move Money Shift Power, where she focuses on social change philanthropy with individuals, families, and foundations. Sarah began her social justice career working in documentary filmmaking in LA, but quickly realized she wanted to be more deeply involved in activism. She spent a decade working for social justice non-profits, building grassroots movements and raising millions of dollars. In addition to honing her organizing and fundraising skills there, Sarah developed her analysis of corporate power and systemic change.

Jenifer Fernandez Ancona oversees the political and narrative strategy of Way to Win, a national community of donors, movement leaders and strategists seeking to upend politics as usual. Prior to coming on full-time to Way to Win, she served as Vice President at Women Donors Network, helping to run the national community of women donors who leverage their wealth, power, and community for a more fair, just, and sustainable world. She has a wide range of experience in communications, donor organizing, strategy development, grassroots organizing, and multi-racial coalition building.

Errin Haines is editor at large and a founding mother of The 19th, a nonprofit, independent newsroom focused on the intersection of gender, politics and policy. She is also author of The 19th newsletter, The Amendment, and an MSNBC Contributor. Prior to joining The 19th, Errin was national writer on race and ethnicity for The Associated Press. She has also worked at The Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times and Orlando Sentinel. Errin’s expertise on issues of race, gender and politics make her a thought leader in her industry. She has also taught at the Georgetown University Institute of Politics and Princeton University. 

Nadia Ismail is the Senior Capacity Building Consultant at Barakah Group, a hub for strategic philanthropy. Nadia draws on nearly 10 years of experience in both Organizational Development and diversity, equity, and inclusion where she has supported the building and enhancement of healthy, empowering work environments that allow organizations to grow and scale meaningfully. Nadia serves on the WDN Board of Directors.

Robin Johnson is the Interim CEO of Black United Fund of Oregon, where she leads efforts to assist in the social and economic development of Oregon’s underserved communities and contribute to a broader understanding of ethnic and culturally diverse groups.

Angie Junck is the inaugural director of the Human Rights program at the Heising-Simons Foundation and Action Fund, overseeing programmatic strategy and grantmaking to challenge mass criminalization of Black, indigenous, and people of color in the criminal legal and immigration enforcement systems by building their power and advancing reimagined approaches to justice and safety. Angie currently serves on the boards of WDN Action, California Coalition for Women Prisoners, and the U.S. program of Human Rights Watch.

Maggie Kulyk’s main interest is in people – getting to know them, listening to them, and helping them balance their finances with the rest of their lives in a way that has meaning to them. Maggie founded Chicory Wealth, a fee-only financial life planning and sustainable wealth management firm. She’s a CRPC® (Chartered Retirement Planning CounselorSM), a Chartered SRI Counselor™, a member of the Financial Planning Association, the author of Integrating Money and Meaning: Practices for a Heart-Centered Life and a recent graduate of the WDN board.

Janet Levinger’s (she/her) vision is to create opportunity through engagement, advocacy, and philanthropy. Her focus areas include education, reproductive rights, and civic engagement. Over the past 25 years, Janet has served on nearly 20 nonprofit boards and chaired five of them. In addition to the WDN Board, she currently serves on the board of the University of Washington College of Education. Janet writes a blog with the goal of improving board governance – www.LeadingWell.org – Strategies and stories for doing good better.

Growing up as a queer Latina in the south and living with fear of having family deported pushed Kelly Morales to become an actor of change. She’s dedicated the last eleven years of her life to the immigrant rights movement, as the former Director of the Latino Family Center and State Director for American Friends Service Committee. She officially joined the Siembra team in 2020 and partnered with Mijente to run the largest Latine voter engagement campaign in the state’s history. In 2022, Kelly became the Executive Director of Siembra and doubled the size of the organization, eventually leading her to transform leadership of the organization into a Co-Directorship by 2023.

Melissa Ryan is CEO and founding partner of Inviolable, an AI platform that helps organizations build resilience against targeted attacks of hate, harassment, and harm. Melissa is widely recognized as one of the foremost experts on right wing online extremism, and her work has been cited by Pres. Barack Obama, NPR, Washington Post, NBC, and dozens of other outlets and leaders. Melissa authors Ctrl Alt-Right Delete, a weekly newsletter of 18,000+ subscribers that drives conversation about online threats and extremism. Melissa was selected for the 2023 inaugural cohort of Obama Foundation USA Leaders, and serves as Board Chair for Netroots Nation.

Laura Saunders is VP of Research at Everest Detection, a biotechnology company that seeks to change cancer patients' lives for the better through the early detection of lung cancer in heavy smokers. Laura is a PhD-level molecular and cellular biologist with expertise in cancer therapeutics, stem cell biology, and regenerative medicine. Laura is a passionate advocate for Palestinian human rights and has spent time in the West Bank and East Jerusalem over the past 10 years doing Palestinian-led co-resistance with the Center for Jewish Nonviolence. She is a member of WDN, and active with Mobilize for Palestine. 

Zoe is a public history researcher and project manager at Tufts University, where she works on the Slavery, Colonialism and their Legacies at Tufts initiative. As a student at Tufts, she became captivated by place-based history and memory while organizing with the labor movement. Since then, she has grown to appreciate the power of stories about the past to give shape and meaning to current struggles for justice. Zoe lives in Somerville, MA and loves to make soup and music.

Aryeh is a facilitator, program/curriculum designer and Life Coach specializing in Diversity, Equity and Inclusion, personal and collective transformation, somatics, resilience, ancestral healing and leadership development. She is currently a Community Engagement and Training Program Director at Pachamama Alliance and a co-founder of the Thrive Network, building beloved community and a world rooted in belonging and sacred reciprocity. 

Nina Simons is the Co-founder and Chief Relationship Officer at Bioneers. Her work has spanned the nonprofit, social entrepreneurship, corporate, and philanthropic sectors and has been fortunate to learn with so many how to co-create conditions for mutual learning, trust, flourishing and leadership development. Nina authored Nature, Culture, and the Sacred: A Woman Listens for Leadership – which includes a discussion guide and embodied practices, and also won Gold Nautilus awards in women, intersectionality, and social justice. Nina has been a WDN member for 22 years.

Gretchen Sisson, PhD, is a sociologist who studies abortion and adoption in the United States, and the author of the award-winning book Relinquished: The American Mothers Behind Infant Adoption. She currently serves on the board of trustees of Amerst College, the board of directors for Emerge America, and on the steering committee for Electing Women Bay Area. An active member of the Women Donors Network, she is a co-founder of the Abortion Bridge Collaborative Fund and served as a founding board member of WDN Action. She lives in San Francisco with her husband, three children, and their little free library.

Emily Squires is an artist, facilitator and consultant who has spent over two decades in relationships with organizations and social justice ecosystems. Emily’s work is collaborative and currently focused on growing and sustaining organizational cultures of care, holding dignity and relationships at the center. Squires is also trained as a printmaker, using art-making as a collaborative and political tool investigating histories and possibilities of voice, participation, and belonging.

Mary Stranahan practiced medicine on the Salish Kootenai Reservation for twenty years. She has been a member of WDN for many years. Mary is the founder of Goodworks Ventures, Goodworks Evergreen, and High Stakes Foundation. She is committed to elevating the importance of rural America from her home in Montana. She is a board member of WDN Action and the state-wide donor alliance in Montana.

As Director of Advocacy and Civic Engagement at Equality Federation, Vivian Topping works with state-based LGBTQ+ organizations to craft smart, effective legislative and electoral campaigns that build political power and allow supporters to take action in their communities. Most recently Vivian was the Field Director for the historic, winning Yes on 3 campaign in Massachusetts. Her work in Massachusetts was a groundbreaking success, building the leadership of transgender people, having more than 100,000 conversations with voters, and ultimately winning the first statewide referendum on transgender rights in the nation.

Karundi Williams (she/her) is the Executive Director of re:power, a national movement organization that trains and supports leaders and organizations across the progressive ecosystem with base building as the cornerstone of power building and sustainable organizing. Since Karundi became the first Black woman Executive Director in 2019, re:power has supported leaders, national, state and grassroots organizations, with intentional focus on women of color and trans and gender expansive people of color, to embody the ideology and practice of liberatory organizing—an organizing practice that is pro-Black and grounded in community, collective action, and abundance.

Ash-Lee Woodard Henderson is an Affrilachian (Black Appalachian) woman from the working class, born and raised in Southeast Tennessee. She is the first Black woman to serve as Co-Executive Director of Highlander Research & Education Center. As a member of leadership teams in the Movement for Black Lives (M4BL), Ash-Lee has contributed to the Vision for Black Lives and BREATHE Act. She has served on the governance council of the Southern Movement Assembly, the advisory committee of National Bailout Collective. She is a long-time activist who has worked in movements fighting for workers, for reproductive justice, LGBTQUIA+, environmental justice etc.