Agostine Ndung’u works to support entrepreneurs in Africa and around the world, to promote multi-ethnic cooperation and employment that will reduce youth participation in violation. To this end, he was worked for Ashoka in the global internship program and the fellows program, and he has worked for Impact Hub to set up programs in support of entrepreneurs in Africa. He is the founder of Audible Concepts and a former manager at Intellecap. He has worked extensively on the Sankalp Forum conventions for entrepreneur networking and fundraising both in Africa and in India.

Ndung’u is a graduate of Amherst College. As a student, he was named a Dalai Lama Fellow in 2011 to develop the Amani Seed Project in partnership with Baraka Agricultural College to promote inter-ethnic integration among rural youth in Kenya through agribusiness. He is currently a prospective Master of Business Administration candidate at the University of British Columbia Sauder School of Business in Canada.

Annan is an adjunct lecturer for the final year Entrepreneurship Capstone at Ashesi University and also a leadership faculty at Ashesi Innovation Experience. Annan holds an Master of Arts in applied economics with specialization in project management, innovation, and entrepreneurship economics. He also holds a Bachelor of Science in computer science from Ashesi University. Annan has over 8 years of progressive experience in managing projects in education, oil and gas, technology, start-ups, and healthcare with projects and public presentations in Ghana, Senegal, USA, and Czech Republic and 6 years’ experience in the informal sector. Annan currently runs two companies in retail, transportation, and real estate. In 2013, he was named a Dalai Lama Fellow for his literacy and empowerment work.

Landa Mabenge is the author of Becoming Him – A Trans Memoir of Triumph. A University of Cape Town alumnus, he is the founder and managing director of Landa Mabenge Consulting, which creates awareness of the transgender experience. He is the first known transgender man in South Africa to receive medical aid to finance his gender alignment surgeries.

Mabenge has extensive experience working in the private and public health care sectors in South Africa, and uses this knowledge plus his personal journey to reach out to marginalised and impoverished communities. In 2017, he was selected for the Mandela Washington Fellowship for Young African Leaders in the USA. Mabenge now serves on the USAID’s youth advisory board and is a youth mentor at SAYes Youth Mentoring. He also serves as a non-executive board member for Transgender Intersex Africa (TIA), which advocates for the rights of transgender and intersex persons. He currently works for the Stellenbosch University Equality Unit.

Justine Hamupolo has vast experience in development, administration, and management of programmes working with youth and lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and intersex people in supporting young people’s organized response to HIV/AIDS as well as human rights topics. She is currently the country coordinator for Namibia Diverse Women’s Association, where she works on creating change and protecting the social, political, and economic rights of all.

Hamupolo’s previous work includes UNAIDS, where she oversaw youth programming for young girls. She has also contributed to the development of women’s sports in Namibia, currently mentoring young girls in football. She has worked on youth media literacy development projects, travelling the country to ensure access to media and information literacy. Additionally, she has served as the manager for an LGBT organization to build a more inclusive human rights movement. In 2017, Hamupolo was selected for the Mandela Washington Fellowship for Young African Leaders program in the USA in recognition of her role in civic leadership.

Kelvy Bird is an artist and internationally recognized “scribe”, translating content and dynamics into visual, tangible formats to aid with reflection and decision-making. She has worked in the fields of human and organizational development since 1995, with a focus on innovation, collective intelligence, and systems thinking. As a co-founder of the Presencing Institute since 2007, Kelvy has helped shape many of the global community offerings, most recently the MIT edX course u.lab: Leading From the Emerging Future, for which she provides extensive visual material. In 2016, she co-edited the anthology: Drawn Together through Visual Practice, and in 2018 released Generative Scribing: A Social Art of the 21st Century. Kelvy steadily delivers workshops and online learning opportunities to cultivate next generation scribes. She received a BFA and BA from Cornell University, and currently lives in Somerville, MA USA.  More Info

Martin Vitorino, PhD serves as a lead faculty member for Courage of Care and directs their LGBTQIA+ initiative. He is also the Director of Programming at InsightLA and leads the organization’s diversity, equity and inclusivity efforts. He facilitates a meditation group for the transgender community called “Mindful Transitions” that focuses on deepening self-compassion and building connection. Prior to joining InsightLA, Martin trained foster parents and social workers in the child welfare system on ways to better understand and support LGBTQ young people in care. In 2012, he earned a Ph.D. in Women’s, Gender and Sexuality Studies from Emory University where he researched resiliency in women who had been incarcerated. Martin also holds a B.S. in Psychology from Westfield State University in Massachusetts. In a volunteer capacity, he organizes heart-centered retreats for transgender men and is a member of the speaker’s bureau of PFLAG Los Angeles.

Dr. Angel Acosta recently completed his doctorate degree in the Curriculum and Teaching Department at Teachers College, Columbia University. For the last decade, Angel has worked to bridge the fields of leadership, social justice and mindfulness. Angel has supported over 30,000 educational leaders and their students by facilitating leadership trainings, creating pathways to higher education, and designing dynamic learning experiences. His dissertation explores healing-centered education as a promising framework for integrating contemplative science and educational leadership development. He is currently an education consultant and former Trustee for the Center for Contemplative Mind in Society.

Jasmine Syedullah is a theorist of abolitionist movement scholarship as well as co-author of Radical Dharma: Talking Race, Love, and Liberation (North Atlantic Books, 2016). She joined the faculty of Vassar College in 2019 and holds Africana Studies’ first Assistant Professor line there, currently developing interdisciplinary Prison Studies curricula and programming that integrates cultural studies, political theory, abolitionist geography, black feminism, critical ethnic studies, and contemplative studies. Her current book project “Negress Ex Machina” centers Harriet Jacobs’s 1861 abolitionist narrative as a protofeminist foundation for seeing how prophets from the margins shape abolitionist movement theory and practice.

Before returning to the east coast, Syedullah taught at the University of San Francisco and the University of California Santa Cruz where she completed her PhD in Politics with designated emphasis in Feminist Studies and History of Consciousness. Her research is published in Palimpsest: A Journal on Women, Gender, and the Black International; Abolition: A Journal of Insurgent Politics; The Journal of Contemporary Political Theory; Society and Space; Tricycle: The Buddhist Review, and Truthout.

Out in the world, Dr Sy, as she is affectionately called, is a certified yoga teacher, a mindfulness instructor, and skilled facilitator, bringing embodied contemplative approaches critical reckonings our habituated relationships to white supremacy and carceral culture, transforming colonizing logics that shape the places we call home from the inside out.