Our Partners
Jamila Medley (she/her)
For two decades I have served mission-based organizations in the nonprofit and cooperative sectors. From 2012-2021, I served in governance roles and then as executive director of the Philadelphia Area Cooperative Alliance (PACA). At PACA, I collaborated with other cooperators, elected officials, movement organizers, and funders to position cooperatively-owned enterprises as a robust and equitable economic development solution to economic and racial injustice in the Philadelphia region. As a practitioner consultant, I bring facilitation expertise in highly participatory processes to support organizations and their stakeholders with change management, leadership development, governance, DEI (diversity, equity, and inclusion) efforts, and participatory management.
Selina Morales (she/her)
I am a public folklorist who consults nationally on projects at the intersection of community aesthetics and social justice. From 2010-2019 I worked with the Philadelphia Folklore Project, for the last 5 years as the Director. I am a faculty member in the Masters of Cultural Sustainability program at Goucher College, where I teach a course on building ethical and effective cultural partnerships and another on non-profit leadership and management. I am the Board Chair of the Folk Arts Cultural Treasures Charter School in Philadelphia and serve on the Advisory Council to the Smithsonian Center for Folklife and Cultural Heritage. In 2017, I was honored as one of the Delaware Valley’s 50 Most Influential Latinos.
Current consultancies include working with Taller Puertoriqqeño on a neighborhood memorial project, the American Folklore Society on an effort to address racial bias in fieldwide graduate curriculum and the Southwest Folklife Alliance on the national Radical Imagination for Racial Justice initiative where I coach community-based researchers to document and interpret racial justice projects in their own ALAANA communities. In 2020 I was the guest editor for the Journal of Folklore and Education’s Special Issue “Teaching for Equity”.
Sara Zia Ebrahimi (she/her)
Sara Zia Ebrahimi learned to talk in Iran and press the record button in the United States. Her professional and creative practice has focused on questioning power structures and how to shift the narratives that enable them to perpetuate. For over 20 years she has worked as a resource mobilizer, connecting artists and community organizers to the resources they need to move their work forward. She does this through fundraising, building administrative and operations processes, and weaving strong webs of relationships between individuals and organizations for the collective thriving of historically marginalized communities. She currently works as the Deputy Director at BlackStar. Her previous positions have included working as the Program Director at the Leeway Foundation, a Community Engagement Coordinator for Independent Television Service’s (ITVS) Community Cinema program and as the Development and Communications Director at Bread & Roses Community Fund. She has worked as a producer on several short films and webseries, written and directed her own short films, and served on dozens of review panels for arts funders and festivals. She holds an MFA in Film & Media Arts and BA in Film & Media Studies both from Temple University. She credits her accomplishments to the larger community of friends, chosen family, coworkers and social change movements that have guided her thinking and actions and is honored to join a strong legacy of cultural workers in the Philadelphia area by leading BlackStar’s fundraising and planning. When not working, she can be found in the kitchen cooking too much food, reading and watching science fiction stories, or battling monsters with her partner and a young warrior princess.
Brittany Campese (she/her)
For more than 15 years, I have been utilizing my community-based experiences and educational background in gender studies and nonprofit management to provide holistic support to change-makers and artists working in the public secperpetuatetor. As a white, cis-het woman who was raised in rural Western New York, I consider myself both an ally and an accomplice in the struggles for racial justice. I use my facilitation and organizational superpowers to push for social justice, helpin)g to build skills and secure resources with individuals and communities who are making powerful changes in the world.
I am the Founder & Principal of Vision Driven Consulting, a consultancy that supports the visionary work of artists, community groups, and not-for-profit organizations by providing consulting, facilitation, and training services. VDC’s methods are rooted in trans-inclusive feminist and anti-oppressive frameworks, and seeks out the voices, opinions, and ideas of people at all levels of power, starting conversations from points of strengths and assets to create sustainable, healthy, and inclusive changes.