Advisory Board
Akintunde Ahmad (he/him)
Ida B. Wells Fellow, Type Investigations
Akintunde is a multimedia journalist focusing on the intersection of education, economic inequality, and the justice system. Ahmad, an east Oakland native, was most recently a Delacorte Fellow with the Columbia Journalism Review, where he wrote about news media and its influence on public perceptions. He holds a BA in sociology from Yale University and an MS in journalism and documentary film from Columbia University. His thesis film, which focused on a team of teenage slam poets, can be viewed here. His written work has been featured in The Atlantic, The Appeal, Huffington Post, and MTV. He has been featured on broadcasts ranging from The Ellen Show to Sway in the Morning. In the upcoming year, he will be reporting on police misconduct in Oakland as an Ida B Wells Fellow for Type Investigations.
Alicia Bell (they/she)
Director, Media 2070, Free Press
Alicia was born and raised in Charlotte, North Carolina and still lives there today. They work at the intersections of afrofuturist imagination, journalism, land, food, and all the spaces in between. At Free Press, they work to transform the future of journalism via News Voices, a project organizing communities around information equity and community centered journalism, and Media 2070, a project working towards making media reparations real. Alicia is also a parent, member of a local gardening collective called Angelou House, and a lover of big bodies of nature.
Anoa Changa (she/her)
Host, “The Way With Anoa”
Anoa is an Atlanta based movement journalist, influenced by grassroots-led electoral organizing efforts. She is the host of the podcast “The Way with Anoa,” which tackles politics and current events through a Black progressive feminist perspective.
Rachel Gilmer (she/her)
Co-Director, Dream Defenders
Rachel is a Black feminist organizer with over 10 years of experience in advocacy, programs, leadership development, research and writing on issues of racial and social justice. She joined Dream Defenders in 2015 as Chief of Strategy. She graduated in 2010 from Vassar College, where she received an award for her thesis, a critical analysis of the rise of Barack Obama as both an emerging hero of the African Diaspora and the new face of American hegemonic power. She organized on issues of racial and social justice in a number of settings, including schools, prisons, community based organizations, and government.
Prentiss Haney (he/him)
Co-Executive Director, Ohio Organizing Collaborative & Ohio Student Association
At the Ohio Student Association (OSA), Prentiss leads efforts to build a political and cultural bloc of young people that can move a progressive public policy agenda. OSA aims to transform youth culture and climate in Ohio to one of equity and justice—where every young person is valued, living in the inherent dignity they deserve and has a fair shot at a thriving economy, quality education, and community free from police violence. Prentiss started organizing with Organizing for America, registering students and building campus teams across the state. He then joined OSA to continue building student power, serving in various capacities from training coordinator to regional team lead, communication director and more. Prentiss has trained hundreds of young leaders in grassroots organizing and led racial justice and higher education campaigns across the state. Prentiss has earned his B.A. in urban affairs at Wright State University. He currently lives in Cincinnati, OH.
Claudia Irizarry Aponte (she/her)
Bronx Reporter, THE CITY
Claudia covers The Bronx for THE CITY, a nonprofit, independent news site in New York City that covers local issues in the public interest. Her reporting has appeared in The Philadelphia Inquirer and NPR’s Latino USA. She’s a recipient of the 2019 Sidney Hillman Foundation Award for Social Justice Reporting and was named the Nellie Bly Cub Reporter for 2020 by the New York Press Club. A Puerto Rico native, she is an alumna of the University of Puerto Rico at Mayagüez and the Newmark Graduate School of Journalism at CUNY.
DaLyah Jones (she/her)
Director of Community Engagement, Texas Observer
DaLyah is the director of community engagement and former staff writer for the Texas Observer. Her work covers BIPOC communities in rural Texas and Contemporary Black Southern Arts and Culture. She’s a former general assignment reporter and All Things Considered producer for Austin’s NPR Station, KUT 90.5, where she focused on rural and suburban stories outside of the Capital’s urban core. She was born and raised in Deep East Texas and currently lives in Austin.
Brendan O’Connor (he/him)
Journalist and Author
Brendan O'Connor is a freelance journalist and the author of Blood Red Lines: How Nativism Fuels the Right. He lives in Brooklyn and is a member of the National Writers Union and the Strikewave editorial collective.
Anna Simonton (she/her)
Senior Editor, The Appeal
Anna Simonton is a Senior Editor for The Appeal: Political Report. She has focused her journalism career on covering social movements for collective liberation, particularly in the U.S. South. She served as an editor for Scalawag magazine for five years and co-founded Press On, an organization dedicated to supporting Southern movement journalism. She is the co-author with Shani Robinson of None of the Above: The Untold Story of the Atlanta Public Schools Cheating Scandal, Corporate Greed, and the Criminalization of Educators. Originally from Atlanta, she is currently based in Minneapolis.
Joshua Vincent (he/him)
Co-Executive Director, Southern Vision Alliance
Joshua brings two decades of experience as a political and community organizer in the US South, coordinating Black organizing programs with the Education Not Incarceration Network, Black Men Build, the North Carolina NAACP, and the 2008 Obama for America campaign. He got his start as an HBCU student organizer, serving as one of six student protesters arrested in NC House Speaker Thom Tillis’ office opposing the state’s voter suppression bill. Joshua brings a commitment to grounding organizing in culture. As a trained jazz trombonist and producer, he has opened for artists including Erykah Badu and Lupe Fiasco and worked on the score for the second season of Aaron McGruder’s The Boondocks. He currently resides in Raleigh.
Devren Washington (he/him)
Senior Policy Organizer, Movement Alliance Project
Devren is Senior Policy Organizer with the Movement Alliance Project in Philadelphia. He focuses on building power in marginalized communities to bring equity and inclusion to the people who need it most. With a focus on digital justice, he uses his experience as a founding member of the Philadelphia Community Bail Fund and organizer with Black Lives Matter Philadelphia to organize directly impacted communities around issues pertaining to technology, surveillance, and internet access.