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About our facilitators

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Angela Berkfield

Angela Berkfield was a social justice educator and activist and parent of two boys advantaged because of race, class, gender, and ability. In her words, “I have a tall task in raising kids who have privilege to move through the world honoring principles of equity and justice. I’ve aimed to center social justice in my parenting from day one. The more caregivers I can partner with on this journey, the better!” Angela taught in a variety of settings over the course of two decades and co-founded The Root Social Justice Center, ACT for Social Justice, and Equity Solutions. She earned an MA in social justice from the School for International Training, and she believed that a world where everyone can thrive is possible, and coming. 

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Leila Raven

Zara is an Afro-Caribbean descended, mixed-race queer mama parenting using a consent-based, non-hierarchical approach. From 2015 to 2018, Zara was the director of DC-based grassroots organization Collective Action for Safe Spaces (CASS), working to create community-based strategies to interrupt patriarchal violence and state violence in public spaces. Zara sees the family as an important site of resistance against oppression and seeks to uplift alternatives to the nuclear family structure to promote collective responsibility for the safety and well-being of whole communities.

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Chrissy Colón Bradt

Chrissy Colón Bradt is an educator and mom to two children under the age of 6. As an Afro-Latina in an interracial marriage, Chrissy is keenly aware of her family’s intersecting identities and privilege. She strives to support her children in developing a positive racial and ethnic identity, and in taking joy in this one precious life. Chrissy serves as an educator and director of equity and inclusion at an independent school and is on the board of The Courage of Care Coalition and The Root Social Justice Center. She holds a BA in comparative ethnic studies from Barnard College and an M.Ed. in special education from Hunter College.

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Jaimie Lynn Kessell

Jaimie has spent her entire life dealing with the consequences of being born into generational poverty—hunger, prejudices, and a lack of access to connections and capital that would facilitate an upwards movement of social class. One of Jaimie’s life goals is to raise her four children—ages 16, 13, 6, and 7 months—with the knowledge necessary not only to propel themselves out of poverty but to help create a world in which all people have access to what they need, not just to survive, but to thrive.

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Rowan Parker

Rowan Parker has worked in early childhood education and early childhood development for over a decade. He is white and transgender; he is neurodivergent and has a chronic pain condition. Rowan currently works in Early Intervention as a developmental specialist, assessing young children for therapeutic needs, but his favorite part of the job is helping parents learn to understand and work with their children. He continues his work with children as a foster parent with his partner. Rowan has a master's in education from Western Governors University.

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Abigail Healey

Abigail Healey is white, cisgender, and middle-class raised. She is the mother of two children, one of whom is limb-different and Hard of Hearing, and both of whom are creative, wild and kind. She currently works with elders, providing activities and gardening at a residential care facility. She is constantly seeking ways to engage her children in critical thinking, big questions, justice, and change-making. She started her social justice work decades ago with cardboard puppet theater and loves the way that bringing creativity into activism makes it feel like a new world is possible. She lives with her family in southern Vermont.

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Amber Arnold

Amber is a Black Multiracial mom of three and commUNITY liberation worker. Amber is co-steward of the SUSU Healing Collective and the SUSU commUNITY Farm. Her offerings include building curriculum and foundational systems of change that uproot racism and white supremacy in institutional and organizational settings. She has offered programming for children with acute needs aka equity-based community in action. She has a background in racial and healing justice and has been part of many transformative systems of change. She is deeply rooted in her vision of healing through commUNITY and collective liberation that decenters whiteness. She creates spaces that calm the nervous system, invite curiosity, and allow for abundance, deep connection, and co-regulation. Amber follows the knowledge, wisdom, and guidance of her ancestors who through pain, liberation, and resilience paved the way for her to offer seeds of connection and healing within communities.

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Brittney Washington

Brittney Nicole Washington is a Southern Queer Black Artist + Mama + Art Therapist + Doula + Strategist + Troublemaker. Brittney's multidisciplinary approach to her craft applies an understanding that 1) our most important responsibility is dismantling the power arrangements that maintain structural oppression and poverty; 2) everyone has different points of entry into politicization and social justice movements; and 3) art is a portal toward healing, imagination, and movement for that purpose. 

 

As an artist, Brittney uses painting, illustration, and filmmaking to uplift BIPOC experiences and perspectives in media. Her work decolonizes ideas of normality and invites radical empathy across difference. As a racial justice strategist and cultural organizer, Brittney facilitates nationwide to illuminate the historical events that shape our current experiences of racialized poverty, trauma, and disconnection. She curates arts-based spaces where folks can be brave, vulnerable, and imaginative about how to bend our world toward justice together. She also serves as a visual arts producer for various movement groups in the DC area.

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