Board – MediaJustice

Angella Bellota

Sat, 25 Nov 2023 22:20:54 +0000

Angella (She/Her) supports the growth and stewardship of Groundswell Fund’s community of funders, donors, and philanthropic partners. She plays a key role in securing institutional philanthropic support to advance women of color-led power building across the U.S.

Before joining the Groundswell Fund team, Angella worked at MediaJustice (formerly Center for Media Justice), where she managed the MediaJustice Network, a network of 100 social justice organizations from across the country working at the intersection of media justice and social justice to fight for communication rights, access, and representation.

Prior to joining MediaJustice, Angella served as Field Director at the Campaign for Youth Justice working to resource and strengthen organizations fighting against the criminalization and over-incarceration of youth.

Angella brings over ten years of experience advancing advocacy initiatives at both the state and national levels through community organizing, campaign strategizing, and coalition building, as well as expertise and leadership in project management, grassroots fundraising, and technical assistance to social justice organizations.

Angella holds a BA in Sociology from California State University-San Bernardino and an MS in Sociology from North Carolina State University.

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Venita Griffin

Mon, 21 Nov 2022 02:59:41 +0000

Venita Griffin possesses over 15 years of experience leading successful advocacy and digital campaigns.

Some of her recent notable achievements include working to mobilize millions of low-income workers to call for the passage of the HEROES Act, organizing displaced restaurant workers to secure benefits from their employers at the start of the COVID pandemic, and leading the comms and digital strategy for the campaign to legalize recreational cannabis in Illinois.

Venita is a digital campaigner with National Domestic Workers Alliance and is the founding social media manager of the Blue Tent, a media outlet that uses research and in-depth reporting to help progressive donors decide where to give. She is also a 2021-2022 Stanford PACS Digital Civil Society Lab Fellow.

Venita was a Winter 2020 Fellow of The Movement School, and a 2019 Fellow of the Chicago Foundation for Women (CFW) Willie’s Warriors Leadership Initiative, which connects Black women leaders from a variety of sectors with a focus on systems change and economic empowerment. She is a member of CFW’s Anti-Racism Transformation Team and its South Side Giving Circle, which mobilizes women on Chicago’s South Side and in the South Suburbs to invest in the economic, social, and political power of Black women and girls in Chicago. Additionally, she serves on the boards of the Cook County Health Foundation and Girls Like Me Inc.

A New Orleans native, Venita now lives on the south side of Chicago. In her spare time, she is working to launch “Chronically Black,” a social media campaign that amplifies the experiences of Black women living with chronic illnesses.

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Gabriella Anaïs Deal-Márquez

Mon, 21 Nov 2022 02:48:26 +0000

Anaïs Deal-Márquez is a cultural strategist, writer, and organizer, raised between Mexico and the Midwest. She is the former Co-Executive Director of Minneapolis-based Voices of Racial Justice (VRJ). Prior to stepping into this role, she was Director of Youth Organizing at VRJ. Her organizing is informed by cultural strategy that’s rooted in art as a tool to build power in community for sustained change. Anaïs is committed to fostering spaces that use storytelling as an anchor for healing and collective transformation. She loves spreading time near the water, cooking with family, and traveling to her homelands.

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DeMarcus Akeem Suggs

Mon, 21 Nov 2022 02:41:25 +0000

DeMarcus Akeem Suggs is a dance artist, arts administrator, and culturist with over a decade of service to the nonprofit arts ecosystem. His life’s work is fueled by a passion to cultivate and sustain more vibrant communities through equitable policy, creativity, and restorative practices. DeMarcus serves as Director of Development for Mid-America Arts Alliance (M-AAA), the nation’s first Regional Arts Organization, where he spearheads the organization’s fundraising Victoria Theatre Association initiatives. Before joining M-AAA, DeMarcus held positions at Alternate ROOTS, The National Center of Choreography at the University of Akron (NCCAkron), (now Dayton Live), Neos Dance Theatre, and The Victory Project. Additionally, he serves on the boards of MediaJustice and NCCAkron.

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Vickie Suggs-Jones, Ph.D.

Mon, 21 Nov 2022 02:33:23 +0000

Vickie Suggs-Jones, Ph.D. is Assistant Coordinator in the Office of Faculty Professional Development and Adjunct Faculty member in the Department of Mass Communication at North Carolina Central University (NCCU), as well as a proud alumna.

Dr. Suggs-Jones’ background includes nearly 30 years as a higher education administrator, researcher, and faculty member. Separately, she is a skilled inclusion strategist with successful delivery of services within higher education and corporate industries. She seeks to infuse the tenants of media and technology as an apparatus for justice.

In 2014, Suggs-Jones authored and edited, Historically Black College Leadership and Social Transformation: How Past Practices Inform the Present and Future (Information Age Publishing). In 2022, she published, Unscripted: Narratives From Women At Life’s 50-Yard Line, through her company, Doc Mommy Diva, LLC.

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Daniel Carrillo

Mon, 21 Nov 2022 02:22:35 +0000

Daniel Carrillo is the Forest Campaigns Director at Rainforest Action Network where they lead a global team in campaigns against multinational corporations responsible for deforestation and human rights violations. They grew up in Los Angeles in a large mixed-status Mexican family. He got their start as a youth organizing against anti-immigrant Prop 187 and successfully defeating a proposed power plant in their neighborhood in Southeast Los Angeles. Daniel has over 20 years of experience organizing and campaigning in the social justice movement. They won corporate campaigns and successfully negotiated contracts at SEIU, AFSCME, and CWA in the US and the independent unions in Mexico. Daniel also co-founded the Prison Divestment Campaign which successfully pressured union pensions, universities, and cities to divest over $6 billion from the prison industry. Daniel co-founded Stop LAPD Spying, the New York Worker Center Federation, and Freedom Cities. Recently, Daniel was a Fellow at the Cornell University Worker Institute.

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Joseph Bateman

Mon, 21 Nov 2022 02:11:31 +0000

Joe Bateman is passionate about investing in and providing advisory services to organizations working toward a more just and equitable society. He is currently a Director on the Impact Investing team at Social Finance, where he works with private, public, and social sector organizations to measurably improve economic mobility by utilizing innovative financing models.

Previously, Joe worked on the US investments team at Luminate, a global philanthropic investor. In this role, Joe expanded Luminate’s portfolio of for-profit and nonprofit organizations working at the intersection of civic empowerment, racial justice, and digital rights, providing significant post-investment organizational support to the portfolio. Before working at Luminate, Joe led teams at Summit Consulting to conduct due diligence and portfolio monitoring for more than $500 million in loans to Community Development Financial Institutions from the US Treasury’s CDFI Fund, US banks, and philanthropies. He also led multi-year quantitative and qualitative research about best practices in community development finance for the US Treasury’s New Markets Tax Credit program.

Joe began his career working in human rights advocacy at the Washington Office on Latin America, a nonprofit research and advocacy organization focused on changing US foreign policy toward Latin America. He holds a Master of International Business from The Fletcher School at Tufts University and bachelor’s degrees in International Studies and Spanish from the University of Mississippi.

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Payal Patel

Tue, 14 Jan 2020 23:29:12 +0000

Payal Patel is the Senior Director of Finance & Operations at Beyond 12, based in Oakland, CA. Previously, she was the Director of Finance & Operations at the Ella Baker Center for Human Rights. She has dedicated her life to improving the lives of black and brown underserved communities and believes in people power as the way to create meaningful change in our society.

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Andrea Figueroa

Tue, 14 Jan 2020 23:27:08 +0000

Andrea has a Masters of Public Administration and National Certification in Nonprofit Management, as well as a B.A. in Mexican American Studies with a concentration in Literature, from the University of Texas at San Antonio. She currently serves as the Executive Director of The Martinez Street Women’s Center, a 20-year-old organization with roots in the East Side of San Antonio. Previously, she led the MSWC Girl Zone Program until December of 2015. Prior to, Andrea enjoyed a short but fulfilling career in music that eventually led her back to San Antonio and family. Although not an S.A. native, she now considers S.A. home, and so has lent a hand in several issues and movements she cares about, including as a member and then volunteer Chair of C.A.U.S.A. (Community Alliance of a United San Antonio), volunteer for the San Antonio Women’s March, and Steering Committee and Working group member for Excel Beyond the Bell. She currently serves as a new member of The Media Justice Board, Steering Committee member of the Digital Inclusion Alliance of San Antonio, and is a member of The Executive Committee for The Women and Girls Development Fund of The San Antonio Area Foundation. Recently, she was awarded The Pride Center’s 2019 Icon Award for Leadership in the LGBT community.

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