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.

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.

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.

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.