Rev. Dr. Yvonne Delk, Chairperson

Dr. Delk is retired clergy in the United Church of Christ. Dr. Delk was the first African American woman ordained by the United Church of Christ and was selected by Ebony magazine as one of the top 15 woman preachers in the country. She is the former executive director of the Community Renewal Society (CRS), a Chicago-based mission agency related to the United Church of Christ. CRS works to empower people to dismantle racism and poverty in order to build just communities. She directed a staff of 40 and oversaw an annual operating budget of $2.5 million. As an interfaith leader and prolific speaker, Dr. Delk has taught and lectured in over 100 countries on all seven continents. She is former moderator of the World Council of Churches (WCC) Programme to Combat Racism (PCR) working group and prior to that, member of the PCR Commission. Through the WCC, she has worked extensively with justice networks globally. She also serves on the board of Sojourners Magazine.

Jotaka L. Eaddy is currently the Domestic Program Coordinator at the National Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty, where she coordinates the office’s Grassroots, Education, and Mobilization project. She is a 1997 graduate of Johnsonville High School and a 2001 graduate of the University of South Carolina with a dual degree in political science and criminal justice. Ms. Eaddy served as Student Body President of USC, becoming the first Black woman to serve in that position in the University of South Carolina’s 200 year history. She has been involved with the anti-death penalty movement for nearly nine years, and has traveled nationally and internationally speaking to youth about the anti-death penalty movement and youth leadership. Ms. Eaddy participated with the NGO youth organizing around the 2001 U.N. World Conference Against Racism in Durban, South Africa and spoke at the 2003 U.N. High Commission on Human Rights in Geneva, Switzerland.

Ms. Freeman is a strategic communications/ public relations consultant who specializes in raising the visibility of social justice organizations and campaigns in the United States and abroad. Based in Washington, DC for the past fifteen years, she has worked on numerous national and international political, media, and public relations campaigns on issues including environmental and economic justice, welfare reform, human rights, globalization, immigrant and workers’ rights, racial justice and the plight of disadvantaged youth.

Previous work as a community organizer, trainer, policy advocate and cultural worker has shaped her creative approach to public relations, and produced strategies ranging from staging mock funeral processions through polluted neighborhoods to preparing human rights activists to participate in international fora at the United Nations.  Her strategies have helped burgeoning grassroots networks and well-established national institutions such as Jobs with Justice, the Smithsonian Institution and the Children’s Defense Fund begin to move their agendas forward in exciting ways.

In all this work, Ms. Freeman strives to bring the voices of those most affected by the salient social issues of our time into the decision making arena and public discourse.

Makani Themba-Nixon

Makani Themba-Nixon is executive director of The Praxis Project, a nonprofit organization helping communities use media and policy advocacy to advance equity and social justice.  A long time organizer and nationally renowned trainer, Makani has published numerous articles and case studies on race, media and policy advocacy.  She is co-author of Media Advocacy and Public Health: Power for Prevention.  Her latest book is Making Policy, Making Change available from Jossey-Bass.

Dr. Sheila Walker

Dr. Sheila Walker, the first William and Camille Cosby Endowed Professor in the Humanities at Spelman College for 2002-03, is Professor of Anthropology and the Annabel Irion Centennial Professor in the College of Liberal Arts at the University of Texas at Austin. Dr. Walker was the former Director of the Center for African and African American Studies, and creator of a doctoral program in the Anthropology of the African Diaspora at the University of Texas. She organized an international conference on The African Diaspora and The Modern World in 1996 with the co-sponsorship of United Nations Education, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO). The only event held in the United States in the context of the United Nations International Year for Tolerance, the conference was the basis of her edited volume African Roots/American Cultures: Africa in the Creation of the Americas, and video documentary Scattered Africa: Faces and Voices of the African Diaspora.

Ray Winbush

Raymond A. Winbush, Ph.D., is the director for the Institute for Urban Research at Morgan State University. Author of The Warrior Method : A Parents' Guide to Rearing Healthy Black Boys, and editor of Should America Pay?: Slavery and the Raging Debate on Reparations, he is one of America's most dynamic speakers on the topic of reparations/ race relations. A native of Cleveland Ohio, he graduated with honors from Oakwood College and received both his Masters and Ph.D. in psychology from the University of Chicago. Prior to assuming his current position he taught at Oakwood College, Alabama A&M, Vanderbilt, and served as Benjamin Hooks Professor of Social Justice and Director of the Race Relations Institute at Fisk University. Winbush has traveled to Ghana, Nigeria, Togo, France, England, Ecuador, Honduras, Jamaica, Barbados, and Belgium to understand how African culture has influenced world culture. He is the proud father of three children: Omari, Sharifa and Faraji Winbush.