Our Team

  • Mia Birdsong (she/her) is a pathfinder, author, and facilitator who steadily engages the leadership and wisdom of people experiencing injustice to chart new visions of American life. She has a gift for making visible and leveraging the brilliance of everyday people so that our collective gifts reach larger spheres of influence, cultural and political change, and create wellbeing for all of us.

    In her book How We Show Up: Reclaiming Family, Friendship, and Community, Mia maps swaths of community life and points us toward the promise of our collective vitality. In “More Than Enough,” her podcast miniseries from The Nation, she expands the guaranteed income movement by tapping into the voices and visions of low-income people.

    Mia is a Senior Fellow of the Economic Security Project, a Future Good Fellow at Institute For the Future, and an inaugural Ascend Fellow of The Aspen Institute.

Founder and Executive Director

  • Allison Cook (she/her) is a strategist and story whisperer. She is an executer of grand visions and small feats whose work spans mediums and timezones.

    With a robust background in communications and strategy, Allison has a knack for distilling complicated information into something digestible. She is a maker of media of all sorts - from crafting op-eds, to producing videos, and working behind the scenes at conferences.

    A California native who loves her kid, liberation, and pop music, Allison strives to love generously and read closely.

Director of Programs

  • Madeline Davis (she/her) is an idea-shaper, wordsmith, and strategist, whose non-linear career path has taken her through art, business, technology, and non-profit spaces. While varied in context, her work consistently orients around stories – rooting in her belief that narrative holds unique power to structure our relationships to each other, our environments, and ourselves. From supporting artists in Berlin to developing an equity-centered design philosophy for Salesforce, Madeline is driven toward opportunities to make the world a more creative and just place to be. She finds her joy by taking slow walks in the mountains, long drives through the desert, big bites of in-season produce, and soft moments with the people she loves.

Director of Strategic Communications

  • Chrissy M. Etienne (they/them) is a digital strategist, community builder, and coach working at the intersection of narrative change, collective care, and social impact. For more than seven years, they’ve helped progressive organizations use digital tools to connect people to movements, deepen participation, and shift the stories we tell about what’s possible.

    Before joining Next River, Chrissy worked with organizations including The Audre Lorde Project, Believe Out Loud, Equality Federation, and MoveOn, supporting national advocacy campaigns and building digital programs that mobilized millions of people. At MoveOn, they helped lead one of the largest volunteer texting banks that reached tens of millions of voters. Chrissy is also the founder of Steady Bloom Coaching, a practice supporting queer, trans, and BIPOC people in reconnecting with dignity, self-trust, and inner authority after burnout and chronic self-abandonment.

    At Next River, Chrissy helps grow the organization’s digital storytelling ecosystem, exploring how narrative, imagination, and shared practice can help us rehearse more liberated futures.

    Outside of work, Chrissy can often be found reading, cooking, or tending the small rituals that keep imagination alive.

Content Manager

  • Ana Tellez (she/her/ella) is a program builder, an organizational development nerd, and a facilitator of process. 

    Her jam is supporting organizations to navigate change in service of social and racial justice. From advancing health equity in government agencies to establishing a network of community colleges and private universities addressing the racial wealth divide in their region, she thrives in setting up the people and resources infrastructure so we can do hard things in the collective. 

    Ana hails from Mexico City with a Midwest twist. She loves finding opportunities to dance, introducing her kiddos to all kinds of movies and live music, and participating in immigrant rights advocacy in her community in the Bay.

Managing Director

  • Wynndeé Reese (she/her) is a curious creative and executive strategist who prides herself on adeptly supporting the forward motion of our most prized visionaries.

    With almost two decades of experience in executive strategy and support across multiple fields, she prides herself on leaving people, communities, and companies better than she found them. With a knack for dissecting the details while capturing the big picture, she is able to use her background in digital strategy, storytelling, and project management to tackle our loftiest goals.

    Wynndeé is dedicated to doing the work necessary to give her Black and queer communities a soft place to land and bloom. When she isn't soaking up the sun at the beach or perusing Black owned bookstores, she’s spending time with her chosen family or binging a sci-fi series while building legos.

Executive Assistant

Our Board

  • Jorge Blandón (he/him) is an independent philanthropic strategist and consultant. He brings a systems-thinking approach to building new ecosystems where historically disenfranchised communities are seen and can thrive. He believes lasting change requires shifting power and resources directly to people.

    He previously served as Senior Director at Arrow Impact, an equity-driven, learning-oriented foundation focused on dismantling systemic barriers to economic opportunity. Before Arrow Impact, he spent a decade in leadership at UpTogether (formerly the Family Independence Initiative), where he challenged deficit-based narratives and helped build a strengths-based model that restores agency to communities across the United States. Earlier in his career, he worked in capital markets, securitizing bond financings for essential infrastructure projects.

    Jorge holds a Master of International Affairs from the University of California, San Diego, and a Bachelor of Arts from Amherst College.

  • Malkia Devich Cyril (they/them) is a writer, public speaker and award winning activist on issues of digital rights, narrative power, Black liberation, and collective grief; and is the founding and former executive director of MediaJustice — a national hub boldly advancing racial justice, rights, and dignity in a digital age. In 2002, Malkia Devich Cyril helped coin the term “Media Justice”, and in 2019 declared that one significant goal of the Media Justice movement was to “fight for a future where we are all connected, represented, and free.”

    After more than 20 years of media justice leadership, Malkia now serves as a Senior Fellow at both Media Justice and at Philanthropic Initiative for Racial Equity, while spearheading new projects to transform public narratives on race, power, and collective grief in a digital age. Malkia’s writing has been published in The Atlantic, Wired Magazine, CNN.com, The Washington Post, The Guardian, In These Times, the Nation, McSweeney’s, TechCrunch, the Progressive, Truthout and We Will Not Cancel Us — a book by adrienne maree brown, among many others. Additional appearances include documentaries Outfoxed (2004), Miss Representation (2011), 13TH, the acclaimed documentary by director Ava Duvernay (2016), and Free For All: Inside the Public Library (2020).

  • Natalie Foster (she/her) is the President and Co-founder of the Economic Security Project, a network dedicated to advancing a guaranteed income in America and reining in the unprecedented concentration of corporate power, and a senior fellow at the Aspen Institute Future of Work Initiative.

    Prior to that she was the CEO and co-founder of Rebuild the Dream, a platform for people–driven economic change. Natalie served as digital director for President Obama’s Organizing for America (OFA) and the Democratic National Committee. She built the first digital department at the Sierra Club and served as the deputy organizing director for MoveOn.org. She’s been awarded fellowships at the Institute for the Future, Rockwood Leadership Institute and New America California, and is a board member of the California Budget and Policy Center, Liberation in a Generation, and Next River. She grew up in Kansas and is raising her family in Oakland, CA.

  • Glen Galaich (he/him) joined the Stupski Foundation as CEO in 2015. Glen leads the overall strategy of the Foundation and oversees the programmatic focus areas and operations. Glen previously served as CEO of The Philanthropy Workshop, whose mission was to educate, inspire, and activate a peer network of effective, engaged, and innovative philanthropists. His career in strategic philanthropy started with the founding team of the Global Philanthropy Forum, where he was responsible for launching the first and second Conferences on Borderless Giving. He also served at Human Rights Watch as the deputy director of development for North America, where he had strategic oversight of the Human Rights Watch Council, a network of supporters and opinion leaders committed to raising money for, and awareness of, human rights in five major cities.

  • Teddy Zmrhal (he/him) is committed to elevating humanity in business. Taking a relationship-centered and design-minded approach, he has co-founded startups and non-profit boards, grown teams, and (re)built organizations within IDEO and Salesforce. In his current role as Global Vice President, Design and Innovation at Salesforce, Teddy leads a cross-disciplinary team responsible for connecting 1500+ designers across the company, shaping a design practice that embeds social values, and scaling design practices across Salesforce’s 100,000+ person ecosystem.

    As a serial global design leader, entrepreneur, intrapreneur, advisor, investor, mentor, and learning designer, Teddy creates and nurtures initiatives with room to grow into themselves. Always facing forward, always taking the long-view, he has the endurance and commitment to work at the speed of trust.

    Inside and outside of work, Teddy invests his time, energy, and attention in opportunities that center equity. He sits on the Board of Alonzo King’s Lines Ballet, the Advisory Board to the Board of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Academy, and the Board of Next River. He is most proud of his curious and thoughtful son, Edison.

  • Sabrina Hersi Issa (she/her) is a human rights technologist and angel investor committed to leveraging innovation as a tool to build power and unlock opportunity and dignity for all. She does this through her work in technology, media, and investments.

    Sabrina is a Race and Technology Fellow at Stanford University’s Digital Civil Society Lab and is Chief Executive Officer of Be Bold Media, a global innovation agency that helps changemakers chart their moonshots and build bold futures. Sabrina is an opinion contributor to MSNBC and NBC News on technology, power, and human potential. She leads Future Well, a fund dedicated to the well-being of communities of color, investing in companies and leaders dedicated to keeping Black and brown people alive, well, and thriving. Sabrina is a VC-in-Residence with Pipeline Angels. She created the Bold Prize.

    Sabrina served on the Board of Directors for the Project on Middle East Democracy and NARAL Pro-Choice America. She advises Run for Something, VOW for Girls, and Tech Congress. Sabrina is a graduate of Ohio State University where she studied International Relations & Diplomacy, Political Science, Women Studies, and was a term member of the Council on Foreign Relations.

  • John L. S. Simpkins (he/him) is President and CEO of MDC, an organization working on behalf of racial equity and economic mobility in the South. Previously, he served as VP Aspen Global Leadership Network at the Aspen Institute. Prior to that, he was an executive with Prisma Health, where he led collaborative, evidence-based efforts to promote health innovation, access, and equity. He also is a Senior Lecturer at Duke Law School. John was appointed to the Senior Executive Service in the Obama Administration where he served as general counsel for the U.S. Agency for International Development and deputy general counsel for the White House Office of Management and Budget. Before joining the government, he was of counsel with Wyche, P.A., visiting assistant professor of law at the University of Victoria, and an assistant professor at Charleston School of Law. He continues to work as a consultant and researcher in comparative constitutional law and constitutional design. John received his AB in government from Harvard College and a JD and LLM in international and comparative law from Duke University School of Law. He is a Fellow of the fourth class of the Liberty Fellowship.

  • Cat Willis (she/her) is the Founder and Executive Director of the Tannery World Dance and Cultural Center. She is originally from Rochester, N.Y., where she began her dance education with Garth Fagan Dance, with whom she studied extensively for six years. She holds a Bachelor’s Degree in Dance from SUNY Brockport. Cat has served on the Arts Council of Santa Cruz Grants Advisory Committee, the Arts Council of Santa Cruz grants panel, and County Park Friends Advisory Committee. She received the 2014 Gail Rich Award for her excellence in arts leadership in Santa Cruz County. Her cross cultural studies and work in the dance arts have led her to West Africa and Jamaica where she lectures at the Edna Manley School of Visual and Performing Arts in Kingston.

    Cat's dedication to racial justice and equity spans a lifetime of education, community organizing, and activism through the platform of arts and culture. She was the 418 Project’s 2009 Artist in Residence and the Theatre Bay Area’s CA$H grant recipient in dance for her evening-length dance production Diaspora, Food for Thought: Roots, Ritual, Re-imagined; an exploration of ancestral wisdom, racial trauma, and a re-imagined Black Diaspora in the American experience. She is a founding member of the Santa Cruz County Black Coalition for Justice and Racial Equity and is founding director of the Black Health Matters Initiative alongside community partners; County Park Friends, United Way of, NAACP Santa Cruz Chapter, Blended Bridge, and the SCC Black Coalition for Justice and Racial Equity. She currently sits on the Community Foundation of Santa Cruz County RISE Together leadership circle and the Santa Cruz County's Commission on Anti-Racism, Economic & Social (CARES) Justice.

Our Collaborators


  • Mariah Rankine-Landers (she/her) is most proud of her 12 years as a kindergarten and first grade teacher. She stepped out of the classroom in 2011 to lead for teacher leadership and school transformation at Alameda County Office of Education, a role she was asked to lead due to her outstanding methodology and equity outcomes in her classroom leading through the arts.  Mariah is sought out for her ability to design responsive curriculum centered in creative inquiry. She’s a coach to school leaders, classroom teachers, and educators at large to interrupt master narratives in favor of systems whose outcomes are justice.

    Mariah’s work promotes and invites the educational system to redesign its purposes with the role of the contemporary artists at the forefront of how young people can develop the capacity for imagination, innovation, perception, and critical thought that will bridge and build a society that we all deserve.  Mariah leads with conviction that if you tend to your heart, tend to the art that motivates you, and lead with love, that our schools can dissolve the oppressive systems they uphold and become the sanctuaries we all need to fully bloom and become.  She was particularly motivated to co-found Rise Up! An American Curriculum inspired by the musical “Hamilton, An American Musical” to transform teaching and learning through creative inquiry. Mariah as a doorway to activate the changes in attitudes, assumptions and patterns of knowing that teachers and students should wrestle with.

      In recent years, Mariah Rankine-Landers, has been a fellow for the National Arts Strategies Harvard Business Program, Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, and Harvard’s Project Zero.  She was featured on The Electric Company (PBS), The Teaching Channel, Education.com, Teaching Artists Guild, and Happy Black Girl.  She co-founded Canerow, a resource and database of literature for children of color written by authors of color.  She is also a founder of Chapter 510, a writing center for youth in Oakland and served on the board for 7 years.  She still studies tap dance, which has been a lifelong love affair.

Studio Pathways

  • Saneta deVuono-powell (she/her) leads strategy on policies and practices to improve racial health disparities and community stability. She is passionate about engaging in work that simultaneously addresses immediate community needs while planning for long term stability and systems change.

    Saneta has over a decade of experience working on issues of racial justice, housing, and health and in conducting various types of community-based participatory research.

    Before founding Ground Works Consulting, Saneta deVuono-powell worked at ChangeLab Solutions, a national organization focused on public health law and policy. She was the co-director of ChangeLab Solutions Healthy Neighborhood team, which developed intersectional strategies to address the social determinants of health and oversaw the organization's health and housing practice. Saneta received her bachelor's degree from Sarah Lawrence College and both her law degree and her master's degree in city planning from UC Berkeley. Saneta is currently pursuing a PhD in Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at Emory and sits on the board of the Texas Observer and The Safe Return Project.

Groundworks Consulting

  • Sarah Cowell (she/her) is an award-winning dancer, choreographer, arts educator and nonprofit leader who creates powerful collaborative experiences through movement, intimate storytelling and scathing political commentary.

    For 30 years she was a leader at Destiny Arts Center, a youth arts organization based in Oakland, whose mission is to inspire and ignite social change through the arts.

    Since leaving Destiny in 2020, Sarah has worked with arts organizations, colleges and universities, nonprofits and foundations, as a performer, curator, speaker, facilitator, collaborator and curriculum writer. In August of 2025 Sarah accepted the position of Artistic Director of Dance Mission Theater in San Francisco.


  • Aáron Heard, she/they, is a Queer, Black artist, facilitator, and peace being committed to our collective liberation through the intersection of art, healing, and education. Rooted in love and community, Aáron is grounded in purpose, leads with enthusiasm, questions with a critical curiosity, and prioritizes learning, reflection and growth. Aáron is passionate about facilitation experiences and processes that invite participants to connect with their bodies and spirits in nourishing, healing, and transformative ways. When she isn't facilitating, you can find her playing drums, writing poetry, or painting.