Social Justice Coalition
Advisory Council
Alexis McGill Johnson
President & CEO,
Planned Parenthood
Healthcare
Alexis McGill Johnson is the President and CEO of Planned Parenthood Federation of America and the Planned Parenthood Action Fund. Planned Parenthood provides vital health services to 2.4 million people each year through its more than 600 health centers across the country.
Alexis McGill Johnson brings a researcher’s lens to the justice issues of our time. She is a renowned social and racial justice leader, lifelong political and cultural organizer, and a tireless advocate for reproductive rights and access to quality, affordable health care.
She is the co-founder and former co-director of the Perception Institute, a consortium of researchers, advocates, and strategists who translate cutting edge mind science research on race, gender, ethnic, and other identities into solutions that reduce bias and discrimination, and promote belonging.
She currently serves on the board of Color of Change, Revolutions Per Minute, and Narrative Initiative. She is a founder of the Culture Group as well as a frequent commentator on FOX News, CNN, MSNBC, and in the press. She holds degrees from Princeton and Yale Universities and has taught political science at both Yale and Wesleyan Universities.
Alicia Garza
Principal , Black Futures Lab
Police Reform
Alicia Garza founded the Black Futures Lab to make Black communities powerful in politics. In 2018, the Black Futures Lab conducted the Black Census Project -- the largest survey of Black communities in over 150 years.
Alicia believes that Black communities deserve what all communities deserve -- to be powerful in every aspect of their lives. An innovator, strategist, organizer, and cheeseburger enthusiast, she is the co-creator of #BlackLivesMatter and the Black Lives Matter Global Network, an international organizing project to end state violence and oppression against Black people. The Black Lives Matter Global Network now has 40 chapters in
4 countries.
Alicia serves as the Strategy & Partnerships Director for the National Domestic Workers Alliance, the nation’s premier voice for millions of domestic workers in the United States. She is also the co-founder of Supermajority, a new home for women’s activism. She shares her thoughts on politics and pop culture on her podcast, Lady Don't Take No.
Garza was born and raised in the Bay Area, lives and loves in Oakland, California, and she warns you -- hashtags don’t start movements. People do.
Arlan Hamilton
Founder & Managing Partner Backstage Capital
Economic Justice
Arlan Hamilton is a remarkable entrepreneur who built a venture capital fund from the ground up, while homeless. She is the Founder and Managing Partner of Backstage Capital, a venture capital firm dedicated to minimizing funding disparities in tech by investing in high-potential founders who are people of color, women, and/or LGBT. Started in 2015, Backstage has now invested more than $10M into 100 startups led by underestimated founders and has been featured in Forbes, Fortune, Wall Street Journal, CNN Money, Inc., Entrepreneur, and Quartz.
Arlan made history by making the cover of Fast Company as the first Black woman who is not an entertainer or athlete. She and Backstage Studio were also the subjects of Season 7 of the popular Gimlet Media podcast, StartUp.
Dr. Melissa
Harris-Perry
Maya Angelou Presidential Chair at Wake Forest University
Melissa Harris-Perry is the Maya Angelou Presidential Chair at Wake Forest University. She is the founding director of the Anna Julia Cooper Center. Melissa is Editor-in-Large at ELLE.com. She hosted the television show “Melissa Harris-Perry” from 2012-2016 on weekend mornings on MSNBC. She is the author of the award-winning Barbershops, Bibles, and BET: Everyday Talk and Black Political Thought, and Sister Citizen: Shame, Stereotypes, and Black Women in America.
Harris-Perry received her B.A. degree in English from Wake Forest University and her Ph.D. degree in political science from Duke University. She also studied theology at Union Theological Seminary in New York. Harris-Perry previously served on the faculty of the University of Chicago, Princeton University, and Tulane University.
Dr. Shaun Harper
Provost Professor, Rossier School of Education and the Marshall School of Business at the University of Southern California
Educational Equity
Shaun R. Harper is a Provost Professor in the Rossier School of Education and the Marshall School of Business at the University of Southern California. He also is the Clifford and Betty Allen Chair in Urban Leadership, founder and executive director of the USC Race and Equity Center, president of the American Educational Research Association, a past president of the Association for the Study of Higher Education, and Editor at Large of TIME.
Dr. Harper’s research focuses primarily on race, gender, and other dimensions of equity in an array of organizational contexts, including K-12 schools, colleges and universities, and corporations. Johns Hopkins University Press is publishing his 13th book, Race Matters in College.
His research has been cited in more than 14,000 published studies and funded by more than $15 million in grants from Atlantic Philanthropies and the Lumina, Bill & Melinda Gates, Ford, Kresge, W.K. Kellogg, and Open Society Foundations. The New York Times, Los Angeles Times, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, and several thousand other news outlets have quoted Professor Harper and featured his research.
lIyasah Shabazz
Professor & Author
Ilyasah is a professor, social activist, community organizer, speaker and author of four award-winning publications: Growing Up X, Malcolm Little: The Boy Who Grew Up to Become Malcolm X, X: A Novel and Betty Before X.
Ilyasah promotes higher education for at-risk youth, interfaith dialogue to build bridges between cultures for young leaders of the world, and she participates on international humanitarian delegations. She served as a member of the U.S. Delegation that accompanied President Bill Clinton to South Africa to commemorate the election of President Nelson Mandela and the Education & Economic Business Development initiative and with the U.S. Interfaith Leadership Delegation to Mali, West Africa with the Malaria No More initiative.
She holds a Master of Science in Education & Human Resource Development from Fordham University; a Bachelor's of Science in Biology from SUNY/New Paltz; and is currently an adjunct professor at John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York City.
Tamika Mallory
Co-Founder, Until Freedom
Tamika D. Mallory is nationally recognized civil rights activist and seasoned community organizer. She served as the youngest ever Executive Director of the National Action Network. Mallory was the co-chair of the Women’s March on Washington, the largest single day demonstration in US history. She most recently gave what has been dubbed “the speech of a generation” – State of Emergency in the wake of the murder of George Floyd. She is an expert in the areas of gun violence prevention, criminal justice reform, and grassroots organizing.
Tiffany Dena Loftin
National Director for the Youth and College Division at the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP)
Voting Rights
Tiffany Dena Loftin serves as the National Director for the Youth and College Division at the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). Her mission is to train, organize and uplift young Black leaders everywhere who fight for the racial, social, and economic equity of all people.
Ms. Loftin has a five-year background in national labor union organizing working at the American Federation of Teachers (AFT), the National Education Association (NEA), and the American Federation of Labor-Council of Industrial Organizations (AFL-CIO). As a labor civil rights organizer, she created the labor unions only national curriculum that helps workers understand better how race and inequality are part of every collective bargaining fight.
Ms. Loftin has been nationally recognized, appearing on TV One, Fox News, ABC, People’s World, NBC, National Public Radio, and Al Jazeera. A passionate organizer for the liberation of communities of color. In 2015, she was appointed by President Barack Obama to serve on the White House Initiative on Educational Excellence for African Americans in Higher Education.
