Shanelle is a Communications Strategist who used her CoreAlign fellowship to develop her founding ideas for the Radical Communicators Network. Her story speaks to the vulnerability and self-awareness needed to center people and relationships in leadership.
Juana Rosa is a first-generation immigrant and reproductive justice organizer who places great importance on relationships and responsibility as elements of community care. She names building a community of practice (in her words: uplifting, protecting, cultivating, and mentoring the leadership of women of color) as central to her definition of reproductive justice. CoreAlign values of radical collaboration have informed her approach to social justice work as well as her current leadership of a reproductive justice coalition.
In just four months, Liza went from having no connection to community organizing to starting the DC abortion fund. Liza’s story showcases her speaking race to power, and directing her leadership toward taking on racism in white-led organizations. Her CoreAlign fellowships helped her deepen her racial justice lens, and make the connection between relationships and mission-driven work.
Kelly is a leader in national reproductive rights advocacy for state policy. Her time at CoreAlign taught her the importance of a community of practice as she learned to build relationships and value her own emotional connection to her work. After CoreAlign, she built SiX’s Reproductive Rights program from the ground up, letting the spirit of innovation, feedback, and trusted relationships guide her strategy.
Brittany has been a lifelong activist whose work centers on supporting girls of color’s sexual and reproductive health. She shares how she reclaimed innovation, after many years of building activism as a tool for resistance and resilience. She used the CoreAlign fellowship to build her own innovation mindset, redefining technology with community stories of survival.
Kari’s experience working in a wide range of settings has shaped her work around two questions: “What do I have access to, and how can I get that to the people who need it?” and CoreAlign helped Kari learn how to test ideas and fail fast to learn fast. Since her experience with CoreAlign, Kari has directed her work toward working with white women to dismantle internalized white supremacy.
Elizabeth has always been committed to making the world a better place for women of color. At CoreAlign, she found a community of practice to support her in developing a leadership initiative for progressive Black women. The CoreAlign fellowship also helped Elizabeth partner with like-minded people working to transform how people understand, prioritize, and address racial disparities in maternal health.
Lisa is a clinician and educator who has worked to replace mainstream public health lessons in her background with user-centered engagement and an equity lens. Her story describes developing an understanding of race, class and gender early on in her Jewish day school and public high school experiences, which CoreAlign helped to reawaken and to sharpen.
As a young person, Lilliann noticed and named injustice when she saw it, and longed for spaces where she wasn’t the only one speaking up. Her story tells about her search for a community of practice and care. Lilliann’s time working with CoreAlign taught her to remove herself from spaces that didn’t value her and to see her own healing as part of her reproductive justice work.
Charmaine is a writer and researcher whose work focuses on the intersections of race, gender, and wellness. Her CoreAlign experience re-grounded her in a community of practice and gave her permission to try on and test new modes of healing for our movement.
