Our board members
Sabrina Abney
Sabrina is unit director of the Salvation Army Boys and Girls Club in the Ray Warren Homes public housing community in Greensboro. The unit offers after-school and summer enrichment programs including the Ray Warren Drum Corps, which she coordinates and co-founded.
She was born and raised in Greensboro and graduated from N.C. A&T State University with a degree in speech communications. As a child, she participated in a program organized by the late Ervin Brisbon, a legendary Greensboro activist. Brisbon is remembered for inspiring dozens of white people to make a lifelong commitment to embracing an anti-racist lens at the same time that he empowered his black neighbors to take control of making change in their own lives.
Marilyn Baird
Marilyn is a longtime labor organizer who directs the economic justice programs of the Beloved Community Center of Greensboro. Her duties include coordinating the Worker's Rights Center and the Southern Faith and Labor Community Alliance.
A native of Greensboro who lived many years in Washington, D.C., Marilyn spent 15 years as southeast director of the Communications Workers of America. After retiring from that position, she was the organizing director of Grassroots Leadership's privatization of prisons project.
Passionate about the need for workers to use democracy to take control of their own lives and working conditions, she is co-chair of Greensboro's Minimum Wage Campaign, which is using the electoral process to increase the city's minimum wage.
She is an active member of New Hope Missionary Baptist Church, where she serves as the church hostess and as the staff person for the nonprofit New Hope Community Development Group. A mother of four and grandmother of seven, she lives in Greensboro with her husband Lawrence Baird.
Erica "Ricky" Bratz
Ricky is an organic farmer, activist, grant writer and member of the Cakalak Thunder Radical Drum Corps, which uses Brazilian Samba music to "drum fear into the hearts of tyrants" (and drum zazz into protest marches).
A native of New Hampshire, she came to Greensboro in 2002 to attend Guilford College. She previously served as an organizer for the Justice at Smithfield Campaign of the United Food and Commercial Workers International Union, fighting poverty wages, brutal conditions and crippling injuries faced by workers at Smithfield Foods' Tar Heel hog processing plant, which is the world's largest.
Among others, her interests include plants and food, medicinal herbs and nutrition, and learning language.
Jonathan Henderson
Jonathan is a musician, activist, and teacher involved in a number of cultural and political projects in and around Greensboro. He is a founding member of Cakalak Thunder, a radical street band and community organization that brings infectious energy and rhythm to community events, political rallies and street demonstrations around the southeast and beyond. In 2005 he received a grant to set up the Greensboro Recording Collective and most recently helped establish The HIVE, a collectively-run community space where the F4DC office is located. Jonathan also lives in a collective house in the Glenwood neighborhood of Greensboro and contributes enthusiastically to several musical projects, including the quixotic band, INVISIBLE.
A native of Durham, North Carolina and a 2005 graduate of Guilford College, he teaches music and physical education to elementary students at The Greensboro Montessori School.
Stephen Johnson
Stephen designs and analyzes certification exams for CASTLE Worldwide, a certification and licensure testing company. He is also a principal in the consulting firm RPM Data, which provides research, evaluation, and analysis services in education, psychology, and science and technology.
Stephen has worked in the field of educational psychology and measurement since 1992. Over the past 12 years, he has developed strong skills in research methods (field and experimental), measurement and assessment, leadership and project management focus groups and panels, advanced statistics, survey design and analysis, report writing and presentation, and program and policy evaluation.
He has bachelor's degrees in education and psychology, a graduate certificate in education, and a Ph.D. from the University of Western Australia in Perth, Australia. In addition to credentials and experience in research design, testing, statistics, measurement, and computer networks, he has experience in business, government, K-12, and tertiary education.
A native of Australia, he brings an international perspective to his life and work. His passions include organic gardening, environmental sustainability, and economic justice. He is a trained popular education leader for United for a Fair Economy, and also works closely with the Fund for Southern Communities.
He lives in Greensboro with his partner Marnie Thompson.
Muktha Jost
Muktha is an associate professor of curriculum and instruction in the School of Education at N.C. A&T State University. Her research and writing focus on instructional and assistive technology, antiracist pedagogy in teacher education, instructional design, and interpretivist foundations. She recently served as one of the seven commissioners for the history-making Greensboro Truth and Reconciliation Commission.
Born in Tanjore, India, Muktha has a bachelor’s degree in public relations from Madras University, India, a master’s in journalism and mass communications from the University of Kansas, and a Ph.D. in instructional technology from Iowa State University.
Muktha spends a great deal of time attempting to understand how people (including herself) learn, and in designing rich and playful learning situations that can make shared understanding possible. One of her deep concerns is the invisibility of children of color in public schooling, especially African-American and Hispanic-American children, and the teachers in her courses are subject to intense exploration of critical race and class issues as a consequence.
Muktha has two hobbies and an aspiration: blowing bubbles, starting water fights, and becoming a member of Cakalak Thunder (the aspiration). She lives in Greensboro with her husband Mark, and two teenagers, Diya and Alec.
Kyle Lambelet
Kyle is media, communications and arts coordinator for the Beloved Community Center in Greensboro. A native of Wichita, Kansas he and his partner Nicole came to Greensboro as interns with Word & World, a small nonprofit that seeks to provide education, training, and capacity-building for Christian disciples dedicated to the work of social transformation.
He previously worked as a resident volunteer and as part of the Martin Luther King Campaign for Economic Justice at the Open Door Community, an intentional Christian community in Atlanta, Ga. Working primarily with homeless neighbors, Kyle was active in responding both to immediate needs of hunger and shelter as well as systemic oppression that led to such needs in the first place.
He has a bachelor's degree in biblical studies and theology from Azusa Pacific University in Azusa, California. Using his theological education as a frame, Kyle began his work as an organizer mobilizing fellow students to be active in social justice campaigns, particularly against the Iraq war.
Currently a member of Faith Community Church, where he sings in the choir, Kyle is an amateur musician. Though he only has nine and a half fingers, he still enjoys picking on the banjo and singing folks songs with friends.
Nicole Lambelet
Nicole Lambelet and her partner Kyle came to Greensboro as interns with Word & World, a small nonprofit that seeks to provide education, training, and capacity-building for Christian disciples dedicated to the work of social transformation.
A native of Albuquerque, New Mexico, she is a graduate of Azusa Pacific University, where she studied art and theology. Although Nicole is not any longer enrolled in formal schooling, she continues to see herself as a learner and student of the movement. Nicole spends much of her time volunteering with the Beloved Community Center, playing drums with local samba group, Cakalak Thunder, and supporting the ongoing organizing of the Farm Labor Organizing Committee, UFCW's Justice at Smithfield Campaign, and a local community center called the HIVE.
A former athlete, she was a gymnast and pole vaulter who at one time could bench press 220 pounds.
Lorenzo "Logie" Meachum
Logie is a folk artist, motivator and educator who presents to audiences his own brand of age-appropriate entertainment mixed with a combative spirituality. He has been performing literature, stories, and music nationally for more than 30 years, and has presented lectures and workshops in settings ranging from Harvard University to church fellowship halls.
A blues musician and ethnomusicologist, he is a founder of the Piedmont Blues Preservation Society and in 1995 received the group's Keeping The Blues Alive Award. Among other honors, Logie participated in the American College Theater Festival Finals of 1999 as composer of the musical score to N.C. A&T's winning performance of David Richmond by Samuel Hay. In 2004, he portrayed a blues singer in the Academy Award-winning short film Two Soldiers, adapted by Aaron Schneider from a work by William Faulkner.
As a writer, one of his works, "Butter's Place," appears in the collection, A Turn In Time: Piedmont Writers At The Millennium.
As an educator, Logie has taught courses including African American Studies, public speaking, composition and theater history at institutions including Virginia Polytechnic and State University in Blacksburg, Virginia, the University of North Carolina at Greensboro and N.C. A& T State University. He has a bachelor of fine arts in technical theater from N.C. A&T, a master's in education from Virginia Tech, and is working on a Ph.D. at UNCG.
He lives in Greensboro with his wife Tomi and his two sons Ishmael and Isa. His mission is to be a catalyst in the discussion of the meaning of humanity and to utilize his talents to create a voice for children and those individuals who inhabit the often overlooked quadrants of our culture.
Isabell Moore
Isabell is an activist, writer, teacher and student focused on economic and racial justice issues, as well as on fighting war and police brutality. She grew up in Greensboro, NC and returned to live there in 2003 after living, studying and working for six years in New York, where she was involved in fighting for protection of community gardens and opposing corporate globalization.
She earned her B.A. in historical sociology from Columbia University, where she focused on race, class, gender and social movements. Most recently she worked for the Justice at Smithfield campaign organizing community folks to support workers at the world's largest hog processing plant in Tar Heel, NC. Currently working on a master's degree in Women and Gender Studies at UNCG, she is a graduate assistant for the university's African American Studies Program and a trainer in training for the anti-racism process of the Leadership and Empowerment Institute.
She is a longtime member of Cakalak Thunder Radical Drum Corps, Southerners On New Ground, and Project South and recently became a member of the National Committee of the War Resisters' League. She also frequently writes for Left Turn magazine.
Steve Sumerford
Steve is a longtime peace and justice activist and assistant director of the Greensboro Public Library, where he oversees the library's extensive array of cultural, literary and educational programs.
Steve was the first director of the Glenwood Branch Library, which is well-known throughout the city and state for its innovative work with immigrants and refugees. The branch has won numerous grants and awards, including the Peace Award from the N.C. Peace Corps Society.
Currently, in addition to his work as an assistant director, Steve is the project director for Poetry GSO, an annual literary festival that seeks to build community through poetry," and "One City, One Book," a biannual project to encourage reading and community-building.
Steve, who spent two years teaching English for the Time-Life Corporation in Nagoya, Japan, and conducting oral history research in Hiroshima, is the recipient of numerous awards including the Z. Smith Reynolds Foundation's Nancy Susan Reynolds Award for Community Building and the N.C. Library Association's Public Librarian of the Year Award.
He serves on the Board of Directors of the Moses Cone-Wesley Long Community Health Foundation, the United Arts Council, the Beloved Community Center, the local task force of the Greensboro Truth and Community Reconciliation Project, and is active with several other community organizations.
A native North Carolinian, he received his BA at UNC-Chapel Hill and his Masters in Library and Information Science from North Carolina Central University. He lives in Greensboro with his wife Evelyn Smith.
Joya Wesley
Joya Wesley is a freelance writer and editor with experience in print and broadcast journalism, as well as public relations, who often uses her skills in support of peace and justice efforts. She was communications director for the history-making Greensboro Truth and Reconciliation Commission.
Born in Alabama, Joya was raised in Los Angeles, Calif. After earning a sociology degree from Stanford University in 1988, she began a journalism career with the Greensboro News & Record. She later worked for the Associated Press, which she served in Milwaukee, New York and Raleigh as an editor, writer and news manager.
She returned to Greensboro in 1995, and has served in roles including editor of the Carolina Peacemaker (the city's African American newsweekly), editorial writer for the News & Record, public relations writer for N.C. A&T State University, and producer and host of music and talk shows with public radio station WNAA-FM.
Among other community involvements, she is co-chair of the Peace and Justice Network, which keeps progressive activists informed about local events of interest to the progressive activist community.
Joya is co-author with Lisa Magarrell of "The Politics of Truth: Greensboro's search for a new narrative," which will be published in 2008 by the University of Pennsylvania Press.
