Saluting Our National Rock Stars

Kimberlé Crenshaw

Crenshaw is the Co-Founder and Executive Director of the African American Policy Forum, and the founder and Executive Director of the Center for Intersectionality and Social Policy Studies at Columbia Law School. She is the Promise Institute Professor at UCLA Law School and the Isidor and Seville Sulzbacher Professor at Columbia Law School. She is popularly known for her development of “intersectionality,” “Critical Race Theory,” and the #SayHerName Campaign.

Adrianne Shropshire

Shropshire is executive director of BlackPAC and the affiliated nonpartisan Black Progressive Action Coalition. She is a leader in developing model integrated voter engagement programs that build voter power over multiple election cycles. She, along with Black progressive leaders from across the country, founded BlackPAC in 2016 to develop a sustainable infrastructure for Black political engagement.

LaTosha Brown

Brown is the co-founder of the Black Voters Matter Fund and the BVM Capacity Building Institute, and is adamant about ensuring that all human beings have access to quality education, safety, security, peace, love and happiness. Striving daily to hear the voices of women in leadership amplified and supported, she is working to eliminate human suffering through her vision of the Southern Black Girls & Women’s Consortium.

Johnnetta B.Cole

Cole, is an accomplished educator and museum professional; noted speaker and author on issues of diversity, equity, accessibility, and inclusion; and a committed advocate for social justice. She currently serves as the National Chair and Seventh President of the National Council of Negro Women, an advocacy organization with more than 2 million members, working in the interest of women’s rights and civil rights. She rose to national prominence as the first African American woman President of Spelman College and, later, as President of Bennett College, making her the only person to serve as president of both historically Black colleges for women in the United States.

Melanie L. Campbell

Campbell is president/CEO, National Coalition on Black Civic Participation, convener, Black Women’s Roundtable. Campbell is recognized as one of the hardest working leaders in today’s Civil Rights, Women’s Rights and Social Justice Movement. Campbell recently celebrated 25 years of service with The National Coalition and has served as an advisor to U. S. presidents, congressional members, corporate, labor, non-profit executives, philanthropists, faith leaders and others — on critical issues impacting Black America.

Stacey Abrams

Abrams is a New York Times bestselling author, serial entrepreneur, nonprofit CEO and political leader. After serving for eleven years in the Georgia House of Representatives, seven as Democratic Leader, In 2018, Abrams became the Democratic nominee for Governor of Georgia, winning more votes than any other Democrat in the state’s history. Abrams was the first black woman to become the gubernatorial nominee for a major party in the United States, and she was the first black woman and first Georgian to deliver a Response to the State of the Union.

Glynda Carr

Carr is president, CEO and co-founder of Higher Heights for America which is at the center of the national movement to grow Black women’s political power from the voting booth to elected office. Her work to date has helped to elect 11 Black women to the U.S. Congress–including one to the Senate–and increase the number of Black women holding statewide executive office–including helping to elect the first Black woman to serve as New York State attorney general.

Kristen Clarke

Clarke is the president & executive director of the National Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law (Lawyers’ Committee) and leads one of the country’s most important national civil rights organizations in the pursuit of equal justice for all.  The Lawyers’ Committee seeks to promote fair housing and community development, economic justice, voting rights, equal educational opportunity, criminal justice, judicial diversity and more.

Ifill is the President and Director-Counsel of the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, Inc. (LDF), the nation’s premier civil rights law organization fighting for racial justice and equality. The lawyers at the Legal Defense Fund developed and executed the legal strategy that led to the Supreme Court’s decision in Brown v. Board of Education, widely regarded as the most transformative and monumental legal decision of the 20th century. Ifill is the second woman to lead the organization.

Barbara Arnwine

Arnwine is the president & founder of the Transformative Justice Coalition and is internationally renowned for her contributions on critical justice issues including the passage of the landmark Civil Rights Act of 1991 and the 2006 reauthorization of provisions of the Voting Rights Act. Currently, she also serves as Co-Chair and Facilitator of the National Commission for Voter Justice, the Millennial Votes Matters Convenings and the Voting Rights Alliance.

Jotaka Eaddy

Eaddy is the founder and CEO of Full Circle Strategies, LLC – a social impact consulting firm committed to advancing transformative change and global impact. Described as the “Olivia Pope of Silicon Valley” by Forbes Magazine, she is a dedicated and seasoned strategist with more than 20 years of experience in policy, advocacy, and movement building. In addition to domestic advocacy, she has lobbied within various international forums including the United Nations Human Rights Council, African Union, the Organization of American States, and Council of Europe, among others.