Cecilia came undocumented to the U.S. from Argentina to live her dream as an openly transgender woman. Her journey has included 10 years as a sex worker, frequent targeting by police, and incarceration. Today she works to elevate and protect the trans community – founding Decrim NY to legitimize the sex trades, fighting for the Gender Expression Non-Discrimination Act, leading the NEW Pride Agenda, and helping to expand access to health services for transgender people across New York State. Cecilia also founded Trans Equity Consulting in 2019, where she and her team help organizations care for and connect with trans and queer communities. And in her spare time, she celebrates stories of the trans community as a playwright and actress. 

Alt text: Black and white photograph of Cecilia Gentili who is building a New York that celebrates the joy, talent, and resiliency of trans people.

New York is a welcoming and inclusive city for blind people, thanks to world-class transit, vibrant accessible culture, and a talented community of 300,000+ folks who are blind or have low vision. Even so, 70% of blind / low vision New Yorkers are unemployed, and gaps remain in NYC’s accessibility ecosystem. Chancey is a leading advocate for her community as the founder of the Dimensions Project, a free and open tactile graphics and Braille lab housed at the New York Public Library. She started the initiative to teach New Yorkers about accessible images, models and data representations; today it’s a fully fledged, internationally recognized lab helping individuals and New York institutions – museums, restaurants, and transit systems – create graphics, 3D models and Braille materials to support tactile literacy for Blind and low vision New Yorkers.

Alt text: Black and white photograph of Chancey Fleet who works to end image poverty among Blind and low-vision New Yorkers through tactile graphics, 3D models, and Braille.

Jason knows that children deserve every chance to succeed – access that transcends zip code and opportunities that jump economic hurdles. Growing up in the Queensbridge Houses, he’s faced those hurdles, and now, as the father of a teenager, he also understands the constraints that can trip up working parents. Jason launched Hood Code to address some of these issues and grounded the program in his own NYCHA community, offering free coding classes to learners ages 8 – 15. Over the program’s 13 weeks, Hood Code kids learn creative problem solving, coding basics, and computer competency. Hood Code acts as both an educational opportunity for young people and a set of extra hands for working parents, bringing a spark to NYCHA community centers in the form of essential 21st century skills.

Alt text: Black and white photograph of Jason Gibson who is teaching free coding classes to NYCHA’s youngest learners.

Diana wears many hats. She’s the owner of Friends and Lovers, one of Brooklyn’s danciest spots, a community organizer, and the founder of NYC Nightlife United (NNU), a coalition of leaders dedicated to a safer, more inclusive scene. Originally established to help venues navigate the pandemic, NNU has become the incubator of necessary and urgent initiatives, programs, and solutions for the nightlife community. They’ve piloted and scaled mental health supports for nightlife professionals, and distributed over $145K in cash relief to venues and nightlife workers during the pandemic. Based on these successes, Diana envisions a time when every nightlife professional – from barbacks to security – works in a sustainable, safe environment and NYC’s after hours scene delivers the best of the city’s electric energy.

Alt text: Black and white photograph of Diana Mora who is making sure NYC nightlife reflects and protects New Yorkers’ diverse, creative energy.

Jill is a special education teacher and behavior analyst whose 15-year career left her frustrated by special education models failing to reach young neurodiverse children equitably. She launched a new model, The Inspired Community Project, rooted in the Bronx where demand for programs is high while supply lags – nearly 40% of children ages 1-3 who are eligible for services lack support. Having worked for and managed programs, Jill has the experience to run her organization differently: increasing staff support and promotional opportunities to improve retention, co-developing a training model to hire people from within the community, and working with local organizations to create a universal community uplift.

Alt text: Black and white photograph of Jillian Moses who is launching a new kind of early intervention center for neurodiverse children in the Bronx

Family separation happens not just at the US-Mexico border. It regularly occurs within New York’s five boroughs, with disproportionate impacts on poor communities of color. Over 92% of children in foster care in NYC are Black or Latinx. Families below the poverty line are 22X more likely to be swept into the child welfare system than families with even slightly higher incomes. Despite multiple barriers to challenging and changing this unequal unjust system, David’s years of experience as a public defender representing New York families in court have prepared him to hold the government accountable. He recently founded the Family Justice Law Center (FJLC) to litigate for families unfairly separated and those caught up in child and family services’ tangled web. FJLC will vindicate the rights of underrepresented New Yorkers, change the devastating systems that hurt families, and shed much needed light on entrenched injustice.

Alt text: Black and white photograph of David Shalleck-Klein who is protecting New York families from unnecessary and harmful separation.

Jeannette is a lifelong Bronxite and champion for families grappling with the juvenile justice system. Drawing on her own experience as a parent advocate, PTA member, and mom who felt hopeless when her own child became justice-involved, Jeannette became the Executive Director of Justice 4 Families in 2020, a non-profit organization that trains families and organizations to navigate NYC agencies and systems on behalf of their kids. Outside of her work at Justice 4 Families, she has also worked as a researcher, board member, consultant and Director of Family Partnership at a number of like minded organizations. Jeannette’s vision is rooted in the Bronx, where she runs a variety of grassroots community-building and training programs. Next up are the grasstops – she’s out to ensure NYC agencies interact with families to support young people in restorative, healing ways.

Alt text: Black and white photograph of Jeannette Bocanegra-Simon who is dismantling juvenile justice systems one parent at a time.

Carmen moved to NYC from Mexico to become a fashion designer. While pursuing a BFA at Parsons, she saw opportunities beyond front-end design into clothing’s next life – reclaiming value from discarded items to create sustainable circular design solutions. She began by helping brands like Eileen Fisher set up processes and find scalable solutions for all their unsellable inventory from their take back program.. Now, Carmen and co-founder Carolina Bedoya are leveraging 20 years of industry experience to build MAKE ANEEW, a company that helps brands develop ‘post-consumer operations’ like take-back programs, resale, remanufacturing, repair and fiber-to-fiber recycling. Carmen and Carolina are changing the fashion industry, one garment at a time.

Alt text: Black and white photograph of Carmen Gama who is recovering, repairing, remanufacturing, and recycling the clothes New Yorkers throw away.

This New Yorker has deep roots in Brooklyn and a lifelong commitment to nurturing the community, culture, and history that makes it so special. They founded institutions that provide financial resources to Brooklynites, build movements and campaigns to build power in Brooklyn’s Black communities, and nurture local leaders. Building on decades of experience, this individual is on a mission to unleash the potential of local storytelling. Through deep investigative journalism and oral narrative, they are putting a spotlight on the history of Brooklyn and what changes in the borough mean for its communities today.

Alt text: Blurred black and white image of a 2022 David Prize Finalist who is redefining who gets to tell stories about New York City’s culture and history.

Growing up in NYCHA housing in the South Bronx, Velvet saw her neighbors band together to advocate for safe and adequate housing. In college she served as a member of her borough’s Community Board, but found herself homeless after an illegal eviction from an unsafe apartment. Today, Velvet is a leading voice pushing New York City’s progress on housing vouchers, including access, fair amounts, and landlord acceptance. She plans to continue her work with organizations such as UnLock NYC, Neighbors Together and Housing Justice For All to continue to advocate for safe, affordable housing for all and fight to eradicate homelessness and evictions. Through The Eviction Fund, Velvet plans on combating the harsh and treacherous ways that evictions destabilize families and individuals by providing a source of relief to circumvent their displacement by providing monetary relief. Her soon to be podcast, “HerHousing” will  provide a discussion around the intersections of race, gender, class and housing.

Alt text: Black and white image of Velvet Ross who is advocating for women of color locked out of housing opportunities because of evictions, vouchers, and bad credit.

Gabriela is a lifelong Queens resident and the proud daughter of a single, working, immigrant mom who made sure she could be the first in her family to go to college and have a successful career in financial tech. Now Gabriela is giving back by launching Miren, a technology company that helps small business lenders collect data and assess risk more efficiently by aggregating the underwriting process onto one platform – like a digital bridge between banks and small business owners who might do their accounting by hand. Why? To help lenders increase and improve financing available to small businesses that lack credit history or traditional credentials. Miren also focuses on non-native English-speaking clients, so its platform includes live translation. Gabriela ultimately plans to learn from the lenders she partners with to reimagine the definition of “creditworthy.”

Alt text: Black and white photo of Gabriela Ariana Campoverde who is helping lenders better assess risk to invest in no-credit, credit-thin, and immigrant small businesses.

Dianna Rose is a Community Cultivator from Southeast Queens with a deep commitment to redesigning the Circular Economy within her community and its overall health. Over the past 15 years, she has launched companies that reconnect people to the planet – from a M/WBE certified zero-waste catering company, to a platform for sustainability content, to the first community farmers market in the Laurelton area.

The Sovereign Markets, launched during the height of the 2020 Pandemic at the Laurelton Long Island Railroad Station, supports local food businesses and artisans. While some concessionaires were able to successfully scale their businesses to brick-and-mortar stores, kitchen space remained too distant and expensive for most local food entrepreneurs. So, in 2021 Dianna opened the Essential Kitchen Co – the first of its kind, as a solution to the opportunity gap historically disinvested communities face due to lack of infrastructure, and today she’s on a mission to establish Southeast Queens as a food oasis and high-end concessionaire market. 

Dianna is working towards a more robust food ecosystem and increased economic success for local food entrepreneurs.

Alt text: Black and white photograph of Dianna Rose who is creating a healthy and sustainable food ecosystem in Southeast Queens.

Hernan is a formerly incarcerated, Chicano, community organizer and social entrepreneur. After a decade of advocacy aimed at closing youth prisons and empowering formerly incarcerated youth, Hernan has made it his mission to reimagine wellness and mental health for all New Yorkers. As a suicide survivor, and someone working with people who have experienced all kinds of trauma, he saw that there was a gap in how people both talked about and accessed different kinds wellness and healing modalities. As a result, he founded Healing Ninjas,Inc. a social enterprise dedicated to de-stigmatizing mental health and wellness and providing access to traditional and non-traditional resources across NYC’s five boroughs. 

Hernan aims to create a web-based platform and app that will allow people to locate and access the mental health and wellness resources near them. The Healing Ninjas brand also emphasizes community over ‘anonymity,’ asking neighbors, friends, and partners to join each person’s journey toward a happier healthier life.

Alt text: Black and white photograph of Hernan Carvente-Martinez who is increasing access to healing and wellness resources for communities of color in NYC.

A decade working in the beauty magazine industry showed Jihan that products, services, and hairstyles specific to women of color were largely ignored. But women of color spend nine times more on beauty than any other group, yet don’t have the same access to solutions to make their beauty experience seamless and satisfying. New York alone has the highest employment level of any metro area for hairstylists and cosmetologists. Coupled with the fact that 21% of businesses in the salon industry are black owned, there’s a massive opportunity to support an industry that has been overlooked and under-supported. Jihan set out to strengthen her community with Swivel, offering a suite of digital services to help clients and stylists find their perfect match so women of color can have their best hair days, while stylists can grow their businesses and build wealth. To date, Jihan has worked with more than 2,000 stylists and is scaling the platform to serve the industry even better. She plans to expand Swivel’s reach by helping more NYC stylists grow their salon businesses and generate wealth through a suite of digital marketing tools, partnerships, and business development support.

Alt text: Black and white photograph of Jihan Thompson who is building tech tools and support for NYC hairstylists and cosmetologists who serve communities of color.

Neil started his career in post-9/11 policy, working to put systems in place to prevent similar catastrophes. He later pivoted to urban development, realizing that everyday neighborhood realities can also exact deep harm—or opportunity. Today he’s focused on mass transit, which is tied to issues of mobility, access, equity, climate justice, and economic development. Yes, modifying NYC’s veins and arteries is an expensive and long-term endeavor, but from Neil’s perspective, supporting the supply chain of businesses and frontline workers that manufacture, install, and maintain our transit is key to bringing about the innovations that will support our transit system and our city’s recovery.

At the new Center for Transit R&D, Neil will work with New York’s major transit systems to address critical – if unsexy – problems like signals, track abrasion, wheel friction, and more, collaborating with researchers, universities, and manufacturers to test, scale, fabricate, and implement solutions that bring our system into and through the next century.

Alt text: Black and white photograph of Neil Padukone who is strengthening the supply chain and workforce for the region’s transit systems that move New Yorkers, support neighborhoods, and energize the City’s economy

Life-threatening birth and pregnancy complications have been steadily on the rise, and Myla is on a mission to change that. Since she began as a doula in 2006, Myla has become a leader and visionary in the birth field, building a suite of community programs where people can access safe, informed reproductive care pre-, during, and post-pregnancy. Her innovation of a mobile wellness hub, the Womb Bus, brings essential education, resources, and outreach to blossoming families. This serves as a vehicle to increase awareness and provide services in preparation for The Birthing Place, a future birth center offering midwifery-led collaborative care.

Myla acts from the perspective that when we bring marginalized people to the center, care as a whole improves, and it improves for all people.

Alt text: Black and white photograph of Myla Flores who is building a community-based pregnancy and reproductive center for NYC birthing people that offers safe, accessible, and family-rooted midwifery and doula services.

Geneva is a creative industry veteran who has witnessed firsthand the sector’s insurmountable barriers to entry for NYC’s young people of color. Geneva and Co-Founder, Eda Levenson founded Scope of Work (SOW) in 2016 in response – a talent agency for young Black, Indigenous, and people of color creatives. SOW creates intentional pathways into NYC’s creative sector through talent development, a non-traditional and inclusive skill-building space; talent pipeline, a paid fellowship program connecting young people to early workplace experiences; and talent agency, which offers recruitment and placement services to young BIPOC creatives.

Alt text: Black and white photograph of Geneva White who is building a more sustainable, inclusive and equitable creative economy in NYC.

Every four hours, someone in New York City dies of an overdose, more often than not from ingesting substances mixed with drugs they didn’t know were present, such as fentanyl. Advanced drug checking technologies exist that analyze substances for their exact content, but these technologies are  expensive, time-consuming, and not accessible to those most vulnerable. And while more accessible drug checking methods like fentanyl test strips can be used, their efficacy is limited and the results are unreliable in environments like the bathrooms of music venues where they are sometimes available. Mohawk is a harm reduction educator focused on young people within NYC nightlife. Championing a pragmatic approach to drug use, Mohawk takes to the streets to ensure New Yorkers can accurately test substances and reduce risks associated with their use via a mobile drug checking unit that offers overdose prevention education and testing results on the spot. Mohawk’s vision is to increase safety, awareness, and reduce unnecessary deaths in New York City’s youth populations – without judgment.

Alt text: Black and white photograph of Mohawk Kellye Greene who is preventing accidental overdose through high-level, accessible drug checking and improved information about prevalence and risk.

Yin Q creates spaces and platforms to advocate for the dignity and rights of all sex workers through art, storytelling, and celebration. She is the founder of Kink Out and is a core member of Red Canary Song and AAPI grassroots collective that organizes migrant massage and sex workers and connects them to medical, legal, and mutual aid. Yin’s new idea — Body of Workers — will be an online ‘backstage’ for sex workers to create, share, and build community.

Alt text: Black and white photograph of Yin Q, an advocate for the dignity and rights of all sex workers

Troy, a long-time Spectrum worker, led a strike when the company erased employee benefits after its purchase by Time Warner. Today, he’s organizing that same coalition to build a new kind of high speed internet service provider — one that serves low income communities and leverages state-of-the-art technology to minimize costly hardline construction. He envisions including the community in  network ownership, giving marginalized neighborhoods control and increased economic independence.

Alt text: Black and white photograph of Troy Walcott, founder of People’s Choice Internet

Sharon started Just Soul Catering in 2015, a small business that not only brings fantastic soul food to New York City, but also provides jobs, education, and advocacy to its formerly incarcerated woman identified and non binary participants . Just Soul Catering works in tandem with Re-Entry Rocks which offers a full array of services, from dance focused on healing to entrepreneurship preparation and incubation and from mentorship to training in food preparation and event set-up. Sharon and her team have created a close community dedicated to addressing the unique issues faced by survivors of both domestic violence and incarceration.

Alt text: Black and white photograph of Sharon Richardson, founder of Just Soul Catering and Re-Entry Rocks

Shams, dubbed ‘Da Homeless Hero,’ knows NYC’s homeless system from the inside, having experienced homelessness since the age of 10, even raising his son in the family shelter system toward graduation and a high school diploma. Shams has led the conversation regarding the Lucerne Hotel, designated a temporary shelter during the pandemic to public outcry. Whether brokering mayoral conversations or detailing the policies and services necessary to support vulnerable New Yorkers, Shams is a relentless advocate, speaking with those directly impacted, elected officials, faith leaders — anyone who will listen. He’s a bridge builder, a strong voice at the table, and the accountability watchdog the city didn’t know it needed.

Alt text: Black and white photograph of Shams DaBaron, an advocate fighting for dignified housing for people experiencing houselessness

Since his release from ICE custody, Ravi has worked tirelessly to stop deportations and expose a system confusing even to experts in the field of immigration rights. While leading protests and participating in vigils and civil disobedience around 26 Federal Plaza — ICE’s HQ — Ravi envisioned a plan to partner non-citizens with citizens who accompany them during immigration proceedings. In parallel, he built a legal clinic for those without representation. Ravi’s extensive network now includes committed citizens who rally, garner media attention, and re-imagine ‘protection’ for those at risk of deportation, educating the public and helping to keep thousands of people in the US.

Alt text: Black and white photograph of activist Ravi Ragbir

Five is a long-time advocate within the criminal justice space who has authored policies to reduce solitary confinement, founded Incarcerated Nation, and spent decades collaborating with anti-prison organizations in New York and across the country. Now he is launching the Youth Anti Prison Project, recognizing severe gaps in the system of long-term community supervision and support for youth coming home from prison. The project mentors, trains, houses and employs justice-impacted young adults through a variety of academies that last throughout their community supervision sentences, using expert trauma-informed care to give these often forgotten youth a real second chance.

Alt text: Black and white photograph of Five Mualimm-ak, founder of Incarcerated Nation

Michael believes that ballroom can speak profound truths about humanity and struggle. The Freedom School, named after the late great Ballroom Icon, Arbert Santana, strives to be a beloved community in the old sense — not an ordinary brick and mortar institution, but a forum to channel events, literature and pedagogy, leadership, mentorship, and identity for NYC’s Black / Latinx / LGBT ballroom family.

Alt text: Black and white photograph of Michael Angelo Roberson, an advocate working towards the invigoration of the House Ball scene

Medical diagnoses are seen as final answers, deduced by all-knowing medical professionals who translate symptoms into objective clinical signs and accredited illnesses. Within this framework there is little room for chronically, invisibly ill patients whose symptoms do not readily translate into those signs. Their desire to be diagnosed is often regarded with suspicion and equated with a desire to be sick. But for many chronically ill people, including Liz, diagnosis means gaining access to the language of their body, learning how to recognize and respond to its needs, and work with it rather than constantly fighting against it. For this reason, Liz wants to compile, analyze and map the nuanced body-languages of chronically ill New Yorkers, and use them to create tools that not only support undiagnosed people to recognize and understand events within their own bodies, but also change the way we think about diagnosis itself.

Alt text: Black and white photograph of Liz Jackson, founding member of The Disabled List

By illuminating the lore and culture of Staten Island via a media hub and FM radio station, Kristin wants to increase appreciation for the many cultures and neighborhoods of NYC’s most outer borough.  She gives the tools and mic to Staten Islanders to amplify their special stories, culture, and artistic talents. 

Alt text: Black and white photograph of Kristin Wallace, founder of MakerPark Radio

Ken is a founder of The Driver’s Cooperative, which operates Coop-Ride, a new ride hailing taxi service. Coop-Ride is owned by the drivers who are involved in democratically running their Company.  Drivers pay just 15% on fares and profits will be shared among member-owners. Ken has spent most of his working life in New York City passenger transportation, including at signature programs as Access-A-Ride and EZPass.  Like many of his fellow immigrants, he started life in NY as a cab driver and drives to this day. Along the way, he has seen this once respected occupation — a pathway to the American Dream for countless immigrants — become decimated by exploitative ride-hailing giants. Coop-Ride, is not only an innovative ride-hailing service, but also a movement to transform drivers’ economic circumstances and restore dignity to New York’s driver community. 

Alt text: Black and white photograph of Ken Lewis, founder of The Drivers Cooperative

Jaime-Jin Lewis envisions a New York where every parent has access to affordable, quality childcare; every child is surrounded by a caring community; and the majority-woman-powered workforce of childcare providers enjoys dignified jobs with fair pay. She founded Wiggle Room to innovate solutions toward these goals. Jaime-Jin organized #WorkersNeedChildcare, a hotline to help essential workers navigate childcare during the pandemic, and #CareTogetherNYC, a mutual aid project to disburse cash assistance to essential workers with untenable childcare costs due to school and daycare closures. She is currently launching a new platform that connects two overlooked communities: parents who work fluctuating, hourly jobs and home-based childcare providers.

Alt text: Black and white photograph of Jaime-Jin Lewis, founder of Wiggle Room, a platform to make childcare more accessible for NYC families

Using a unusual skillset, which includes dumpster diving, moonshining, and collaborative DIY, Hackett has developed a way to produce a clean, renewable gasoline replacement from bread — specifically the mountain of unsold and imperfect bread thrown away in NYC every day that contains volumes of potential energy in its concentrated carbs. His worker-owned co-op will intercept this waste and then ferment and distill it into renewable, low-emission ethanol fuel. Like the movement to transform used fry oil into biodiesel, this process represents a new pathway to sustainability and community ownership of a cleaner future.

Alt text: Black and white photograph of Hackett, founder of a new cooperative that turns bakery waste into fuel

Gladys is the co-founder of ECE on the Move, a group of more than 600 early childhood educators working in residential settings in New York City. Sometimes called “home-based childcare workers” or “family child care providers,” ECE on the Move uses the term “early childhood educators,” which more accurately reflects their many skills. Gladys and her co-founder, Doris Irizarry, spent years organizing providers, but eventually tired of the lack of respect and representation they saw in politics and policies affecting their industry. They formally established ECE on the Move in 2019 and have built a thriving community of early childhood educators mobilized for positive change.

Alt text: Black and white photograph of Gladys Jones, co-founder of Early Childhood Educators on the Move

Creative connector and nonprofit leader Gabrielle Prisco has spent nearly twenty years working with young people—as an attorney, policy advocate, and Co-Executive Director of a nonprofit teaching trauma-sensitive mindfulness to young people inside NYC systems. Throughout, she’s seen young people—particularly Black and brown young people—systematically failed by our city, and “youth” nonprofits routinely stretched beyond capacity.  

Gabrielle’s vision partners young people and nonprofit leaders in The Core Collective: a holistic “one-stop” community center for young people and shared home for a curated group of smaller NYC “youth” nonprofits. When young people arrive, what they need will be there—from art, coding, and entrepreneurial support to legal and medical services. Simultaneously, resident nonprofits will benefit from daily proximity to youth and one another, and from shared space, fundraising, and administrative staff—freeing them to be more mission-focused. Ultimately, Gabrielle envisions a public-private partnership to secure a building for the center and income-generating rentals.

Alt text: Black and white photograph of Gabrielle Prisco, Co-Executive Director of The Lineage Project

Felicia has dedicated her life to supporting young people within and aging out of New York City’s foster care system. Raised in care from the age of four, Felicia knows the power of targeted, high quality services. Her new non-profit, What About Us, will provide mentoring, financial management training, job training and placement, and mental health support. 

Alt text: Black and white photograph of Felicia Wilson, founder of What About Us and advocate for youth in foster care

NYC’s youngest residents deserve to be seen, heard and loved in their classrooms — particularly Black and Brown children who too often start at a disadvantage. For 40 years, Fela Barclift has led Little Sun People, an early childhood education center in Brooklyn with an Afrocentric/Culturally Responsive curriculum where children ages 2-5 can express themselves through African dance, drumming, music, martial arts, chess,  and play. Fela’s kids learn and grow by gardening, cooking, taking field trips (offsite, on campus, and virtually) and by supporting local Black-owned businesses.  It’s a community that joyfully celebrates, learns from, and is inspired by the countless contributions people of African descent have made to NYC and around the globe.

Alt text: Black and white photograph of Fela Barclift, founder of Little Sun People, a childcare program with an African centered focus

After 14 years as a New York City ESL instructor and frustrated by the lack of resources for immigrant students, Darnell Benoit founded Flanbwayan Haitian Literacy Project in 2005. FHLC fights for change in the NYC Public School System so that newcomer youth can receive necessary support — neither defined nor limited by discrimination, isolation, or language barriers. The Immigrant Youth Project (IYLP) will use technology to build a safe citywide support network where young immigrants can build relationships, encounter unexpected influences, and engage in educational activities outside school walls. Using dance, art, music, filmmaking, podcasts, book clubs, and leadership development activities, the IYLP will create new pathways for recent newcomers to co-create community and wellbeing.

Alt text: Black and white photograph of Darnell Benoit, founder of Flanbwayan and advocate for immigrant youth city-wide

Carmen is a fierce advocate for reproductive health and justice, specifically to improve care for women of color — especially for Black women who are twelve times more likely to die in childbirth than white women in New York City — and increase young people’s access to sexual education. Because care is rooted in community, Carmen frames the maternal health conversation as a responsibility for all New Yorkers.

Alt text: Black and white photograph of Carmen Mojica, a midwife and advocate for reproductive health and justice

Caridad is a Bronx native, world-renowned spoken word artist known as “La Bruja,” who transformed a 100-year old garage behind her home into a cultural, art, and spiritual center. She envisions El Garaje as a site for creative residencies, learning and projection projects, and a sanctuary space for indigenous artists, activists, and practitioners. After opening its doors in 2016, she learned that it is built on what once was a Siwanoy village called Snakapins. Ultimately, the vision is for El Garaje to become a historic site and beacon from which a new village can emerge in the Soundview section of The Bronx.

Alt text: Black and white photograph of Caridad de la Luz, also known as La Bruja, founder of a community art space in Soundview, Bronx called El Garaje

More than half a million US veterans were born outside the United States, and nearly two million are US-born children of immigrants. Cesar Vargas was born in Mexico, grew up undocumented in the US, and went on to serve in the armed forces. Now the first undocumented lawyer in the country focuses on this nexus — working to ensure fair and accessible immigration services for active service members and veterans vulnerable to deportation.

Alt text: Black and white photograph of Cesar Vargas, an advocate for immigrants serving in the military

Ana Maria Martinez de Luco is a street nun who founded Sure We Can, a Brooklyn non-profit where people who survive by collecting cans and bottles come together with students and neighbors. Now Ana is launching Our Home, a project to build and support a community of tiny homes in New York City. Our Home is a lifeline for homeless individuals and others challenged by substance abuse and complex immigration profiles. Our Home residents thrive and regain control of their lives, thanks to the web of services and community supports provided. 

Alt text: Black and white photograph of Ana Maria Martinez de Luco, founder of Sure We Can and co-creator of Our Home

Robert Gore is an emergency physician and founder of the Kings Against Violence Initiative (KAVI). Drawing from 7+ years of experience, Robert hopes to reach all NYC frontline workers — police officers, healthcare workers, educators, firefighters — with a new virtual training program in holistic care and trauma-informed response. Robert envisions a New York where providers and recipients of care have the tools to transform trauma, leading to better physical and mental health outcomes.

Suzette is a pediatrician seeking to transform the way healthcare is delivered in NYC’s marginalized communities by using a ‘reverse integration’ model of care. After working with a single mom of seven who had become homeless after fleeing domestic violence, Suzette was inspired to collaborate within the fragmented social service / mental health system to more holistically support families. The Strong Children Wellness model embeds pediatric clinics within existing community-based social service and mental health organizations so that a comprehensive team — not just doctors — can fully address the needs of children and families. Strong Children Wellness plans to pilot a value-based payment system for pediatric care that is tied to improved health and well-being outcomes.

Father Michael Lopez is a Catholic priest and the creator of Hungry Monks, a mobile food pantry based in Ridgewood that exponentially increased service during the coronavirus pandemic. (If you’d asked 8-year-old Mike what kind of priest he would want to be, his answer probably would have been simply “a good one.”) Michael has transformed his church basement into a shelter — using a monastery model — and is creating a roadmap for other faith-based institutions to follow suit.

Kit Yan and Melissa Li want to bring vibrant nontraditional voices to Broadway with their musical Interstate, a coming-of-age story about Queer and Trans Asian-American experiences. The musical, developed in NYC over 8 years, opened in Minneapolis to packed audiences and rave reviews. This underdog show wants to return home to New York and open on Broadway, empowering an important community of New Yorkers who deserve to be seen and heard.

Edafe is striving to end street homelessness through partnerships with faith institutions and with targeted advocacy. The RDJ Refugee Shelter is more than a shelter; it’s a space where asylum-seekers and immigrants can access community and start to rebuild their lives. There are currently 83,000 people looking for housing in NYC, and Edafe’s mission is to ensure every New Yorker can transition with dignity to safe housing.

Cielo wants to ensure all marginalized NYC students can realize their college dreams — not just a lucky few with top test scores or leadership roles. Cielo is building an online resource called Road to Uni that will act as a supercharged, hyper-accessible college advisor, open to all and offering a gamified roadmap with quick informational videos, live support, and actionable resources to navigate the overwhelming college admissions process.

While serving as a PTA member at her children’s school, Maria developed a plan to help immigrant women gain access to education in the USA. This vision became Centro de Recursos Educativos para Adultos (CREA), a space in East Harlem offering adult literacy and education to parents across the five boroughs. The program currently serves 170+ people. More than an education platform, CREA equips parents with skills to become active participants in and advocates for their children’s growth.

Yin believes Chinatown’s survival depends on the community’s ability to advocate for equal access to resources. Together with an intergenerational group of volunteers, she built Think!Chinatown, a non-profit focusing on neighborhood engagement fostered by storytelling and the arts. Through projects like Chinatown Arts Week, The Art of Storytelling, & Everyday Chinatown, T!C honors, explores, and presents the culture and history of the community that have long made NYC’s Chinatown a vibrant immigrant neighborhood. Guided by an older generation of Chinatown organizers, Yin directs community actions to address neighborhood issues. Yin dreams of hosting kitchen classes, artists residencies, art exhibits, & community workshops in a permanent space for and in Chinatown.

Su is transforming urban transit for the many New Yorkers without access to the city’s public transportation system. Dollaride eases the connection between riders and vans-for-hire with transparent routes, consistent schedules, and mobile payments. Su hopes to connect the extensive dollar van network to existing public infrastructure and expand their territory to improve economic mobility.

Stefan is a user-centric designer who wants to make it easier for people with disabilities to thrive in New York City. Stefan and his team have developed tools that make a variety of daily tasks more accessible, like an easy- to-deploy lightweight wheelchair ramp; a multipurpose eating utensil; and an arm-support to help users play video games. His vision is simple: achieve accessibility and independence for people with disabilities by re-imagining everyday devices.

One in 15 New Yorkers lives in public housing — many of them the public servants who keep New York City safe and vibrant. But too often this huge and critical system is overlooked or given up as an intractable problem. Rasmia wants to reinvent our public housing system by building networks from generative, community-centered relationships to embrace “truth and reconciliation,” and develop real action plans to change the system. 

Manuel’s journey across the Mexico-US border at the age of five with his mother sparked a passion for helping others envision and find opportunity. As an early DREAMer – a movement of undocumented immigrants brought to the U.S. as children – Manuel now leads New Immigrant Community Empowerment (NICE), a grassroots organization that provides NYC’s day laborers and new immigrants with support services and leadership development programs. Manuel wants to test new ways of organizing this critical and essential workforce citywide around cooperative work and social and economic justice.

Chino’s lived experience as a formerly incarcerated, Black and Indiginous Trans person provides deep inspiration for NuLegacy, a program designed to support Black, Indigenous, Queer & Trans New Yorkers whose lives have been devastated by prison involvement.  His radical idea?  To use ancestral healing practices and connect folks — sometimes for the first time — to nature.  For the last 20 years, Chino has taught youth and families in Bedstuy that stewardship of land and community can lead to healing and transformation.

Somia is a community organizer, educator, and advocate. Somia’s passion for empowering women and fighting for human rights began when she was a student leader at Sana’a University in Yemen, where she earned a Bachelor’s degree in Physics and Mathematics. Since moving to New York City, Somia has led Arab women in south Brooklyn. Somia is launching a bakery that will double as an economic empowerment vehicle for Arab American women in their community. Structured as a cooperative, Somia’s social enterprise can become a blueprint for other affinity groups and neighborhoods that aspire to amplify their members’ talents to build economic assets.

Marco is a member of the Dream 9. Now he’s organizing in the South Bronx to benefit other immigrants, using his family’s restaurant La Morada as base camp for a community response team and gatherings to share knowledge and tools to fight ICE raids. The restaurant has become a true sanctuary space where undocumented people, families and allies can share, learn and eat. 

Deborah is a leader in air-levitation technology designed to autonomously move goods and people from one point to the next. (Cred: she won Elon Musk’s Hyperloop competition after being told she didn’t qualify). Deborah is taking this technology to the streets to reimagine the way New Yorkers move through the city — safely, quickly, and with low carbon emissions. She aims to create a community driven transportation revolution that empowers New Yorkers to be a part of the conversation and design.

Akili is building the new healthcare home New York City’s families. Juno Medical is a one-stop solution for you and your family’s everyday care needs that features exceptional hospitality, modern technology, and transparent prices that won’t break the bank. Akili and his team believe that great care is for everyone, so he’s set out to build a premier consumer healthcare brand that’s designed for the 99%.   

One third of NYC’s trash is organic — but too often this useful waste gets wasted. Domingo is working to solve this problem and grow plants for New York’s tomorrow. And after managing Red Hook Farms’s composting operation, he’s an expert in food chemistry, safe and healthy composting habits, and teaching others to make it happen. Domingo is developing a ‘how to’ compost guide and launching a new podcast called Compost Power to share expertise in support of composting processes around the city. 

Cecilia came undocumented to the U.S. from Argentina to live her dream as an openly transgender woman. Her journey has included 10 years as a sex worker, frequent targeting by police, and incarceration. Today she works to elevate and protect the trans community – founding Decrim NY to legitimize the sex trades, fighting for the Gender Expression Non-Discrimination Act, leading the NEW Pride Agenda, and helping to expand access to health services for transgender people across New York State. Cecilia also founded Trans Equity Consulting in 2019, where she and her team help organizations care for and connect with trans and queer communities. And in her spare time, she celebrates stories of the trans community as a playwright and actress. 

Alt text: Black and white photograph of Cecilia Gentili who is building a New York that celebrates the joy, talent, and resiliency of trans people.

New York is a welcoming and inclusive city for blind people, thanks to world-class transit, vibrant accessible culture, and a talented community of 300,000+ folks who are blind or have low vision. Even so, 70% of blind / low vision New Yorkers are unemployed, and gaps remain in NYC’s accessibility ecosystem. Chancey is a leading advocate for her community as the founder of the Dimensions Project, a free and open tactile graphics and Braille lab housed at the New York Public Library. She started the initiative to teach New Yorkers about accessible images, models and data representations; today it’s a fully fledged, internationally recognized lab helping individuals and New York institutions – museums, restaurants, and transit systems – create graphics, 3D models and Braille materials to support tactile literacy for Blind and low vision New Yorkers.

Alt text: Black and white photograph of Chancey Fleet who works to end image poverty among Blind and low-vision New Yorkers through tactile graphics, 3D models, and Braille.

Jason knows that children deserve every chance to succeed – access that transcends zip code and opportunities that jump economic hurdles. Growing up in the Queensbridge Houses, he’s faced those hurdles, and now, as the father of a teenager, he also understands the constraints that can trip up working parents. Jason launched Hood Code to address some of these issues and grounded the program in his own NYCHA community, offering free coding classes to learners ages 8 – 15. Over the program’s 13 weeks, Hood Code kids learn creative problem solving, coding basics, and computer competency. Hood Code acts as both an educational opportunity for young people and a set of extra hands for working parents, bringing a spark to NYCHA community centers in the form of essential 21st century skills.

Alt text: Black and white photograph of Jason Gibson who is teaching free coding classes to NYCHA’s youngest learners.

Diana wears many hats. She’s the owner of Friends and Lovers, one of Brooklyn’s danciest spots, a community organizer, and the founder of NYC Nightlife United (NNU), a coalition of leaders dedicated to a safer, more inclusive scene. Originally established to help venues navigate the pandemic, NNU has become the incubator of necessary and urgent initiatives, programs, and solutions for the nightlife community. They’ve piloted and scaled mental health supports for nightlife professionals, and distributed over $145K in cash relief to venues and nightlife workers during the pandemic. Based on these successes, Diana envisions a time when every nightlife professional – from barbacks to security – works in a sustainable, safe environment and NYC’s after hours scene delivers the best of the city’s electric energy.

Alt text: Black and white photograph of Diana Mora who is making sure NYC nightlife reflects and protects New Yorkers’ diverse, creative energy.

Jill is a special education teacher and behavior analyst whose 15-year career left her frustrated by special education models failing to reach young neurodiverse children equitably. She launched a new model, The Inspired Community Project, rooted in the Bronx where demand for programs is high while supply lags – nearly 40% of children ages 1-3 who are eligible for services lack support. Having worked for and managed programs, Jill has the experience to run her organization differently: increasing staff support and promotional opportunities to improve retention, co-developing a training model to hire people from within the community, and working with local organizations to create a universal community uplift.

Alt text: Black and white photograph of Jillian Moses who is launching a new kind of early intervention center for neurodiverse children in the Bronx

Family separation happens not just at the US-Mexico border. It regularly occurs within New York’s five boroughs, with disproportionate impacts on poor communities of color. Over 92% of children in foster care in NYC are Black or Latinx. Families below the poverty line are 22X more likely to be swept into the child welfare system than families with even slightly higher incomes. Despite multiple barriers to challenging and changing this unequal unjust system, David’s years of experience as a public defender representing New York families in court have prepared him to hold the government accountable. He recently founded the Family Justice Law Center (FJLC) to litigate for families unfairly separated and those caught up in child and family services’ tangled web. FJLC will vindicate the rights of underrepresented New Yorkers, change the devastating systems that hurt families, and shed much needed light on entrenched injustice.

Alt text: Black and white photograph of David Shalleck-Klein who is protecting New York families from unnecessary and harmful separation.

Jeannette is a lifelong Bronxite and champion for families grappling with the juvenile justice system. Drawing on her own experience as a parent advocate, PTA member, and mom who felt hopeless when her own child became justice-involved, Jeannette became the Executive Director of Justice 4 Families in 2020, a non-profit organization that trains families and organizations to navigate NYC agencies and systems on behalf of their kids. Outside of her work at Justice 4 Families, she has also worked as a researcher, board member, consultant and Director of Family Partnership at a number of like minded organizations. Jeannette’s vision is rooted in the Bronx, where she runs a variety of grassroots community-building and training programs. Next up are the grasstops – she’s out to ensure NYC agencies interact with families to support young people in restorative, healing ways.

Alt text: Black and white photograph of Jeannette Bocanegra-Simon who is dismantling juvenile justice systems one parent at a time.

Carmen moved to NYC from Mexico to become a fashion designer. While pursuing a BFA at Parsons, she saw opportunities beyond front-end design into clothing’s next life – reclaiming value from discarded items to create sustainable circular design solutions. She began by helping brands like Eileen Fisher set up processes and find scalable solutions for all their unsellable inventory from their take back program.. Now, Carmen and co-founder Carolina Bedoya are leveraging 20 years of industry experience to build MAKE ANEEW, a company that helps brands develop ‘post-consumer operations’ like take-back programs, resale, remanufacturing, repair and fiber-to-fiber recycling. Carmen and Carolina are changing the fashion industry, one garment at a time.

Alt text: Black and white photograph of Carmen Gama who is recovering, repairing, remanufacturing, and recycling the clothes New Yorkers throw away.

This New Yorker has deep roots in Brooklyn and a lifelong commitment to nurturing the community, culture, and history that makes it so special. They founded institutions that provide financial resources to Brooklynites, build movements and campaigns to build power in Brooklyn’s Black communities, and nurture local leaders. Building on decades of experience, this individual is on a mission to unleash the potential of local storytelling. Through deep investigative journalism and oral narrative, they are putting a spotlight on the history of Brooklyn and what changes in the borough mean for its communities today.

Alt text: Blurred black and white image of a 2022 David Prize Finalist who is redefining who gets to tell stories about New York City’s culture and history.

Growing up in NYCHA housing in the South Bronx, Velvet saw her neighbors band together to advocate for safe and adequate housing. In college she served as a member of her borough’s Community Board, but found herself homeless after an illegal eviction from an unsafe apartment. Today, Velvet is a leading voice pushing New York City’s progress on housing vouchers, including access, fair amounts, and landlord acceptance. She plans to continue her work with organizations such as UnLock NYC, Neighbors Together and Housing Justice For All to continue to advocate for safe, affordable housing for all and fight to eradicate homelessness and evictions. Through The Eviction Fund, Velvet plans on combating the harsh and treacherous ways that evictions destabilize families and individuals by providing a source of relief to circumvent their displacement by providing monetary relief. Her soon to be podcast, “HerHousing” will  provide a discussion around the intersections of race, gender, class and housing.

Alt text: Black and white image of Velvet Ross who is advocating for women of color locked out of housing opportunities because of evictions, vouchers, and bad credit.

Gabriela is a lifelong Queens resident and the proud daughter of a single, working, immigrant mom who made sure she could be the first in her family to go to college and have a successful career in financial tech. Now Gabriela is giving back by launching Miren, a technology company that helps small business lenders collect data and assess risk more efficiently by aggregating the underwriting process onto one platform – like a digital bridge between banks and small business owners who might do their accounting by hand. Why? To help lenders increase and improve financing available to small businesses that lack credit history or traditional credentials. Miren also focuses on non-native English-speaking clients, so its platform includes live translation. Gabriela ultimately plans to learn from the lenders she partners with to reimagine the definition of “creditworthy.”

Alt text: Black and white photo of Gabriela Ariana Campoverde who is helping lenders better assess risk to invest in no-credit, credit-thin, and immigrant small businesses.

Dianna Rose is a Community Cultivator from Southeast Queens with a deep commitment to redesigning the Circular Economy within her community and its overall health. Over the past 15 years, she has launched companies that reconnect people to the planet – from a M/WBE certified zero-waste catering company, to a platform for sustainability content, to the first community farmers market in the Laurelton area.

The Sovereign Markets, launched during the height of the 2020 Pandemic at the Laurelton Long Island Railroad Station, supports local food businesses and artisans. While some concessionaires were able to successfully scale their businesses to brick-and-mortar stores, kitchen space remained too distant and expensive for most local food entrepreneurs. So, in 2021 Dianna opened the Essential Kitchen Co – the first of its kind, as a solution to the opportunity gap historically disinvested communities face due to lack of infrastructure, and today she’s on a mission to establish Southeast Queens as a food oasis and high-end concessionaire market. 

Dianna is working towards a more robust food ecosystem and increased economic success for local food entrepreneurs.

Alt text: Black and white photograph of Dianna Rose who is creating a healthy and sustainable food ecosystem in Southeast Queens.

Hernan is a formerly incarcerated, Chicano, community organizer and social entrepreneur. After a decade of advocacy aimed at closing youth prisons and empowering formerly incarcerated youth, Hernan has made it his mission to reimagine wellness and mental health for all New Yorkers. As a suicide survivor, and someone working with people who have experienced all kinds of trauma, he saw that there was a gap in how people both talked about and accessed different kinds wellness and healing modalities. As a result, he founded Healing Ninjas,Inc. a social enterprise dedicated to de-stigmatizing mental health and wellness and providing access to traditional and non-traditional resources across NYC’s five boroughs. 

Hernan aims to create a web-based platform and app that will allow people to locate and access the mental health and wellness resources near them. The Healing Ninjas brand also emphasizes community over ‘anonymity,’ asking neighbors, friends, and partners to join each person’s journey toward a happier healthier life.

Alt text: Black and white photograph of Hernan Carvente-Martinez who is increasing access to healing and wellness resources for communities of color in NYC.

A decade working in the beauty magazine industry showed Jihan that products, services, and hairstyles specific to women of color were largely ignored. But women of color spend nine times more on beauty than any other group, yet don’t have the same access to solutions to make their beauty experience seamless and satisfying. New York alone has the highest employment level of any metro area for hairstylists and cosmetologists. Coupled with the fact that 21% of businesses in the salon industry are black owned, there’s a massive opportunity to support an industry that has been overlooked and under-supported. Jihan set out to strengthen her community with Swivel, offering a suite of digital services to help clients and stylists find their perfect match so women of color can have their best hair days, while stylists can grow their businesses and build wealth. To date, Jihan has worked with more than 2,000 stylists and is scaling the platform to serve the industry even better. She plans to expand Swivel’s reach by helping more NYC stylists grow their salon businesses and generate wealth through a suite of digital marketing tools, partnerships, and business development support.

Alt text: Black and white photograph of Jihan Thompson who is building tech tools and support for NYC hairstylists and cosmetologists who serve communities of color.

Neil started his career in post-9/11 policy, working to put systems in place to prevent similar catastrophes. He later pivoted to urban development, realizing that everyday neighborhood realities can also exact deep harm—or opportunity. Today he’s focused on mass transit, which is tied to issues of mobility, access, equity, climate justice, and economic development. Yes, modifying NYC’s veins and arteries is an expensive and long-term endeavor, but from Neil’s perspective, supporting the supply chain of businesses and frontline workers that manufacture, install, and maintain our transit is key to bringing about the innovations that will support our transit system and our city’s recovery.

At the new Center for Transit R&D, Neil will work with New York’s major transit systems to address critical – if unsexy – problems like signals, track abrasion, wheel friction, and more, collaborating with researchers, universities, and manufacturers to test, scale, fabricate, and implement solutions that bring our system into and through the next century.

Alt text: Black and white photograph of Neil Padukone who is strengthening the supply chain and workforce for the region’s transit systems that move New Yorkers, support neighborhoods, and energize the City’s economy

Life-threatening birth and pregnancy complications have been steadily on the rise, and Myla is on a mission to change that. Since she began as a doula in 2006, Myla has become a leader and visionary in the birth field, building a suite of community programs where people can access safe, informed reproductive care pre-, during, and post-pregnancy. Her innovation of a mobile wellness hub, the Womb Bus, brings essential education, resources, and outreach to blossoming families. This serves as a vehicle to increase awareness and provide services in preparation for The Birthing Place, a future birth center offering midwifery-led collaborative care.

Myla acts from the perspective that when we bring marginalized people to the center, care as a whole improves, and it improves for all people.

Alt text: Black and white photograph of Myla Flores who is building a community-based pregnancy and reproductive center for NYC birthing people that offers safe, accessible, and family-rooted midwifery and doula services.

Geneva is a creative industry veteran who has witnessed firsthand the sector’s insurmountable barriers to entry for NYC’s young people of color. Geneva and Co-Founder, Eda Levenson founded Scope of Work (SOW) in 2016 in response – a talent agency for young Black, Indigenous, and people of color creatives. SOW creates intentional pathways into NYC’s creative sector through talent development, a non-traditional and inclusive skill-building space; talent pipeline, a paid fellowship program connecting young people to early workplace experiences; and talent agency, which offers recruitment and placement services to young BIPOC creatives.

Alt text: Black and white photograph of Geneva White who is building a more sustainable, inclusive and equitable creative economy in NYC.

Every four hours, someone in New York City dies of an overdose, more often than not from ingesting substances mixed with drugs they didn’t know were present, such as fentanyl. Advanced drug checking technologies exist that analyze substances for their exact content, but these technologies are  expensive, time-consuming, and not accessible to those most vulnerable. And while more accessible drug checking methods like fentanyl test strips can be used, their efficacy is limited and the results are unreliable in environments like the bathrooms of music venues where they are sometimes available. Mohawk is a harm reduction educator focused on young people within NYC nightlife. Championing a pragmatic approach to drug use, Mohawk takes to the streets to ensure New Yorkers can accurately test substances and reduce risks associated with their use via a mobile drug checking unit that offers overdose prevention education and testing results on the spot. Mohawk’s vision is to increase safety, awareness, and reduce unnecessary deaths in New York City’s youth populations – without judgment.

Alt text: Black and white photograph of Mohawk Kellye Greene who is preventing accidental overdose through high-level, accessible drug checking and improved information about prevalence and risk.

Yin Q creates spaces and platforms to advocate for the dignity and rights of all sex workers through art, storytelling, and celebration. She is the founder of Kink Out and is a core member of Red Canary Song and AAPI grassroots collective that organizes migrant massage and sex workers and connects them to medical, legal, and mutual aid. Yin’s new idea — Body of Workers — will be an online ‘backstage’ for sex workers to create, share, and build community.

Alt text: Black and white photograph of Yin Q, an advocate for the dignity and rights of all sex workers

Troy, a long-time Spectrum worker, led a strike when the company erased employee benefits after its purchase by Time Warner. Today, he’s organizing that same coalition to build a new kind of high speed internet service provider — one that serves low income communities and leverages state-of-the-art technology to minimize costly hardline construction. He envisions including the community in  network ownership, giving marginalized neighborhoods control and increased economic independence.

Alt text: Black and white photograph of Troy Walcott, founder of People’s Choice Internet

Sharon started Just Soul Catering in 2015, a small business that not only brings fantastic soul food to New York City, but also provides jobs, education, and advocacy to its formerly incarcerated woman identified and non binary participants . Just Soul Catering works in tandem with Re-Entry Rocks which offers a full array of services, from dance focused on healing to entrepreneurship preparation and incubation and from mentorship to training in food preparation and event set-up. Sharon and her team have created a close community dedicated to addressing the unique issues faced by survivors of both domestic violence and incarceration.

Alt text: Black and white photograph of Sharon Richardson, founder of Just Soul Catering and Re-Entry Rocks

Shams, dubbed ‘Da Homeless Hero,’ knows NYC’s homeless system from the inside, having experienced homelessness since the age of 10, even raising his son in the family shelter system toward graduation and a high school diploma. Shams has led the conversation regarding the Lucerne Hotel, designated a temporary shelter during the pandemic to public outcry. Whether brokering mayoral conversations or detailing the policies and services necessary to support vulnerable New Yorkers, Shams is a relentless advocate, speaking with those directly impacted, elected officials, faith leaders — anyone who will listen. He’s a bridge builder, a strong voice at the table, and the accountability watchdog the city didn’t know it needed.

Alt text: Black and white photograph of Shams DaBaron, an advocate fighting for dignified housing for people experiencing houselessness

Since his release from ICE custody, Ravi has worked tirelessly to stop deportations and expose a system confusing even to experts in the field of immigration rights. While leading protests and participating in vigils and civil disobedience around 26 Federal Plaza — ICE’s HQ — Ravi envisioned a plan to partner non-citizens with citizens who accompany them during immigration proceedings. In parallel, he built a legal clinic for those without representation. Ravi’s extensive network now includes committed citizens who rally, garner media attention, and re-imagine ‘protection’ for those at risk of deportation, educating the public and helping to keep thousands of people in the US.

Alt text: Black and white photograph of activist Ravi Ragbir

Five is a long-time advocate within the criminal justice space who has authored policies to reduce solitary confinement, founded Incarcerated Nation, and spent decades collaborating with anti-prison organizations in New York and across the country. Now he is launching the Youth Anti Prison Project, recognizing severe gaps in the system of long-term community supervision and support for youth coming home from prison. The project mentors, trains, houses and employs justice-impacted young adults through a variety of academies that last throughout their community supervision sentences, using expert trauma-informed care to give these often forgotten youth a real second chance.

Alt text: Black and white photograph of Five Mualimm-ak, founder of Incarcerated Nation

Michael believes that ballroom can speak profound truths about humanity and struggle. The Freedom School, named after the late great Ballroom Icon, Arbert Santana, strives to be a beloved community in the old sense — not an ordinary brick and mortar institution, but a forum to channel events, literature and pedagogy, leadership, mentorship, and identity for NYC’s Black / Latinx / LGBT ballroom family.

Alt text: Black and white photograph of Michael Angelo Roberson, an advocate working towards the invigoration of the House Ball scene

Medical diagnoses are seen as final answers, deduced by all-knowing medical professionals who translate symptoms into objective clinical signs and accredited illnesses. Within this framework there is little room for chronically, invisibly ill patients whose symptoms do not readily translate into those signs. Their desire to be diagnosed is often regarded with suspicion and equated with a desire to be sick. But for many chronically ill people, including Liz, diagnosis means gaining access to the language of their body, learning how to recognize and respond to its needs, and work with it rather than constantly fighting against it. For this reason, Liz wants to compile, analyze and map the nuanced body-languages of chronically ill New Yorkers, and use them to create tools that not only support undiagnosed people to recognize and understand events within their own bodies, but also change the way we think about diagnosis itself.

Alt text: Black and white photograph of Liz Jackson, founding member of The Disabled List

By illuminating the lore and culture of Staten Island via a media hub and FM radio station, Kristin wants to increase appreciation for the many cultures and neighborhoods of NYC’s most outer borough.  She gives the tools and mic to Staten Islanders to amplify their special stories, culture, and artistic talents. 

Alt text: Black and white photograph of Kristin Wallace, founder of MakerPark Radio

Ken is a founder of The Driver’s Cooperative, which operates Coop-Ride, a new ride hailing taxi service. Coop-Ride is owned by the drivers who are involved in democratically running their Company.  Drivers pay just 15% on fares and profits will be shared among member-owners. Ken has spent most of his working life in New York City passenger transportation, including at signature programs as Access-A-Ride and EZPass.  Like many of his fellow immigrants, he started life in NY as a cab driver and drives to this day. Along the way, he has seen this once respected occupation — a pathway to the American Dream for countless immigrants — become decimated by exploitative ride-hailing giants. Coop-Ride, is not only an innovative ride-hailing service, but also a movement to transform drivers’ economic circumstances and restore dignity to New York’s driver community. 

Alt text: Black and white photograph of Ken Lewis, founder of The Drivers Cooperative

Jaime-Jin Lewis envisions a New York where every parent has access to affordable, quality childcare; every child is surrounded by a caring community; and the majority-woman-powered workforce of childcare providers enjoys dignified jobs with fair pay. She founded Wiggle Room to innovate solutions toward these goals. Jaime-Jin organized #WorkersNeedChildcare, a hotline to help essential workers navigate childcare during the pandemic, and #CareTogetherNYC, a mutual aid project to disburse cash assistance to essential workers with untenable childcare costs due to school and daycare closures. She is currently launching a new platform that connects two overlooked communities: parents who work fluctuating, hourly jobs and home-based childcare providers.

Alt text: Black and white photograph of Jaime-Jin Lewis, founder of Wiggle Room, a platform to make childcare more accessible for NYC families

Using a unusual skillset, which includes dumpster diving, moonshining, and collaborative DIY, Hackett has developed a way to produce a clean, renewable gasoline replacement from bread — specifically the mountain of unsold and imperfect bread thrown away in NYC every day that contains volumes of potential energy in its concentrated carbs. His worker-owned co-op will intercept this waste and then ferment and distill it into renewable, low-emission ethanol fuel. Like the movement to transform used fry oil into biodiesel, this process represents a new pathway to sustainability and community ownership of a cleaner future.

Alt text: Black and white photograph of Hackett, founder of a new cooperative that turns bakery waste into fuel

Gladys is the co-founder of ECE on the Move, a group of more than 600 early childhood educators working in residential settings in New York City. Sometimes called “home-based childcare workers” or “family child care providers,” ECE on the Move uses the term “early childhood educators,” which more accurately reflects their many skills. Gladys and her co-founder, Doris Irizarry, spent years organizing providers, but eventually tired of the lack of respect and representation they saw in politics and policies affecting their industry. They formally established ECE on the Move in 2019 and have built a thriving community of early childhood educators mobilized for positive change.

Alt text: Black and white photograph of Gladys Jones, co-founder of Early Childhood Educators on the Move

Creative connector and nonprofit leader Gabrielle Prisco has spent nearly twenty years working with young people—as an attorney, policy advocate, and Co-Executive Director of a nonprofit teaching trauma-sensitive mindfulness to young people inside NYC systems. Throughout, she’s seen young people—particularly Black and brown young people—systematically failed by our city, and “youth” nonprofits routinely stretched beyond capacity.  

Gabrielle’s vision partners young people and nonprofit leaders in The Core Collective: a holistic “one-stop” community center for young people and shared home for a curated group of smaller NYC “youth” nonprofits. When young people arrive, what they need will be there—from art, coding, and entrepreneurial support to legal and medical services. Simultaneously, resident nonprofits will benefit from daily proximity to youth and one another, and from shared space, fundraising, and administrative staff—freeing them to be more mission-focused. Ultimately, Gabrielle envisions a public-private partnership to secure a building for the center and income-generating rentals.

Alt text: Black and white photograph of Gabrielle Prisco, Co-Executive Director of The Lineage Project

Felicia has dedicated her life to supporting young people within and aging out of New York City’s foster care system. Raised in care from the age of four, Felicia knows the power of targeted, high quality services. Her new non-profit, What About Us, will provide mentoring, financial management training, job training and placement, and mental health support. 

Alt text: Black and white photograph of Felicia Wilson, founder of What About Us and advocate for youth in foster care

NYC’s youngest residents deserve to be seen, heard and loved in their classrooms — particularly Black and Brown children who too often start at a disadvantage. For 40 years, Fela Barclift has led Little Sun People, an early childhood education center in Brooklyn with an Afrocentric/Culturally Responsive curriculum where children ages 2-5 can express themselves through African dance, drumming, music, martial arts, chess,  and play. Fela’s kids learn and grow by gardening, cooking, taking field trips (offsite, on campus, and virtually) and by supporting local Black-owned businesses.  It’s a community that joyfully celebrates, learns from, and is inspired by the countless contributions people of African descent have made to NYC and around the globe.

Alt text: Black and white photograph of Fela Barclift, founder of Little Sun People, a childcare program with an African centered focus

After 14 years as a New York City ESL instructor and frustrated by the lack of resources for immigrant students, Darnell Benoit founded Flanbwayan Haitian Literacy Project in 2005. FHLC fights for change in the NYC Public School System so that newcomer youth can receive necessary support — neither defined nor limited by discrimination, isolation, or language barriers. The Immigrant Youth Project (IYLP) will use technology to build a safe citywide support network where young immigrants can build relationships, encounter unexpected influences, and engage in educational activities outside school walls. Using dance, art, music, filmmaking, podcasts, book clubs, and leadership development activities, the IYLP will create new pathways for recent newcomers to co-create community and wellbeing.

Alt text: Black and white photograph of Darnell Benoit, founder of Flanbwayan and advocate for immigrant youth city-wide

Carmen is a fierce advocate for reproductive health and justice, specifically to improve care for women of color — especially for Black women who are twelve times more likely to die in childbirth than white women in New York City — and increase young people’s access to sexual education. Because care is rooted in community, Carmen frames the maternal health conversation as a responsibility for all New Yorkers.

Alt text: Black and white photograph of Carmen Mojica, a midwife and advocate for reproductive health and justice

Caridad is a Bronx native, world-renowned spoken word artist known as “La Bruja,” who transformed a 100-year old garage behind her home into a cultural, art, and spiritual center. She envisions El Garaje as a site for creative residencies, learning and projection projects, and a sanctuary space for indigenous artists, activists, and practitioners. After opening its doors in 2016, she learned that it is built on what once was a Siwanoy village called Snakapins. Ultimately, the vision is for El Garaje to become a historic site and beacon from which a new village can emerge in the Soundview section of The Bronx.

Alt text: Black and white photograph of Caridad de la Luz, also known as La Bruja, founder of a community art space in Soundview, Bronx called El Garaje

More than half a million US veterans were born outside the United States, and nearly two million are US-born children of immigrants. Cesar Vargas was born in Mexico, grew up undocumented in the US, and went on to serve in the armed forces. Now the first undocumented lawyer in the country focuses on this nexus — working to ensure fair and accessible immigration services for active service members and veterans vulnerable to deportation.

Alt text: Black and white photograph of Cesar Vargas, an advocate for immigrants serving in the military

Ana Maria Martinez de Luco is a street nun who founded Sure We Can, a Brooklyn non-profit where people who survive by collecting cans and bottles come together with students and neighbors. Now Ana is launching Our Home, a project to build and support a community of tiny homes in New York City. Our Home is a lifeline for homeless individuals and others challenged by substance abuse and complex immigration profiles. Our Home residents thrive and regain control of their lives, thanks to the web of services and community supports provided. 

Alt text: Black and white photograph of Ana Maria Martinez de Luco, founder of Sure We Can and co-creator of Our Home

Robert Gore is an emergency physician and founder of the Kings Against Violence Initiative (KAVI). Drawing from 7+ years of experience, Robert hopes to reach all NYC frontline workers — police officers, healthcare workers, educators, firefighters — with a new virtual training program in holistic care and trauma-informed response. Robert envisions a New York where providers and recipients of care have the tools to transform trauma, leading to better physical and mental health outcomes.

Suzette is a pediatrician seeking to transform the way healthcare is delivered in NYC’s marginalized communities by using a ‘reverse integration’ model of care. After working with a single mom of seven who had become homeless after fleeing domestic violence, Suzette was inspired to collaborate within the fragmented social service / mental health system to more holistically support families. The Strong Children Wellness model embeds pediatric clinics within existing community-based social service and mental health organizations so that a comprehensive team — not just doctors — can fully address the needs of children and families. Strong Children Wellness plans to pilot a value-based payment system for pediatric care that is tied to improved health and well-being outcomes.

Father Michael Lopez is a Catholic priest and the creator of Hungry Monks, a mobile food pantry based in Ridgewood that exponentially increased service during the coronavirus pandemic. (If you’d asked 8-year-old Mike what kind of priest he would want to be, his answer probably would have been simply “a good one.”) Michael has transformed his church basement into a shelter — using a monastery model — and is creating a roadmap for other faith-based institutions to follow suit.

Kit Yan and Melissa Li want to bring vibrant nontraditional voices to Broadway with their musical Interstate, a coming-of-age story about Queer and Trans Asian-American experiences. The musical, developed in NYC over 8 years, opened in Minneapolis to packed audiences and rave reviews. This underdog show wants to return home to New York and open on Broadway, empowering an important community of New Yorkers who deserve to be seen and heard.

Edafe is striving to end street homelessness through partnerships with faith institutions and with targeted advocacy. The RDJ Refugee Shelter is more than a shelter; it’s a space where asylum-seekers and immigrants can access community and start to rebuild their lives. There are currently 83,000 people looking for housing in NYC, and Edafe’s mission is to ensure every New Yorker can transition with dignity to safe housing.

Cielo wants to ensure all marginalized NYC students can realize their college dreams — not just a lucky few with top test scores or leadership roles. Cielo is building an online resource called Road to Uni that will act as a supercharged, hyper-accessible college advisor, open to all and offering a gamified roadmap with quick informational videos, live support, and actionable resources to navigate the overwhelming college admissions process.

While serving as a PTA member at her children’s school, Maria developed a plan to help immigrant women gain access to education in the USA. This vision became Centro de Recursos Educativos para Adultos (CREA), a space in East Harlem offering adult literacy and education to parents across the five boroughs. The program currently serves 170+ people. More than an education platform, CREA equips parents with skills to become active participants in and advocates for their children’s growth.

Yin believes Chinatown’s survival depends on the community’s ability to advocate for equal access to resources. Together with an intergenerational group of volunteers, she built Think!Chinatown, a non-profit focusing on neighborhood engagement fostered by storytelling and the arts. Through projects like Chinatown Arts Week, The Art of Storytelling, & Everyday Chinatown, T!C honors, explores, and presents the culture and history of the community that have long made NYC’s Chinatown a vibrant immigrant neighborhood. Guided by an older generation of Chinatown organizers, Yin directs community actions to address neighborhood issues. Yin dreams of hosting kitchen classes, artists residencies, art exhibits, & community workshops in a permanent space for and in Chinatown.

Su is transforming urban transit for the many New Yorkers without access to the city’s public transportation system. Dollaride eases the connection between riders and vans-for-hire with transparent routes, consistent schedules, and mobile payments. Su hopes to connect the extensive dollar van network to existing public infrastructure and expand their territory to improve economic mobility.

Stefan is a user-centric designer who wants to make it easier for people with disabilities to thrive in New York City. Stefan and his team have developed tools that make a variety of daily tasks more accessible, like an easy- to-deploy lightweight wheelchair ramp; a multipurpose eating utensil; and an arm-support to help users play video games. His vision is simple: achieve accessibility and independence for people with disabilities by re-imagining everyday devices.

One in 15 New Yorkers lives in public housing — many of them the public servants who keep New York City safe and vibrant. But too often this huge and critical system is overlooked or given up as an intractable problem. Rasmia wants to reinvent our public housing system by building networks from generative, community-centered relationships to embrace “truth and reconciliation,” and develop real action plans to change the system. 

Manuel’s journey across the Mexico-US border at the age of five with his mother sparked a passion for helping others envision and find opportunity. As an early DREAMer – a movement of undocumented immigrants brought to the U.S. as children – Manuel now leads New Immigrant Community Empowerment (NICE), a grassroots organization that provides NYC’s day laborers and new immigrants with support services and leadership development programs. Manuel wants to test new ways of organizing this critical and essential workforce citywide around cooperative work and social and economic justice.

Chino’s lived experience as a formerly incarcerated, Black and Indiginous Trans person provides deep inspiration for NuLegacy, a program designed to support Black, Indigenous, Queer & Trans New Yorkers whose lives have been devastated by prison involvement.  His radical idea?  To use ancestral healing practices and connect folks — sometimes for the first time — to nature.  For the last 20 years, Chino has taught youth and families in Bedstuy that stewardship of land and community can lead to healing and transformation.

Somia is a community organizer, educator, and advocate. Somia’s passion for empowering women and fighting for human rights began when she was a student leader at Sana’a University in Yemen, where she earned a Bachelor’s degree in Physics and Mathematics. Since moving to New York City, Somia has led Arab women in south Brooklyn. Somia is launching a bakery that will double as an economic empowerment vehicle for Arab American women in their community. Structured as a cooperative, Somia’s social enterprise can become a blueprint for other affinity groups and neighborhoods that aspire to amplify their members’ talents to build economic assets.

Marco is a member of the Dream 9. Now he’s organizing in the South Bronx to benefit other immigrants, using his family’s restaurant La Morada as base camp for a community response team and gatherings to share knowledge and tools to fight ICE raids. The restaurant has become a true sanctuary space where undocumented people, families and allies can share, learn and eat. 

Deborah is a leader in air-levitation technology designed to autonomously move goods and people from one point to the next. (Cred: she won Elon Musk’s Hyperloop competition after being told she didn’t qualify). Deborah is taking this technology to the streets to reimagine the way New Yorkers move through the city — safely, quickly, and with low carbon emissions. She aims to create a community driven transportation revolution that empowers New Yorkers to be a part of the conversation and design.

Akili is building the new healthcare home New York City’s families. Juno Medical is a one-stop solution for you and your family’s everyday care needs that features exceptional hospitality, modern technology, and transparent prices that won’t break the bank. Akili and his team believe that great care is for everyone, so he’s set out to build a premier consumer healthcare brand that’s designed for the 99%.   

One third of NYC’s trash is organic — but too often this useful waste gets wasted. Domingo is working to solve this problem and grow plants for New York’s tomorrow. And after managing Red Hook Farms’s composting operation, he’s an expert in food chemistry, safe and healthy composting habits, and teaching others to make it happen. Domingo is developing a ‘how to’ compost guide and launching a new podcast called Compost Power to share expertise in support of composting processes around the city. 

Jeannette is a lifelong Bronxite and champion for families grappling with the juvenile justice system. Drawing on her own experience as a parent advocate, PTA member, and mom who felt hopeless when her own child became justice-involved, Jeannette became the Executive Director of Justice 4 Families in 2020, a non-profit organization that trains families and organizations to navigate NYC agencies and systems on behalf of their kids. Outside of her work at Justice 4 Families, she has also worked as a researcher, board member, consultant and Director of Family Partnership at a number of like minded organizations. Jeannette’s vision is rooted in the Bronx, where she runs a variety of grassroots community-building and training programs. Next up are the grasstops – she’s out to ensure NYC agencies interact with families to support young people in restorative, healing ways.

Alt text: Black and white photograph of Jeannette Bocanegra-Simon who is dismantling juvenile justice systems one parent at a time.

Yin Q creates spaces and platforms to advocate for the dignity and rights of all sex workers through art, storytelling, and celebration. She is the founder of Kink Out and is a core member of Red Canary Song and AAPI grassroots collective that organizes migrant massage and sex workers and connects them to medical, legal, and mutual aid. Yin’s new idea — Body of Workers — will be an online ‘backstage’ for sex workers to create, share, and build community.

Alt text: Black and white photograph of Yin Q, an advocate for the dignity and rights of all sex workers

Five is a long-time advocate within the criminal justice space who has authored policies to reduce solitary confinement, founded Incarcerated Nation, and spent decades collaborating with anti-prison organizations in New York and across the country. Now he is launching the Youth Anti Prison Project, recognizing severe gaps in the system of long-term community supervision and support for youth coming home from prison. The project mentors, trains, houses and employs justice-impacted young adults through a variety of academies that last throughout their community supervision sentences, using expert trauma-informed care to give these often forgotten youth a real second chance.

Alt text: Black and white photograph of Five Mualimm-ak, founder of Incarcerated Nation

Ken is a founder of The Driver’s Cooperative, which operates Coop-Ride, a new ride hailing taxi service. Coop-Ride is owned by the drivers who are involved in democratically running their Company.  Drivers pay just 15% on fares and profits will be shared among member-owners. Ken has spent most of his working life in New York City passenger transportation, including at signature programs as Access-A-Ride and EZPass.  Like many of his fellow immigrants, he started life in NY as a cab driver and drives to this day. Along the way, he has seen this once respected occupation — a pathway to the American Dream for countless immigrants — become decimated by exploitative ride-hailing giants. Coop-Ride, is not only an innovative ride-hailing service, but also a movement to transform drivers’ economic circumstances and restore dignity to New York’s driver community. 

Alt text: Black and white photograph of Ken Lewis, founder of The Drivers Cooperative

Carmen is a fierce advocate for reproductive health and justice, specifically to improve care for women of color — especially for Black women who are twelve times more likely to die in childbirth than white women in New York City — and increase young people’s access to sexual education. Because care is rooted in community, Carmen frames the maternal health conversation as a responsibility for all New Yorkers.

Alt text: Black and white photograph of Carmen Mojica, a midwife and advocate for reproductive health and justice

Caridad is a Bronx native, world-renowned spoken word artist known as “La Bruja,” who transformed a 100-year old garage behind her home into a cultural, art, and spiritual center. She envisions El Garaje as a site for creative residencies, learning and projection projects, and a sanctuary space for indigenous artists, activists, and practitioners. After opening its doors in 2016, she learned that it is built on what once was a Siwanoy village called Snakapins. Ultimately, the vision is for El Garaje to become a historic site and beacon from which a new village can emerge in the Soundview section of The Bronx.

Alt text: Black and white photograph of Caridad de la Luz, also known as La Bruja, founder of a community art space in Soundview, Bronx called El Garaje

Kit Yan and Melissa Li want to bring vibrant nontraditional voices to Broadway with their musical Interstate, a coming-of-age story about Queer and Trans Asian-American experiences. The musical, developed in NYC over 8 years, opened in Minneapolis to packed audiences and rave reviews. This underdog show wants to return home to New York and open on Broadway, empowering an important community of New Yorkers who deserve to be seen and heard.

Cielo wants to ensure all marginalized NYC students can realize their college dreams — not just a lucky few with top test scores or leadership roles. Cielo is building an online resource called Road to Uni that will act as a supercharged, hyper-accessible college advisor, open to all and offering a gamified roadmap with quick informational videos, live support, and actionable resources to navigate the overwhelming college admissions process.

Su is transforming urban transit for the many New Yorkers without access to the city’s public transportation system. Dollaride eases the connection between riders and vans-for-hire with transparent routes, consistent schedules, and mobile payments. Su hopes to connect the extensive dollar van network to existing public infrastructure and expand their territory to improve economic mobility.

Stefan is a user-centric designer who wants to make it easier for people with disabilities to thrive in New York City. Stefan and his team have developed tools that make a variety of daily tasks more accessible, like an easy- to-deploy lightweight wheelchair ramp; a multipurpose eating utensil; and an arm-support to help users play video games. His vision is simple: achieve accessibility and independence for people with disabilities by re-imagining everyday devices.

One in 15 New Yorkers lives in public housing — many of them the public servants who keep New York City safe and vibrant. But too often this huge and critical system is overlooked or given up as an intractable problem. Rasmia wants to reinvent our public housing system by building networks from generative, community-centered relationships to embrace “truth and reconciliation,” and develop real action plans to change the system. 

Manuel’s journey across the Mexico-US border at the age of five with his mother sparked a passion for helping others envision and find opportunity. As an early DREAMer – a movement of undocumented immigrants brought to the U.S. as children – Manuel now leads New Immigrant Community Empowerment (NICE), a grassroots organization that provides NYC’s day laborers and new immigrants with support services and leadership development programs. Manuel wants to test new ways of organizing this critical and essential workforce citywide around cooperative work and social and economic justice.

Marco is a member of the Dream 9. Now he’s organizing in the South Bronx to benefit other immigrants, using his family’s restaurant La Morada as base camp for a community response team and gatherings to share knowledge and tools to fight ICE raids. The restaurant has become a true sanctuary space where undocumented people, families and allies can share, learn and eat. 

Deborah is a leader in air-levitation technology designed to autonomously move goods and people from one point to the next. (Cred: she won Elon Musk’s Hyperloop competition after being told she didn’t qualify). Deborah is taking this technology to the streets to reimagine the way New Yorkers move through the city — safely, quickly, and with low carbon emissions. She aims to create a community driven transportation revolution that empowers New Yorkers to be a part of the conversation and design.

One third of NYC’s trash is organic — but too often this useful waste gets wasted. Domingo is working to solve this problem and grow plants for New York’s tomorrow. And after managing Red Hook Farms’s composting operation, he’s an expert in food chemistry, safe and healthy composting habits, and teaching others to make it happen. Domingo is developing a ‘how to’ compost guide and launching a new podcast called Compost Power to share expertise in support of composting processes around the city. 

Cecilia came undocumented to the U.S. from Argentina to live her dream as an openly transgender woman. Her journey has included 10 years as a sex worker, frequent targeting by police, and incarceration. Today she works to elevate and protect the trans community – founding Decrim NY to legitimize the sex trades, fighting for the Gender Expression Non-Discrimination Act, leading the NEW Pride Agenda, and helping to expand access to health services for transgender people across New York State. Cecilia also founded Trans Equity Consulting in 2019, where she and her team help organizations care for and connect with trans and queer communities. And in her spare time, she celebrates stories of the trans community as a playwright and actress. 

Alt text: Black and white photograph of Cecilia Gentili who is building a New York that celebrates the joy, talent, and resiliency of trans people.

New York is a welcoming and inclusive city for blind people, thanks to world-class transit, vibrant accessible culture, and a talented community of 300,000+ folks who are blind or have low vision. Even so, 70% of blind / low vision New Yorkers are unemployed, and gaps remain in NYC’s accessibility ecosystem. Chancey is a leading advocate for her community as the founder of the Dimensions Project, a free and open tactile graphics and Braille lab housed at the New York Public Library. She started the initiative to teach New Yorkers about accessible images, models and data representations; today it’s a fully fledged, internationally recognized lab helping individuals and New York institutions – museums, restaurants, and transit systems – create graphics, 3D models and Braille materials to support tactile literacy for Blind and low vision New Yorkers.

Alt text: Black and white photograph of Chancey Fleet who works to end image poverty among Blind and low-vision New Yorkers through tactile graphics, 3D models, and Braille.

Diana wears many hats. She’s the owner of Friends and Lovers, one of Brooklyn’s danciest spots, a community organizer, and the founder of NYC Nightlife United (NNU), a coalition of leaders dedicated to a safer, more inclusive scene. Originally established to help venues navigate the pandemic, NNU has become the incubator of necessary and urgent initiatives, programs, and solutions for the nightlife community. They’ve piloted and scaled mental health supports for nightlife professionals, and distributed over $145K in cash relief to venues and nightlife workers during the pandemic. Based on these successes, Diana envisions a time when every nightlife professional – from barbacks to security – works in a sustainable, safe environment and NYC’s after hours scene delivers the best of the city’s electric energy.

Alt text: Black and white photograph of Diana Mora who is making sure NYC nightlife reflects and protects New Yorkers’ diverse, creative energy.

This New Yorker has deep roots in Brooklyn and a lifelong commitment to nurturing the community, culture, and history that makes it so special. They founded institutions that provide financial resources to Brooklynites, build movements and campaigns to build power in Brooklyn’s Black communities, and nurture local leaders. Building on decades of experience, this individual is on a mission to unleash the potential of local storytelling. Through deep investigative journalism and oral narrative, they are putting a spotlight on the history of Brooklyn and what changes in the borough mean for its communities today.

Alt text: Blurred black and white image of a 2022 David Prize Finalist who is redefining who gets to tell stories about New York City’s culture and history.

Growing up in NYCHA housing in the South Bronx, Velvet saw her neighbors band together to advocate for safe and adequate housing. In college she served as a member of her borough’s Community Board, but found herself homeless after an illegal eviction from an unsafe apartment. Today, Velvet is a leading voice pushing New York City’s progress on housing vouchers, including access, fair amounts, and landlord acceptance. She plans to continue her work with organizations such as UnLock NYC, Neighbors Together and Housing Justice For All to continue to advocate for safe, affordable housing for all and fight to eradicate homelessness and evictions. Through The Eviction Fund, Velvet plans on combating the harsh and treacherous ways that evictions destabilize families and individuals by providing a source of relief to circumvent their displacement by providing monetary relief. Her soon to be podcast, “HerHousing” will  provide a discussion around the intersections of race, gender, class and housing.

Alt text: Black and white image of Velvet Ross who is advocating for women of color locked out of housing opportunities because of evictions, vouchers, and bad credit.

A decade working in the beauty magazine industry showed Jihan that products, services, and hairstyles specific to women of color were largely ignored. But women of color spend nine times more on beauty than any other group, yet don’t have the same access to solutions to make their beauty experience seamless and satisfying. New York alone has the highest employment level of any metro area for hairstylists and cosmetologists. Coupled with the fact that 21% of businesses in the salon industry are black owned, there’s a massive opportunity to support an industry that has been overlooked and under-supported. Jihan set out to strengthen her community with Swivel, offering a suite of digital services to help clients and stylists find their perfect match so women of color can have their best hair days, while stylists can grow their businesses and build wealth. To date, Jihan has worked with more than 2,000 stylists and is scaling the platform to serve the industry even better. She plans to expand Swivel’s reach by helping more NYC stylists grow their salon businesses and generate wealth through a suite of digital marketing tools, partnerships, and business development support.

Alt text: Black and white photograph of Jihan Thompson who is building tech tools and support for NYC hairstylists and cosmetologists who serve communities of color.

Geneva is a creative industry veteran who has witnessed firsthand the sector’s insurmountable barriers to entry for NYC’s young people of color. Geneva and Co-Founder, Eda Levenson founded Scope of Work (SOW) in 2016 in response – a talent agency for young Black, Indigenous, and people of color creatives. SOW creates intentional pathways into NYC’s creative sector through talent development, a non-traditional and inclusive skill-building space; talent pipeline, a paid fellowship program connecting young people to early workplace experiences; and talent agency, which offers recruitment and placement services to young BIPOC creatives.

Alt text: Black and white photograph of Geneva White who is building a more sustainable, inclusive and equitable creative economy in NYC.

Every four hours, someone in New York City dies of an overdose, more often than not from ingesting substances mixed with drugs they didn’t know were present, such as fentanyl. Advanced drug checking technologies exist that analyze substances for their exact content, but these technologies are  expensive, time-consuming, and not accessible to those most vulnerable. And while more accessible drug checking methods like fentanyl test strips can be used, their efficacy is limited and the results are unreliable in environments like the bathrooms of music venues where they are sometimes available. Mohawk is a harm reduction educator focused on young people within NYC nightlife. Championing a pragmatic approach to drug use, Mohawk takes to the streets to ensure New Yorkers can accurately test substances and reduce risks associated with their use via a mobile drug checking unit that offers overdose prevention education and testing results on the spot. Mohawk’s vision is to increase safety, awareness, and reduce unnecessary deaths in New York City’s youth populations – without judgment.

Alt text: Black and white photograph of Mohawk Kellye Greene who is preventing accidental overdose through high-level, accessible drug checking and improved information about prevalence and risk.

Yin Q creates spaces and platforms to advocate for the dignity and rights of all sex workers through art, storytelling, and celebration. She is the founder of Kink Out and is a core member of Red Canary Song and AAPI grassroots collective that organizes migrant massage and sex workers and connects them to medical, legal, and mutual aid. Yin’s new idea — Body of Workers — will be an online ‘backstage’ for sex workers to create, share, and build community.

Alt text: Black and white photograph of Yin Q, an advocate for the dignity and rights of all sex workers

Troy, a long-time Spectrum worker, led a strike when the company erased employee benefits after its purchase by Time Warner. Today, he’s organizing that same coalition to build a new kind of high speed internet service provider — one that serves low income communities and leverages state-of-the-art technology to minimize costly hardline construction. He envisions including the community in  network ownership, giving marginalized neighborhoods control and increased economic independence.

Alt text: Black and white photograph of Troy Walcott, founder of People’s Choice Internet

Since his release from ICE custody, Ravi has worked tirelessly to stop deportations and expose a system confusing even to experts in the field of immigration rights. While leading protests and participating in vigils and civil disobedience around 26 Federal Plaza — ICE’s HQ — Ravi envisioned a plan to partner non-citizens with citizens who accompany them during immigration proceedings. In parallel, he built a legal clinic for those without representation. Ravi’s extensive network now includes committed citizens who rally, garner media attention, and re-imagine ‘protection’ for those at risk of deportation, educating the public and helping to keep thousands of people in the US.

Alt text: Black and white photograph of activist Ravi Ragbir

Michael believes that ballroom can speak profound truths about humanity and struggle. The Freedom School, named after the late great Ballroom Icon, Arbert Santana, strives to be a beloved community in the old sense — not an ordinary brick and mortar institution, but a forum to channel events, literature and pedagogy, leadership, mentorship, and identity for NYC’s Black / Latinx / LGBT ballroom family.

Alt text: Black and white photograph of Michael Angelo Roberson, an advocate working towards the invigoration of the House Ball scene

Medical diagnoses are seen as final answers, deduced by all-knowing medical professionals who translate symptoms into objective clinical signs and accredited illnesses. Within this framework there is little room for chronically, invisibly ill patients whose symptoms do not readily translate into those signs. Their desire to be diagnosed is often regarded with suspicion and equated with a desire to be sick. But for many chronically ill people, including Liz, diagnosis means gaining access to the language of their body, learning how to recognize and respond to its needs, and work with it rather than constantly fighting against it. For this reason, Liz wants to compile, analyze and map the nuanced body-languages of chronically ill New Yorkers, and use them to create tools that not only support undiagnosed people to recognize and understand events within their own bodies, but also change the way we think about diagnosis itself.

Alt text: Black and white photograph of Liz Jackson, founding member of The Disabled List

Ken is a founder of The Driver’s Cooperative, which operates Coop-Ride, a new ride hailing taxi service. Coop-Ride is owned by the drivers who are involved in democratically running their Company.  Drivers pay just 15% on fares and profits will be shared among member-owners. Ken has spent most of his working life in New York City passenger transportation, including at signature programs as Access-A-Ride and EZPass.  Like many of his fellow immigrants, he started life in NY as a cab driver and drives to this day. Along the way, he has seen this once respected occupation — a pathway to the American Dream for countless immigrants — become decimated by exploitative ride-hailing giants. Coop-Ride, is not only an innovative ride-hailing service, but also a movement to transform drivers’ economic circumstances and restore dignity to New York’s driver community. 

Alt text: Black and white photograph of Ken Lewis, founder of The Drivers Cooperative

Jaime-Jin Lewis envisions a New York where every parent has access to affordable, quality childcare; every child is surrounded by a caring community; and the majority-woman-powered workforce of childcare providers enjoys dignified jobs with fair pay. She founded Wiggle Room to innovate solutions toward these goals. Jaime-Jin organized #WorkersNeedChildcare, a hotline to help essential workers navigate childcare during the pandemic, and #CareTogetherNYC, a mutual aid project to disburse cash assistance to essential workers with untenable childcare costs due to school and daycare closures. She is currently launching a new platform that connects two overlooked communities: parents who work fluctuating, hourly jobs and home-based childcare providers.

Alt text: Black and white photograph of Jaime-Jin Lewis, founder of Wiggle Room, a platform to make childcare more accessible for NYC families

Using a unusual skillset, which includes dumpster diving, moonshining, and collaborative DIY, Hackett has developed a way to produce a clean, renewable gasoline replacement from bread — specifically the mountain of unsold and imperfect bread thrown away in NYC every day that contains volumes of potential energy in its concentrated carbs. His worker-owned co-op will intercept this waste and then ferment and distill it into renewable, low-emission ethanol fuel. Like the movement to transform used fry oil into biodiesel, this process represents a new pathway to sustainability and community ownership of a cleaner future.

Alt text: Black and white photograph of Hackett, founder of a new cooperative that turns bakery waste into fuel

Creative connector and nonprofit leader Gabrielle Prisco has spent nearly twenty years working with young people—as an attorney, policy advocate, and Co-Executive Director of a nonprofit teaching trauma-sensitive mindfulness to young people inside NYC systems. Throughout, she’s seen young people—particularly Black and brown young people—systematically failed by our city, and “youth” nonprofits routinely stretched beyond capacity.  

Gabrielle’s vision partners young people and nonprofit leaders in The Core Collective: a holistic “one-stop” community center for young people and shared home for a curated group of smaller NYC “youth” nonprofits. When young people arrive, what they need will be there—from art, coding, and entrepreneurial support to legal and medical services. Simultaneously, resident nonprofits will benefit from daily proximity to youth and one another, and from shared space, fundraising, and administrative staff—freeing them to be more mission-focused. Ultimately, Gabrielle envisions a public-private partnership to secure a building for the center and income-generating rentals.

Alt text: Black and white photograph of Gabrielle Prisco, Co-Executive Director of The Lineage Project

Felicia has dedicated her life to supporting young people within and aging out of New York City’s foster care system. Raised in care from the age of four, Felicia knows the power of targeted, high quality services. Her new non-profit, What About Us, will provide mentoring, financial management training, job training and placement, and mental health support. 

Alt text: Black and white photograph of Felicia Wilson, founder of What About Us and advocate for youth in foster care

NYC’s youngest residents deserve to be seen, heard and loved in their classrooms — particularly Black and Brown children who too often start at a disadvantage. For 40 years, Fela Barclift has led Little Sun People, an early childhood education center in Brooklyn with an Afrocentric/Culturally Responsive curriculum where children ages 2-5 can express themselves through African dance, drumming, music, martial arts, chess,  and play. Fela’s kids learn and grow by gardening, cooking, taking field trips (offsite, on campus, and virtually) and by supporting local Black-owned businesses.  It’s a community that joyfully celebrates, learns from, and is inspired by the countless contributions people of African descent have made to NYC and around the globe.

Alt text: Black and white photograph of Fela Barclift, founder of Little Sun People, a childcare program with an African centered focus

After 14 years as a New York City ESL instructor and frustrated by the lack of resources for immigrant students, Darnell Benoit founded Flanbwayan Haitian Literacy Project in 2005. FHLC fights for change in the NYC Public School System so that newcomer youth can receive necessary support — neither defined nor limited by discrimination, isolation, or language barriers. The Immigrant Youth Project (IYLP) will use technology to build a safe citywide support network where young immigrants can build relationships, encounter unexpected influences, and engage in educational activities outside school walls. Using dance, art, music, filmmaking, podcasts, book clubs, and leadership development activities, the IYLP will create new pathways for recent newcomers to co-create community and wellbeing.

Alt text: Black and white photograph of Darnell Benoit, founder of Flanbwayan and advocate for immigrant youth city-wide

Ana Maria Martinez de Luco is a street nun who founded Sure We Can, a Brooklyn non-profit where people who survive by collecting cans and bottles come together with students and neighbors. Now Ana is launching Our Home, a project to build and support a community of tiny homes in New York City. Our Home is a lifeline for homeless individuals and others challenged by substance abuse and complex immigration profiles. Our Home residents thrive and regain control of their lives, thanks to the web of services and community supports provided. 

Alt text: Black and white photograph of Ana Maria Martinez de Luco, founder of Sure We Can and co-creator of Our Home

Robert Gore is an emergency physician and founder of the Kings Against Violence Initiative (KAVI). Drawing from 7+ years of experience, Robert hopes to reach all NYC frontline workers — police officers, healthcare workers, educators, firefighters — with a new virtual training program in holistic care and trauma-informed response. Robert envisions a New York where providers and recipients of care have the tools to transform trauma, leading to better physical and mental health outcomes.

Suzette is a pediatrician seeking to transform the way healthcare is delivered in NYC’s marginalized communities by using a ‘reverse integration’ model of care. After working with a single mom of seven who had become homeless after fleeing domestic violence, Suzette was inspired to collaborate within the fragmented social service / mental health system to more holistically support families. The Strong Children Wellness model embeds pediatric clinics within existing community-based social service and mental health organizations so that a comprehensive team — not just doctors — can fully address the needs of children and families. Strong Children Wellness plans to pilot a value-based payment system for pediatric care that is tied to improved health and well-being outcomes.

Kit Yan and Melissa Li want to bring vibrant nontraditional voices to Broadway with their musical Interstate, a coming-of-age story about Queer and Trans Asian-American experiences. The musical, developed in NYC over 8 years, opened in Minneapolis to packed audiences and rave reviews. This underdog show wants to return home to New York and open on Broadway, empowering an important community of New Yorkers who deserve to be seen and heard.

Cielo wants to ensure all marginalized NYC students can realize their college dreams — not just a lucky few with top test scores or leadership roles. Cielo is building an online resource called Road to Uni that will act as a supercharged, hyper-accessible college advisor, open to all and offering a gamified roadmap with quick informational videos, live support, and actionable resources to navigate the overwhelming college admissions process.

Su is transforming urban transit for the many New Yorkers without access to the city’s public transportation system. Dollaride eases the connection between riders and vans-for-hire with transparent routes, consistent schedules, and mobile payments. Su hopes to connect the extensive dollar van network to existing public infrastructure and expand their territory to improve economic mobility.

Stefan is a user-centric designer who wants to make it easier for people with disabilities to thrive in New York City. Stefan and his team have developed tools that make a variety of daily tasks more accessible, like an easy- to-deploy lightweight wheelchair ramp; a multipurpose eating utensil; and an arm-support to help users play video games. His vision is simple: achieve accessibility and independence for people with disabilities by re-imagining everyday devices.

One in 15 New Yorkers lives in public housing — many of them the public servants who keep New York City safe and vibrant. But too often this huge and critical system is overlooked or given up as an intractable problem. Rasmia wants to reinvent our public housing system by building networks from generative, community-centered relationships to embrace “truth and reconciliation,” and develop real action plans to change the system. 

Manuel’s journey across the Mexico-US border at the age of five with his mother sparked a passion for helping others envision and find opportunity. As an early DREAMer – a movement of undocumented immigrants brought to the U.S. as children – Manuel now leads New Immigrant Community Empowerment (NICE), a grassroots organization that provides NYC’s day laborers and new immigrants with support services and leadership development programs. Manuel wants to test new ways of organizing this critical and essential workforce citywide around cooperative work and social and economic justice.

Chino’s lived experience as a formerly incarcerated, Black and Indiginous Trans person provides deep inspiration for NuLegacy, a program designed to support Black, Indigenous, Queer & Trans New Yorkers whose lives have been devastated by prison involvement.  His radical idea?  To use ancestral healing practices and connect folks — sometimes for the first time — to nature.  For the last 20 years, Chino has taught youth and families in Bedstuy that stewardship of land and community can lead to healing and transformation.

Somia is a community organizer, educator, and advocate. Somia’s passion for empowering women and fighting for human rights began when she was a student leader at Sana’a University in Yemen, where she earned a Bachelor’s degree in Physics and Mathematics. Since moving to New York City, Somia has led Arab women in south Brooklyn. Somia is launching a bakery that will double as an economic empowerment vehicle for Arab American women in their community. Structured as a cooperative, Somia’s social enterprise can become a blueprint for other affinity groups and neighborhoods that aspire to amplify their members’ talents to build economic assets.

Deborah is a leader in air-levitation technology designed to autonomously move goods and people from one point to the next. (Cred: she won Elon Musk’s Hyperloop competition after being told she didn’t qualify). Deborah is taking this technology to the streets to reimagine the way New Yorkers move through the city — safely, quickly, and with low carbon emissions. She aims to create a community driven transportation revolution that empowers New Yorkers to be a part of the conversation and design.

One third of NYC’s trash is organic — but too often this useful waste gets wasted. Domingo is working to solve this problem and grow plants for New York’s tomorrow. And after managing Red Hook Farms’s composting operation, he’s an expert in food chemistry, safe and healthy composting habits, and teaching others to make it happen. Domingo is developing a ‘how to’ compost guide and launching a new podcast called Compost Power to share expertise in support of composting processes around the city. 

Jill is a special education teacher and behavior analyst whose 15-year career left her frustrated by special education models failing to reach young neurodiverse children equitably. She launched a new model, The Inspired Community Project, rooted in the Bronx where demand for programs is high while supply lags – nearly 40% of children ages 1-3 who are eligible for services lack support. Having worked for and managed programs, Jill has the experience to run her organization differently: increasing staff support and promotional opportunities to improve retention, co-developing a training model to hire people from within the community, and working with local organizations to create a universal community uplift.

Alt text: Black and white photograph of Jillian Moses who is launching a new kind of early intervention center for neurodiverse children in the Bronx

Family separation happens not just at the US-Mexico border. It regularly occurs within New York’s five boroughs, with disproportionate impacts on poor communities of color. Over 92% of children in foster care in NYC are Black or Latinx. Families below the poverty line are 22X more likely to be swept into the child welfare system than families with even slightly higher incomes. Despite multiple barriers to challenging and changing this unequal unjust system, David’s years of experience as a public defender representing New York families in court have prepared him to hold the government accountable. He recently founded the Family Justice Law Center (FJLC) to litigate for families unfairly separated and those caught up in child and family services’ tangled web. FJLC will vindicate the rights of underrepresented New Yorkers, change the devastating systems that hurt families, and shed much needed light on entrenched injustice.

Alt text: Black and white photograph of David Shalleck-Klein who is protecting New York families from unnecessary and harmful separation.

Carmen moved to NYC from Mexico to become a fashion designer. While pursuing a BFA at Parsons, she saw opportunities beyond front-end design into clothing’s next life – reclaiming value from discarded items to create sustainable circular design solutions. She began by helping brands like Eileen Fisher set up processes and find scalable solutions for all their unsellable inventory from their take back program.. Now, Carmen and co-founder Carolina Bedoya are leveraging 20 years of industry experience to build MAKE ANEEW, a company that helps brands develop ‘post-consumer operations’ like take-back programs, resale, remanufacturing, repair and fiber-to-fiber recycling. Carmen and Carolina are changing the fashion industry, one garment at a time.

Alt text: Black and white photograph of Carmen Gama who is recovering, repairing, remanufacturing, and recycling the clothes New Yorkers throw away.

Life-threatening birth and pregnancy complications have been steadily on the rise, and Myla is on a mission to change that. Since she began as a doula in 2006, Myla has become a leader and visionary in the birth field, building a suite of community programs where people can access safe, informed reproductive care pre-, during, and post-pregnancy. Her innovation of a mobile wellness hub, the Womb Bus, brings essential education, resources, and outreach to blossoming families. This serves as a vehicle to increase awareness and provide services in preparation for The Birthing Place, a future birth center offering midwifery-led collaborative care.

Myla acts from the perspective that when we bring marginalized people to the center, care as a whole improves, and it improves for all people.

Alt text: Black and white photograph of Myla Flores who is building a community-based pregnancy and reproductive center for NYC birthing people that offers safe, accessible, and family-rooted midwifery and doula services.

Yin Q creates spaces and platforms to advocate for the dignity and rights of all sex workers through art, storytelling, and celebration. She is the founder of Kink Out and is a core member of Red Canary Song and AAPI grassroots collective that organizes migrant massage and sex workers and connects them to medical, legal, and mutual aid. Yin’s new idea — Body of Workers — will be an online ‘backstage’ for sex workers to create, share, and build community.

Alt text: Black and white photograph of Yin Q, an advocate for the dignity and rights of all sex workers

Sharon started Just Soul Catering in 2015, a small business that not only brings fantastic soul food to New York City, but also provides jobs, education, and advocacy to its formerly incarcerated woman identified and non binary participants . Just Soul Catering works in tandem with Re-Entry Rocks which offers a full array of services, from dance focused on healing to entrepreneurship preparation and incubation and from mentorship to training in food preparation and event set-up. Sharon and her team have created a close community dedicated to addressing the unique issues faced by survivors of both domestic violence and incarceration.

Alt text: Black and white photograph of Sharon Richardson, founder of Just Soul Catering and Re-Entry Rocks

Shams, dubbed ‘Da Homeless Hero,’ knows NYC’s homeless system from the inside, having experienced homelessness since the age of 10, even raising his son in the family shelter system toward graduation and a high school diploma. Shams has led the conversation regarding the Lucerne Hotel, designated a temporary shelter during the pandemic to public outcry. Whether brokering mayoral conversations or detailing the policies and services necessary to support vulnerable New Yorkers, Shams is a relentless advocate, speaking with those directly impacted, elected officials, faith leaders — anyone who will listen. He’s a bridge builder, a strong voice at the table, and the accountability watchdog the city didn’t know it needed.

Alt text: Black and white photograph of Shams DaBaron, an advocate fighting for dignified housing for people experiencing houselessness

Five is a long-time advocate within the criminal justice space who has authored policies to reduce solitary confinement, founded Incarcerated Nation, and spent decades collaborating with anti-prison organizations in New York and across the country. Now he is launching the Youth Anti Prison Project, recognizing severe gaps in the system of long-term community supervision and support for youth coming home from prison. The project mentors, trains, houses and employs justice-impacted young adults through a variety of academies that last throughout their community supervision sentences, using expert trauma-informed care to give these often forgotten youth a real second chance.

Alt text: Black and white photograph of Five Mualimm-ak, founder of Incarcerated Nation

Kit Yan and Melissa Li want to bring vibrant nontraditional voices to Broadway with their musical Interstate, a coming-of-age story about Queer and Trans Asian-American experiences. The musical, developed in NYC over 8 years, opened in Minneapolis to packed audiences and rave reviews. This underdog show wants to return home to New York and open on Broadway, empowering an important community of New Yorkers who deserve to be seen and heard.

Edafe is striving to end street homelessness through partnerships with faith institutions and with targeted advocacy. The RDJ Refugee Shelter is more than a shelter; it’s a space where asylum-seekers and immigrants can access community and start to rebuild their lives. There are currently 83,000 people looking for housing in NYC, and Edafe’s mission is to ensure every New Yorker can transition with dignity to safe housing.

Cielo wants to ensure all marginalized NYC students can realize their college dreams — not just a lucky few with top test scores or leadership roles. Cielo is building an online resource called Road to Uni that will act as a supercharged, hyper-accessible college advisor, open to all and offering a gamified roadmap with quick informational videos, live support, and actionable resources to navigate the overwhelming college admissions process.

While serving as a PTA member at her children’s school, Maria developed a plan to help immigrant women gain access to education in the USA. This vision became Centro de Recursos Educativos para Adultos (CREA), a space in East Harlem offering adult literacy and education to parents across the five boroughs. The program currently serves 170+ people. More than an education platform, CREA equips parents with skills to become active participants in and advocates for their children’s growth.

Yin believes Chinatown’s survival depends on the community’s ability to advocate for equal access to resources. Together with an intergenerational group of volunteers, she built Think!Chinatown, a non-profit focusing on neighborhood engagement fostered by storytelling and the arts. Through projects like Chinatown Arts Week, The Art of Storytelling, & Everyday Chinatown, T!C honors, explores, and presents the culture and history of the community that have long made NYC’s Chinatown a vibrant immigrant neighborhood. Guided by an older generation of Chinatown organizers, Yin directs community actions to address neighborhood issues. Yin dreams of hosting kitchen classes, artists residencies, art exhibits, & community workshops in a permanent space for and in Chinatown.

Su is transforming urban transit for the many New Yorkers without access to the city’s public transportation system. Dollaride eases the connection between riders and vans-for-hire with transparent routes, consistent schedules, and mobile payments. Su hopes to connect the extensive dollar van network to existing public infrastructure and expand their territory to improve economic mobility.

Stefan is a user-centric designer who wants to make it easier for people with disabilities to thrive in New York City. Stefan and his team have developed tools that make a variety of daily tasks more accessible, like an easy- to-deploy lightweight wheelchair ramp; a multipurpose eating utensil; and an arm-support to help users play video games. His vision is simple: achieve accessibility and independence for people with disabilities by re-imagining everyday devices.

One in 15 New Yorkers lives in public housing — many of them the public servants who keep New York City safe and vibrant. But too often this huge and critical system is overlooked or given up as an intractable problem. Rasmia wants to reinvent our public housing system by building networks from generative, community-centered relationships to embrace “truth and reconciliation,” and develop real action plans to change the system. 

Deborah is a leader in air-levitation technology designed to autonomously move goods and people from one point to the next. (Cred: she won Elon Musk’s Hyperloop competition after being told she didn’t qualify). Deborah is taking this technology to the streets to reimagine the way New Yorkers move through the city — safely, quickly, and with low carbon emissions. She aims to create a community driven transportation revolution that empowers New Yorkers to be a part of the conversation and design.

Akili is building the new healthcare home New York City’s families. Juno Medical is a one-stop solution for you and your family’s everyday care needs that features exceptional hospitality, modern technology, and transparent prices that won’t break the bank. Akili and his team believe that great care is for everyone, so he’s set out to build a premier consumer healthcare brand that’s designed for the 99%.   

One third of NYC’s trash is organic — but too often this useful waste gets wasted. Domingo is working to solve this problem and grow plants for New York’s tomorrow. And after managing Red Hook Farms’s composting operation, he’s an expert in food chemistry, safe and healthy composting habits, and teaching others to make it happen. Domingo is developing a ‘how to’ compost guide and launching a new podcast called Compost Power to share expertise in support of composting processes around the city. 

Jason knows that children deserve every chance to succeed – access that transcends zip code and opportunities that jump economic hurdles. Growing up in the Queensbridge Houses, he’s faced those hurdles, and now, as the father of a teenager, he also understands the constraints that can trip up working parents. Jason launched Hood Code to address some of these issues and grounded the program in his own NYCHA community, offering free coding classes to learners ages 8 – 15. Over the program’s 13 weeks, Hood Code kids learn creative problem solving, coding basics, and computer competency. Hood Code acts as both an educational opportunity for young people and a set of extra hands for working parents, bringing a spark to NYCHA community centers in the form of essential 21st century skills.

Alt text: Black and white photograph of Jason Gibson who is teaching free coding classes to NYCHA’s youngest learners.

Gabriela is a lifelong Queens resident and the proud daughter of a single, working, immigrant mom who made sure she could be the first in her family to go to college and have a successful career in financial tech. Now Gabriela is giving back by launching Miren, a technology company that helps small business lenders collect data and assess risk more efficiently by aggregating the underwriting process onto one platform – like a digital bridge between banks and small business owners who might do their accounting by hand. Why? To help lenders increase and improve financing available to small businesses that lack credit history or traditional credentials. Miren also focuses on non-native English-speaking clients, so its platform includes live translation. Gabriela ultimately plans to learn from the lenders she partners with to reimagine the definition of “creditworthy.”

Alt text: Black and white photo of Gabriela Ariana Campoverde who is helping lenders better assess risk to invest in no-credit, credit-thin, and immigrant small businesses.

Dianna Rose is a Community Cultivator from Southeast Queens with a deep commitment to redesigning the Circular Economy within her community and its overall health. Over the past 15 years, she has launched companies that reconnect people to the planet – from a M/WBE certified zero-waste catering company, to a platform for sustainability content, to the first community farmers market in the Laurelton area.

The Sovereign Markets, launched during the height of the 2020 Pandemic at the Laurelton Long Island Railroad Station, supports local food businesses and artisans. While some concessionaires were able to successfully scale their businesses to brick-and-mortar stores, kitchen space remained too distant and expensive for most local food entrepreneurs. So, in 2021 Dianna opened the Essential Kitchen Co – the first of its kind, as a solution to the opportunity gap historically disinvested communities face due to lack of infrastructure, and today she’s on a mission to establish Southeast Queens as a food oasis and high-end concessionaire market. 

Dianna is working towards a more robust food ecosystem and increased economic success for local food entrepreneurs.

Alt text: Black and white photograph of Dianna Rose who is creating a healthy and sustainable food ecosystem in Southeast Queens.

Hernan is a formerly incarcerated, Chicano, community organizer and social entrepreneur. After a decade of advocacy aimed at closing youth prisons and empowering formerly incarcerated youth, Hernan has made it his mission to reimagine wellness and mental health for all New Yorkers. As a suicide survivor, and someone working with people who have experienced all kinds of trauma, he saw that there was a gap in how people both talked about and accessed different kinds wellness and healing modalities. As a result, he founded Healing Ninjas,Inc. a social enterprise dedicated to de-stigmatizing mental health and wellness and providing access to traditional and non-traditional resources across NYC’s five boroughs. 

Hernan aims to create a web-based platform and app that will allow people to locate and access the mental health and wellness resources near them. The Healing Ninjas brand also emphasizes community over ‘anonymity,’ asking neighbors, friends, and partners to join each person’s journey toward a happier healthier life.

Alt text: Black and white photograph of Hernan Carvente-Martinez who is increasing access to healing and wellness resources for communities of color in NYC.

Neil started his career in post-9/11 policy, working to put systems in place to prevent similar catastrophes. He later pivoted to urban development, realizing that everyday neighborhood realities can also exact deep harm—or opportunity. Today he’s focused on mass transit, which is tied to issues of mobility, access, equity, climate justice, and economic development. Yes, modifying NYC’s veins and arteries is an expensive and long-term endeavor, but from Neil’s perspective, supporting the supply chain of businesses and frontline workers that manufacture, install, and maintain our transit is key to bringing about the innovations that will support our transit system and our city’s recovery.

At the new Center for Transit R&D, Neil will work with New York’s major transit systems to address critical – if unsexy – problems like signals, track abrasion, wheel friction, and more, collaborating with researchers, universities, and manufacturers to test, scale, fabricate, and implement solutions that bring our system into and through the next century.

Alt text: Black and white photograph of Neil Padukone who is strengthening the supply chain and workforce for the region’s transit systems that move New Yorkers, support neighborhoods, and energize the City’s economy

Yin Q creates spaces and platforms to advocate for the dignity and rights of all sex workers through art, storytelling, and celebration. She is the founder of Kink Out and is a core member of Red Canary Song and AAPI grassroots collective that organizes migrant massage and sex workers and connects them to medical, legal, and mutual aid. Yin’s new idea — Body of Workers — will be an online ‘backstage’ for sex workers to create, share, and build community.

Alt text: Black and white photograph of Yin Q, an advocate for the dignity and rights of all sex workers

Sharon started Just Soul Catering in 2015, a small business that not only brings fantastic soul food to New York City, but also provides jobs, education, and advocacy to its formerly incarcerated woman identified and non binary participants . Just Soul Catering works in tandem with Re-Entry Rocks which offers a full array of services, from dance focused on healing to entrepreneurship preparation and incubation and from mentorship to training in food preparation and event set-up. Sharon and her team have created a close community dedicated to addressing the unique issues faced by survivors of both domestic violence and incarceration.

Alt text: Black and white photograph of Sharon Richardson, founder of Just Soul Catering and Re-Entry Rocks

Suzette is a pediatrician seeking to transform the way healthcare is delivered in NYC’s marginalized communities by using a ‘reverse integration’ model of care. After working with a single mom of seven who had become homeless after fleeing domestic violence, Suzette was inspired to collaborate within the fragmented social service / mental health system to more holistically support families. The Strong Children Wellness model embeds pediatric clinics within existing community-based social service and mental health organizations so that a comprehensive team — not just doctors — can fully address the needs of children and families. Strong Children Wellness plans to pilot a value-based payment system for pediatric care that is tied to improved health and well-being outcomes.

Father Michael Lopez is a Catholic priest and the creator of Hungry Monks, a mobile food pantry based in Ridgewood that exponentially increased service during the coronavirus pandemic. (If you’d asked 8-year-old Mike what kind of priest he would want to be, his answer probably would have been simply “a good one.”) Michael has transformed his church basement into a shelter — using a monastery model — and is creating a roadmap for other faith-based institutions to follow suit.

Kit Yan and Melissa Li want to bring vibrant nontraditional voices to Broadway with their musical Interstate, a coming-of-age story about Queer and Trans Asian-American experiences. The musical, developed in NYC over 8 years, opened in Minneapolis to packed audiences and rave reviews. This underdog show wants to return home to New York and open on Broadway, empowering an important community of New Yorkers who deserve to be seen and heard.

Cielo wants to ensure all marginalized NYC students can realize their college dreams — not just a lucky few with top test scores or leadership roles. Cielo is building an online resource called Road to Uni that will act as a supercharged, hyper-accessible college advisor, open to all and offering a gamified roadmap with quick informational videos, live support, and actionable resources to navigate the overwhelming college admissions process.

Su is transforming urban transit for the many New Yorkers without access to the city’s public transportation system. Dollaride eases the connection between riders and vans-for-hire with transparent routes, consistent schedules, and mobile payments. Su hopes to connect the extensive dollar van network to existing public infrastructure and expand their territory to improve economic mobility.

Stefan is a user-centric designer who wants to make it easier for people with disabilities to thrive in New York City. Stefan and his team have developed tools that make a variety of daily tasks more accessible, like an easy- to-deploy lightweight wheelchair ramp; a multipurpose eating utensil; and an arm-support to help users play video games. His vision is simple: achieve accessibility and independence for people with disabilities by re-imagining everyday devices.

One in 15 New Yorkers lives in public housing — many of them the public servants who keep New York City safe and vibrant. But too often this huge and critical system is overlooked or given up as an intractable problem. Rasmia wants to reinvent our public housing system by building networks from generative, community-centered relationships to embrace “truth and reconciliation,” and develop real action plans to change the system. 

Manuel’s journey across the Mexico-US border at the age of five with his mother sparked a passion for helping others envision and find opportunity. As an early DREAMer – a movement of undocumented immigrants brought to the U.S. as children – Manuel now leads New Immigrant Community Empowerment (NICE), a grassroots organization that provides NYC’s day laborers and new immigrants with support services and leadership development programs. Manuel wants to test new ways of organizing this critical and essential workforce citywide around cooperative work and social and economic justice.

Deborah is a leader in air-levitation technology designed to autonomously move goods and people from one point to the next. (Cred: she won Elon Musk’s Hyperloop competition after being told she didn’t qualify). Deborah is taking this technology to the streets to reimagine the way New Yorkers move through the city — safely, quickly, and with low carbon emissions. She aims to create a community driven transportation revolution that empowers New Yorkers to be a part of the conversation and design.

One third of NYC’s trash is organic — but too often this useful waste gets wasted. Domingo is working to solve this problem and grow plants for New York’s tomorrow. And after managing Red Hook Farms’s composting operation, he’s an expert in food chemistry, safe and healthy composting habits, and teaching others to make it happen. Domingo is developing a ‘how to’ compost guide and launching a new podcast called Compost Power to share expertise in support of composting processes around the city. 

Yin Q creates spaces and platforms to advocate for the dignity and rights of all sex workers through art, storytelling, and celebration. She is the founder of Kink Out and is a core member of Red Canary Song and AAPI grassroots collective that organizes migrant massage and sex workers and connects them to medical, legal, and mutual aid. Yin’s new idea — Body of Workers — will be an online ‘backstage’ for sex workers to create, share, and build community.

Alt text: Black and white photograph of Yin Q, an advocate for the dignity and rights of all sex workers

By illuminating the lore and culture of Staten Island via a media hub and FM radio station, Kristin wants to increase appreciation for the many cultures and neighborhoods of NYC’s most outer borough.  She gives the tools and mic to Staten Islanders to amplify their special stories, culture, and artistic talents. 

Alt text: Black and white photograph of Kristin Wallace, founder of MakerPark Radio

Gladys is the co-founder of ECE on the Move, a group of more than 600 early childhood educators working in residential settings in New York City. Sometimes called “home-based childcare workers” or “family child care providers,” ECE on the Move uses the term “early childhood educators,” which more accurately reflects their many skills. Gladys and her co-founder, Doris Irizarry, spent years organizing providers, but eventually tired of the lack of respect and representation they saw in politics and policies affecting their industry. They formally established ECE on the Move in 2019 and have built a thriving community of early childhood educators mobilized for positive change.

Alt text: Black and white photograph of Gladys Jones, co-founder of Early Childhood Educators on the Move

More than half a million US veterans were born outside the United States, and nearly two million are US-born children of immigrants. Cesar Vargas was born in Mexico, grew up undocumented in the US, and went on to serve in the armed forces. Now the first undocumented lawyer in the country focuses on this nexus — working to ensure fair and accessible immigration services for active service members and veterans vulnerable to deportation.

Alt text: Black and white photograph of Cesar Vargas, an advocate for immigrants serving in the military

Kit Yan and Melissa Li want to bring vibrant nontraditional voices to Broadway with their musical Interstate, a coming-of-age story about Queer and Trans Asian-American experiences. The musical, developed in NYC over 8 years, opened in Minneapolis to packed audiences and rave reviews. This underdog show wants to return home to New York and open on Broadway, empowering an important community of New Yorkers who deserve to be seen and heard.

Cielo wants to ensure all marginalized NYC students can realize their college dreams — not just a lucky few with top test scores or leadership roles. Cielo is building an online resource called Road to Uni that will act as a supercharged, hyper-accessible college advisor, open to all and offering a gamified roadmap with quick informational videos, live support, and actionable resources to navigate the overwhelming college admissions process.

Su is transforming urban transit for the many New Yorkers without access to the city’s public transportation system. Dollaride eases the connection between riders and vans-for-hire with transparent routes, consistent schedules, and mobile payments. Su hopes to connect the extensive dollar van network to existing public infrastructure and expand their territory to improve economic mobility.

Stefan is a user-centric designer who wants to make it easier for people with disabilities to thrive in New York City. Stefan and his team have developed tools that make a variety of daily tasks more accessible, like an easy- to-deploy lightweight wheelchair ramp; a multipurpose eating utensil; and an arm-support to help users play video games. His vision is simple: achieve accessibility and independence for people with disabilities by re-imagining everyday devices.

One in 15 New Yorkers lives in public housing — many of them the public servants who keep New York City safe and vibrant. But too often this huge and critical system is overlooked or given up as an intractable problem. Rasmia wants to reinvent our public housing system by building networks from generative, community-centered relationships to embrace “truth and reconciliation,” and develop real action plans to change the system. 

Deborah is a leader in air-levitation technology designed to autonomously move goods and people from one point to the next. (Cred: she won Elon Musk’s Hyperloop competition after being told she didn’t qualify). Deborah is taking this technology to the streets to reimagine the way New Yorkers move through the city — safely, quickly, and with low carbon emissions. She aims to create a community driven transportation revolution that empowers New Yorkers to be a part of the conversation and design.

One third of NYC’s trash is organic — but too often this useful waste gets wasted. Domingo is working to solve this problem and grow plants for New York’s tomorrow. And after managing Red Hook Farms’s composting operation, he’s an expert in food chemistry, safe and healthy composting habits, and teaching others to make it happen. Domingo is developing a ‘how to’ compost guide and launching a new podcast called Compost Power to share expertise in support of composting processes around the city. 

Diana wears many hats. She’s the owner of Friends and Lovers, one of Brooklyn’s danciest spots, a community organizer, and the founder of NYC Nightlife United (NNU), a coalition of leaders dedicated to a safer, more inclusive scene. Originally established to help venues navigate the pandemic, NNU has become the incubator of necessary and urgent initiatives, programs, and solutions for the nightlife community. They’ve piloted and scaled mental health supports for nightlife professionals, and distributed over $145K in cash relief to venues and nightlife workers during the pandemic. Based on these successes, Diana envisions a time when every nightlife professional – from barbacks to security – works in a sustainable, safe environment and NYC’s after hours scene delivers the best of the city’s electric energy.

Alt text: Black and white photograph of Diana Mora who is making sure NYC nightlife reflects and protects New Yorkers’ diverse, creative energy.

Geneva is a creative industry veteran who has witnessed firsthand the sector’s insurmountable barriers to entry for NYC’s young people of color. Geneva and Co-Founder, Eda Levenson founded Scope of Work (SOW) in 2016 in response – a talent agency for young Black, Indigenous, and people of color creatives. SOW creates intentional pathways into NYC’s creative sector through talent development, a non-traditional and inclusive skill-building space; talent pipeline, a paid fellowship program connecting young people to early workplace experiences; and talent agency, which offers recruitment and placement services to young BIPOC creatives.

Alt text: Black and white photograph of Geneva White who is building a more sustainable, inclusive and equitable creative economy in NYC.

Yin Q creates spaces and platforms to advocate for the dignity and rights of all sex workers through art, storytelling, and celebration. She is the founder of Kink Out and is a core member of Red Canary Song and AAPI grassroots collective that organizes migrant massage and sex workers and connects them to medical, legal, and mutual aid. Yin’s new idea — Body of Workers — will be an online ‘backstage’ for sex workers to create, share, and build community.

Alt text: Black and white photograph of Yin Q, an advocate for the dignity and rights of all sex workers

By illuminating the lore and culture of Staten Island via a media hub and FM radio station, Kristin wants to increase appreciation for the many cultures and neighborhoods of NYC’s most outer borough.  She gives the tools and mic to Staten Islanders to amplify their special stories, culture, and artistic talents. 

Alt text: Black and white photograph of Kristin Wallace, founder of MakerPark Radio

Using a unusual skillset, which includes dumpster diving, moonshining, and collaborative DIY, Hackett has developed a way to produce a clean, renewable gasoline replacement from bread — specifically the mountain of unsold and imperfect bread thrown away in NYC every day that contains volumes of potential energy in its concentrated carbs. His worker-owned co-op will intercept this waste and then ferment and distill it into renewable, low-emission ethanol fuel. Like the movement to transform used fry oil into biodiesel, this process represents a new pathway to sustainability and community ownership of a cleaner future.

Alt text: Black and white photograph of Hackett, founder of a new cooperative that turns bakery waste into fuel

Caridad is a Bronx native, world-renowned spoken word artist known as “La Bruja,” who transformed a 100-year old garage behind her home into a cultural, art, and spiritual center. She envisions El Garaje as a site for creative residencies, learning and projection projects, and a sanctuary space for indigenous artists, activists, and practitioners. After opening its doors in 2016, she learned that it is built on what once was a Siwanoy village called Snakapins. Ultimately, the vision is for El Garaje to become a historic site and beacon from which a new village can emerge in the Soundview section of The Bronx.

Alt text: Black and white photograph of Caridad de la Luz, also known as La Bruja, founder of a community art space in Soundview, Bronx called El Garaje

Kit Yan and Melissa Li want to bring vibrant nontraditional voices to Broadway with their musical Interstate, a coming-of-age story about Queer and Trans Asian-American experiences. The musical, developed in NYC over 8 years, opened in Minneapolis to packed audiences and rave reviews. This underdog show wants to return home to New York and open on Broadway, empowering an important community of New Yorkers who deserve to be seen and heard.

Yin believes Chinatown’s survival depends on the community’s ability to advocate for equal access to resources. Together with an intergenerational group of volunteers, she built Think!Chinatown, a non-profit focusing on neighborhood engagement fostered by storytelling and the arts. Through projects like Chinatown Arts Week, The Art of Storytelling, & Everyday Chinatown, T!C honors, explores, and presents the culture and history of the community that have long made NYC’s Chinatown a vibrant immigrant neighborhood. Guided by an older generation of Chinatown organizers, Yin directs community actions to address neighborhood issues. Yin dreams of hosting kitchen classes, artists residencies, art exhibits, & community workshops in a permanent space for and in Chinatown.

Jill is a special education teacher and behavior analyst whose 15-year career left her frustrated by special education models failing to reach young neurodiverse children equitably. She launched a new model, The Inspired Community Project, rooted in the Bronx where demand for programs is high while supply lags – nearly 40% of children ages 1-3 who are eligible for services lack support. Having worked for and managed programs, Jill has the experience to run her organization differently: increasing staff support and promotional opportunities to improve retention, co-developing a training model to hire people from within the community, and working with local organizations to create a universal community uplift.

Alt text: Black and white photograph of Jillian Moses who is launching a new kind of early intervention center for neurodiverse children in the Bronx

Jaime-Jin Lewis envisions a New York where every parent has access to affordable, quality childcare; every child is surrounded by a caring community; and the majority-woman-powered workforce of childcare providers enjoys dignified jobs with fair pay. She founded Wiggle Room to innovate solutions toward these goals. Jaime-Jin organized #WorkersNeedChildcare, a hotline to help essential workers navigate childcare during the pandemic, and #CareTogetherNYC, a mutual aid project to disburse cash assistance to essential workers with untenable childcare costs due to school and daycare closures. She is currently launching a new platform that connects two overlooked communities: parents who work fluctuating, hourly jobs and home-based childcare providers.

Alt text: Black and white photograph of Jaime-Jin Lewis, founder of Wiggle Room, a platform to make childcare more accessible for NYC families

NYC’s youngest residents deserve to be seen, heard and loved in their classrooms — particularly Black and Brown children who too often start at a disadvantage. For 40 years, Fela Barclift has led Little Sun People, an early childhood education center in Brooklyn with an Afrocentric/Culturally Responsive curriculum where children ages 2-5 can express themselves through African dance, drumming, music, martial arts, chess,  and play. Fela’s kids learn and grow by gardening, cooking, taking field trips (offsite, on campus, and virtually) and by supporting local Black-owned businesses.  It’s a community that joyfully celebrates, learns from, and is inspired by the countless contributions people of African descent have made to NYC and around the globe.

Alt text: Black and white photograph of Fela Barclift, founder of Little Sun People, a childcare program with an African centered focus

After 14 years as a New York City ESL instructor and frustrated by the lack of resources for immigrant students, Darnell Benoit founded Flanbwayan Haitian Literacy Project in 2005. FHLC fights for change in the NYC Public School System so that newcomer youth can receive necessary support — neither defined nor limited by discrimination, isolation, or language barriers. The Immigrant Youth Project (IYLP) will use technology to build a safe citywide support network where young immigrants can build relationships, encounter unexpected influences, and engage in educational activities outside school walls. Using dance, art, music, filmmaking, podcasts, book clubs, and leadership development activities, the IYLP will create new pathways for recent newcomers to co-create community and wellbeing.

Alt text: Black and white photograph of Darnell Benoit, founder of Flanbwayan and advocate for immigrant youth city-wide

Cielo wants to ensure all marginalized NYC students can realize their college dreams — not just a lucky few with top test scores or leadership roles. Cielo is building an online resource called Road to Uni that will act as a supercharged, hyper-accessible college advisor, open to all and offering a gamified roadmap with quick informational videos, live support, and actionable resources to navigate the overwhelming college admissions process.

While serving as a PTA member at her children’s school, Maria developed a plan to help immigrant women gain access to education in the USA. This vision became Centro de Recursos Educativos para Adultos (CREA), a space in East Harlem offering adult literacy and education to parents across the five boroughs. The program currently serves 170+ people. More than an education platform, CREA equips parents with skills to become active participants in and advocates for their children’s growth.

Carmen moved to NYC from Mexico to become a fashion designer. While pursuing a BFA at Parsons, she saw opportunities beyond front-end design into clothing’s next life – reclaiming value from discarded items to create sustainable circular design solutions. She began by helping brands like Eileen Fisher set up processes and find scalable solutions for all their unsellable inventory from their take back program.. Now, Carmen and co-founder Carolina Bedoya are leveraging 20 years of industry experience to build MAKE ANEEW, a company that helps brands develop ‘post-consumer operations’ like take-back programs, resale, remanufacturing, repair and fiber-to-fiber recycling. Carmen and Carolina are changing the fashion industry, one garment at a time.

Alt text: Black and white photograph of Carmen Gama who is recovering, repairing, remanufacturing, and recycling the clothes New Yorkers throw away.

Dianna Rose is a Community Cultivator from Southeast Queens with a deep commitment to redesigning the Circular Economy within her community and its overall health. Over the past 15 years, she has launched companies that reconnect people to the planet – from a M/WBE certified zero-waste catering company, to a platform for sustainability content, to the first community farmers market in the Laurelton area.

The Sovereign Markets, launched during the height of the 2020 Pandemic at the Laurelton Long Island Railroad Station, supports local food businesses and artisans. While some concessionaires were able to successfully scale their businesses to brick-and-mortar stores, kitchen space remained too distant and expensive for most local food entrepreneurs. So, in 2021 Dianna opened the Essential Kitchen Co – the first of its kind, as a solution to the opportunity gap historically disinvested communities face due to lack of infrastructure, and today she’s on a mission to establish Southeast Queens as a food oasis and high-end concessionaire market. 

Dianna is working towards a more robust food ecosystem and increased economic success for local food entrepreneurs.

Alt text: Black and white photograph of Dianna Rose who is creating a healthy and sustainable food ecosystem in Southeast Queens.

Using a unusual skillset, which includes dumpster diving, moonshining, and collaborative DIY, Hackett has developed a way to produce a clean, renewable gasoline replacement from bread — specifically the mountain of unsold and imperfect bread thrown away in NYC every day that contains volumes of potential energy in its concentrated carbs. His worker-owned co-op will intercept this waste and then ferment and distill it into renewable, low-emission ethanol fuel. Like the movement to transform used fry oil into biodiesel, this process represents a new pathway to sustainability and community ownership of a cleaner future.

Alt text: Black and white photograph of Hackett, founder of a new cooperative that turns bakery waste into fuel

Chino’s lived experience as a formerly incarcerated, Black and Indiginous Trans person provides deep inspiration for NuLegacy, a program designed to support Black, Indigenous, Queer & Trans New Yorkers whose lives have been devastated by prison involvement.  His radical idea?  To use ancestral healing practices and connect folks — sometimes for the first time — to nature.  For the last 20 years, Chino has taught youth and families in Bedstuy that stewardship of land and community can lead to healing and transformation.

Deborah is a leader in air-levitation technology designed to autonomously move goods and people from one point to the next. (Cred: she won Elon Musk’s Hyperloop competition after being told she didn’t qualify). Deborah is taking this technology to the streets to reimagine the way New Yorkers move through the city — safely, quickly, and with low carbon emissions. She aims to create a community driven transportation revolution that empowers New Yorkers to be a part of the conversation and design.

One third of NYC’s trash is organic — but too often this useful waste gets wasted. Domingo is working to solve this problem and grow plants for New York’s tomorrow. And after managing Red Hook Farms’s composting operation, he’s an expert in food chemistry, safe and healthy composting habits, and teaching others to make it happen. Domingo is developing a ‘how to’ compost guide and launching a new podcast called Compost Power to share expertise in support of composting processes around the city. 

Hernan is a formerly incarcerated, Chicano, community organizer and social entrepreneur. After a decade of advocacy aimed at closing youth prisons and empowering formerly incarcerated youth, Hernan has made it his mission to reimagine wellness and mental health for all New Yorkers. As a suicide survivor, and someone working with people who have experienced all kinds of trauma, he saw that there was a gap in how people both talked about and accessed different kinds wellness and healing modalities. As a result, he founded Healing Ninjas,Inc. a social enterprise dedicated to de-stigmatizing mental health and wellness and providing access to traditional and non-traditional resources across NYC’s five boroughs. 

Hernan aims to create a web-based platform and app that will allow people to locate and access the mental health and wellness resources near them. The Healing Ninjas brand also emphasizes community over ‘anonymity,’ asking neighbors, friends, and partners to join each person’s journey toward a happier healthier life.

Alt text: Black and white photograph of Hernan Carvente-Martinez who is increasing access to healing and wellness resources for communities of color in NYC.

Life-threatening birth and pregnancy complications have been steadily on the rise, and Myla is on a mission to change that. Since she began as a doula in 2006, Myla has become a leader and visionary in the birth field, building a suite of community programs where people can access safe, informed reproductive care pre-, during, and post-pregnancy. Her innovation of a mobile wellness hub, the Womb Bus, brings essential education, resources, and outreach to blossoming families. This serves as a vehicle to increase awareness and provide services in preparation for The Birthing Place, a future birth center offering midwifery-led collaborative care.

Myla acts from the perspective that when we bring marginalized people to the center, care as a whole improves, and it improves for all people.

Alt text: Black and white photograph of Myla Flores who is building a community-based pregnancy and reproductive center for NYC birthing people that offers safe, accessible, and family-rooted midwifery and doula services.

Every four hours, someone in New York City dies of an overdose, more often than not from ingesting substances mixed with drugs they didn’t know were present, such as fentanyl. Advanced drug checking technologies exist that analyze substances for their exact content, but these technologies are  expensive, time-consuming, and not accessible to those most vulnerable. And while more accessible drug checking methods like fentanyl test strips can be used, their efficacy is limited and the results are unreliable in environments like the bathrooms of music venues where they are sometimes available. Mohawk is a harm reduction educator focused on young people within NYC nightlife. Championing a pragmatic approach to drug use, Mohawk takes to the streets to ensure New Yorkers can accurately test substances and reduce risks associated with their use via a mobile drug checking unit that offers overdose prevention education and testing results on the spot. Mohawk’s vision is to increase safety, awareness, and reduce unnecessary deaths in New York City’s youth populations – without judgment.

Alt text: Black and white photograph of Mohawk Kellye Greene who is preventing accidental overdose through high-level, accessible drug checking and improved information about prevalence and risk.

Michael believes that ballroom can speak profound truths about humanity and struggle. The Freedom School, named after the late great Ballroom Icon, Arbert Santana, strives to be a beloved community in the old sense — not an ordinary brick and mortar institution, but a forum to channel events, literature and pedagogy, leadership, mentorship, and identity for NYC’s Black / Latinx / LGBT ballroom family.

Alt text: Black and white photograph of Michael Angelo Roberson, an advocate working towards the invigoration of the House Ball scene

Gladys is the co-founder of ECE on the Move, a group of more than 600 early childhood educators working in residential settings in New York City. Sometimes called “home-based childcare workers” or “family child care providers,” ECE on the Move uses the term “early childhood educators,” which more accurately reflects their many skills. Gladys and her co-founder, Doris Irizarry, spent years organizing providers, but eventually tired of the lack of respect and representation they saw in politics and policies affecting their industry. They formally established ECE on the Move in 2019 and have built a thriving community of early childhood educators mobilized for positive change.

Alt text: Black and white photograph of Gladys Jones, co-founder of Early Childhood Educators on the Move

Carmen is a fierce advocate for reproductive health and justice, specifically to improve care for women of color — especially for Black women who are twelve times more likely to die in childbirth than white women in New York City — and increase young people’s access to sexual education. Because care is rooted in community, Carmen frames the maternal health conversation as a responsibility for all New Yorkers.

Alt text: Black and white photograph of Carmen Mojica, a midwife and advocate for reproductive health and justice

Robert Gore is an emergency physician and founder of the Kings Against Violence Initiative (KAVI). Drawing from 7+ years of experience, Robert hopes to reach all NYC frontline workers — police officers, healthcare workers, educators, firefighters — with a new virtual training program in holistic care and trauma-informed response. Robert envisions a New York where providers and recipients of care have the tools to transform trauma, leading to better physical and mental health outcomes.

Suzette is a pediatrician seeking to transform the way healthcare is delivered in NYC’s marginalized communities by using a ‘reverse integration’ model of care. After working with a single mom of seven who had become homeless after fleeing domestic violence, Suzette was inspired to collaborate within the fragmented social service / mental health system to more holistically support families. The Strong Children Wellness model embeds pediatric clinics within existing community-based social service and mental health organizations so that a comprehensive team — not just doctors — can fully address the needs of children and families. Strong Children Wellness plans to pilot a value-based payment system for pediatric care that is tied to improved health and well-being outcomes.

Father Michael Lopez is a Catholic priest and the creator of Hungry Monks, a mobile food pantry based in Ridgewood that exponentially increased service during the coronavirus pandemic. (If you’d asked 8-year-old Mike what kind of priest he would want to be, his answer probably would have been simply “a good one.”) Michael has transformed his church basement into a shelter — using a monastery model — and is creating a roadmap for other faith-based institutions to follow suit.

Manuel’s journey across the Mexico-US border at the age of five with his mother sparked a passion for helping others envision and find opportunity. As an early DREAMer – a movement of undocumented immigrants brought to the U.S. as children – Manuel now leads New Immigrant Community Empowerment (NICE), a grassroots organization that provides NYC’s day laborers and new immigrants with support services and leadership development programs. Manuel wants to test new ways of organizing this critical and essential workforce citywide around cooperative work and social and economic justice.