Meet Community Speakers
Dr. Carolyn Johnson is a Strategic Futurist, Commercial Real Estate Developer, and the Founding CEO of the Black Cultural Zone Community Development Corporation (BCZ CDC). A native of East Oakland, she has spent over 30 years managing public, private, and non-profit institutions with a focus on Finance, Healthcare, and Real Estate. In 2019, she served as the first Executive Director of the East Oakland Black Cultural Zone Collaborative and, alongside the community, led the creation of the BCZ CDC in 2020.
As a Systems Architect, Dr. Johnson is a co-designer of the foundational blueprint for the RISE East initiative, a $100M collective impact model. In 2025, she co-led the creation of the Centers of Excellence Network, representing the natural evolution of the BCZ CDC. She holds an Honors MBA from Columbia Business School in Corporate Finance, Real Estate Finance, and Marketing, an Ed.D. in Educational Leadership from Saint Mary's College, and an MPH in Health Policy and Administration from UC Berkeley. Her leadership integrates Teal principles and collaborative hierarchies to secure cultural sovereignty through permanent community ownership.
Black Cultural Zone (BCZ) was born out of a powerful, community-led movement to stop the displacement of Black residents and businesses in East Oakland. In response to decades of disinvestment and the accelerating pressures of gentrification, Eastside Arts Alliance convened local nonprofits, cultural workers, and grassroots organizations in 2014 to develop a bold strategy for reclaiming and revitalizing Black spaces.
This collective became known as the East Oakland Black Cultural Zone Collaborative, a network rooted in Black arts, culture, and community self-determination. United by a vision to preserve legacy neighborhoods and foster cultural resilience, the Collaborative designated a 50-square-block area—from High Street to the San Leandro border—as the East Oakland Black Cultural Zone.
To help realize this vision through long-term infrastructure and development, the Black Cultural Zone Community Development Corporation (BCZ CDC) was founded in 2019. As the implementing arm of the Collaborative, BCZ CDC advances neighborhood, commercial, and cultural development that centers the needs and aspirations of East Oakland’s Black communities.
Together, the Collaborative and BCZ CDC are working to build, protect, and celebrate Black spaces in East Oakland—unapologetically and with purpose.
Dr. Carolyn Johnson
Black Cultural Zone
Ed Whitfield
Seed Commons
Changing the World in a World that is Changing Seed Commons: Community Wealth Cooperative.
Ed Whitfield is originally from Little Rock Arkansas and was a long time anti-war and social justice activist before becoming involved in labor organizing, community development, cooperative development and philanthropy. He now spends most of his time trying to help communities build self-reliant economies to meet their needs and elevate the quality of life. Ed was Co-Founder and Co-Managing Director of the Fund for Democratic Communities (F4DC) and continues to serve on the boards of the Seed Commons: A Community Wealth Cooperative, The Big We (Historic Clayborn Temple Project) in Memphis TŃ, and Crossroads Cultural Arts Center, near his home in Clarksdale MS. Ed spent 9 years as Board Chairman of the Greensboro NC Redevelopment Commission and was the board chair of Greensboro’s Triad Minority Development Corporation before becoming involved with the cooperatives and the world of democratic non-extractive finance. He currently serves as a consultant to community groups on matters of community cooperative economic development and community wealth building, as well as working in the arena of organizational anti-racism, diversity, equity and inclusion improvement. Ed writes, teaches and lectures on these matters of importance while balancing this work with playing blues and eating barbecue."
Noni Session
East Bay Permanent Real Estate Cooperative (EBPREC)
Claiming Cultural Space: The EB PREC Journey
Objectives
Gain a comprehensive understanding of the history and evolution of the East Bay Permanent Real Estate Cooperative
Explore the strategies behind EB PREC’s success and learn how these approaches were developed
Learn about the successes and challenges encountered throughout the project to gain valuable perspectives
Explore the thesis on strategies to support and sustain a cultural commercial corridor through collective ownership strategies
Facilitate the exchange of rapid feedback on challenging elements of projects to enhance learning and collaboration
Noni Session is Co-founder and Executive Director of the East Bay Permanent Real Estate Cooperative that supports BIPOC and allied communities to finance, purchase, and steward collectively owned land and housing. A 3rd generation West Oaklander and cultural anthropologist, Noni carried out her doctoral studies in international humanitarian strategies in global development. After a 2016 run for Oakland city council where she garnered more than 43% of the District 3 vote, Noni saw a clear path to ameliorating resource disparities and slowing rapid racialized displacement in her West Oakland community through building cooperative networks and galvanizing collective economic action. In addition to co-founding EB PREC, Noni is also a founding board member of BlacSpace Cooperative, and a Founding Steward of Emerald Earth Sanctuary, a Black-led rural intentional community, in the heart of Mendocino County.
https://www.instagram.com/eb.prec/
https://www.linkedin.com/company/ebprec
Kwame Asagefu
Village Connect
The We That Holds
Why Cooperatives Break — and the Practice That Keeps Them Whole
Most cooperatives don’t fall apart over money — they fall apart over trust, conflict, and the conversations no one knows how to hold. Experience the relational practices that keep a co-op whole, and leave with two tools you can use at your next meeting.
Kwame Osagyefo (Gaylon Logan, Jr.) is the creator of Culture-Based Transformative Coaching® and the Ubuntu Mind-Shift methodology, delivered with Repaired Nations as part of Return to Black Wall Street. Founder of CBTC Institute and Village-Connect, he brings 30+ years in community development and international recognition for the documentary Culture Connects Us.
Dominique Pearson
LA Co-op Lab
Dominique is a lover, a fighter, a daughter and a sister, an herbalist, farmer, food and economic justice educator, born in Tongva lands, Inglewood and Los Angeles, CA. They are a Cooperative Developer with LA Co-op Lab, with a decade of experience in the field of cooperative development. They are also the founder of Coyote Gourd Farms, an urban mini farm specializing in the crops of the African diaspora and a member of the Ujamaa farming cooperative. Through their work, Dominique is committed to the practice of culture keeping, the liberation of their people and the freedom dreams of their ancestors.
Alton Byrd
Optimus 1 Consulting and Coaching
Breaking Grant Culture- Building sustainable income systems
This will be a high-energy, execution-focused presentation designed to help you break out of traditional grant dependency and step into diversified, sustainable funding opportunities.
Maria Ava
La Base’
Cooperativism, Community and Resistance:
Experiences from the Global South. We propose to share our experience navigating diverse political, economic, and social contexts. To share lessons learned in resistance from the cooperative community and offer a hopeful vision for a world possible for all.
La Base Argentina has a 21-year history of supporting cooperatives and worker-recuperated factories in Argentina with solidarity financing. Maria Eva and Mariela have been part of the organization for 15 and 10 years respectively.
Brotha Peace &
Mikhael Garvey Ali
Raw Sol Collective
"Healing Collectively: Food, Nature, and Community as Cooperative Practice"
Educating how using nature, natural herbs and food as medicine to work together Cooperatively to inspire a better relationship with land, investing in collective communities and using art & culture as an tool for healing, repair and evolution from “The Hood To The Woods”
Adéniké Amin
BLACSpace Cooperative
"Narrative Sovereignty and The Hero's Journey."
This workshop is framed through the lens of The Hero’s Journey, a well-known literary framework. The intention is for co-ops to see themselves as the hero of their own unfolding story: stepping into the unknown, facing challenges, and claiming new language, campaign building, and power along the way.
Chanowk & Judith Yisrael
Yisrael Farms
The Land Remembers: Agriculture as Cooperative Resistance
Long before cooperatives became formal organizations, Black communities practiced cooperation as a way of life. Through shared labor, seed saving, communal kitchens, church gardens, and family land stewardship, our ancestors built resilient systems rooted in interdependence and collective care.
In this interactive workshop, Judith and Chanowk Yisrael of Yisrael Farms explore how these traditions continue to shape food sovereignty, community resilience, and economic flourishing today. Through storytelling, reflection, and a collaborative community asset-mapping exercise, participants will identify the skills, relationships, land, and cultural knowledge already present within their communities.
Together, we'll reframe cooperation as more than a business model—it's a cultural inheritance that empowers us to steward our communities, strengthen relationships, and cultivate a more resilient future.
Kingdom X
Repaired Nations
Kingdom Tutheruhotep is Co-Founder and Co-Lead of Repaired Nations, serving as a project officer and education lead. He oversees workforce-based cooperative training initiatives and leads the organization’s political education and cooperative literacy programming.
Gregory Jackson Jr.
Repaired Nations
Gregory Jackson is a practicing attorney and serves as the Administrative Director and Lead Strategist for Repaired Nations. He oversees legal compliance, organizational infrastructure, fundraising strategy, and long-term growth planning while serving as a project officer for cooperative initiatives.
Jabari Garvey Shaw
Jabari Garvey Shaw is a veteran Oakland community activist, spoken word artist, and Commissioner General for the UNIA-ACL Rehabilitation Committee, whose work has long centered Black liberation, youth justice, and police accountability.
A prominent voice in Oakland’s Black community, he has been active in efforts surrounding police violence, school-police reform, and movements honoring the legacy of the Black Panther Party and Marcus Garvey.
Through poetry, rap, and grassroots organizing, Shaw has used art and activism to advance community empowerment and political awareness.