Shawnda Chapman, Jamaica Gilmer, Miguel Luciano with Nico Wheadon

The Director of the Girls Fund Initiative of the Ms. Foundation. Shawnda has worked as a lead program specialist on a national initiative aimed at preventing and ending girls’ incarceration at the Vera Institute of Justice. She served as Director of the Beyond the Bars Fellowship program at the Center for Justice at Columbia University. Her work has focused on racial justice, gender justice, and understanding the ways girls of color get pushed into the criminal justice system. With a focus on marginalized and vulnerable populations, Shawnda sits on the board of Black Women’s Blueprint, a transnational organization that works to end all forms of violence against Black women and girls. She also serves on the advisory board of Southern New Hampshire University’s Global Education Movement.

A strategist, storyteller, photographer, and curator who has a 15 year background in creating and implementing curricula. She is founder & director of The Beautiful Project, an arts collective that centers Black women and girls as the authority over their own narratives. Her work as a storyteller and photographer allows her to capture realities that are overlooked and misunderstood. A graduate of Howard University’s John H. Johnson School of Communications, she is a highly influential speaker sharing insight across the nation. She is the lead curator of TBP’s most recent exhibition at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Pens, Lens, and Soul: The Story of The Beautiful Project. Jamaica is a passionate, bold, thought leader and one to watch as a champion for Black girls everywhere.

A multimedia visual artist whose work explores themes of history, popular culture, social justice and migration, through sculpture, painting and socially engaged public art projects. His work has been exhibited nationally and internationally. He is the recipient of numerous grants and awards, and he was a fellow of the smARTpower Program. His work is featured in the permanent collections of The Smithsonian American Art Museum, The Brooklyn Museum, El Museo del Barrio, the Newark Museum, and the Museo de Arte de Puerto Rico. Luciano is a faculty member at the School of Visual Arts in New York and Yale University School of Art. He is currently an Artist in Residence within The Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Civic Practice Partnership Residency Program.

An independent art advisor, curator, educator and writer. She, alongside her partner Malik D. Lewis, is founder and principal of bldg fund LLC, an innovation platform for BIPOC artists, entrepreneurs and neighbors. Nico currently serves on the Board of Governors at the National Academy of Design, and the Advisory Board for the Lubin School of Business Transformative Leadership Program. Nico is an adjunct assistant professor of Creative & Cultural Entrepreneurship in the Commons at Brown University; Freestyle & Displacement in Contemporary Art Practices at Barnard College; and Art & Place Reconsidered at Hartford Art School. She is a Guide at The Institute of Possibility, and has guest lectured at Yale, Princeton, MIT, NYU, Pratt, The New School and Howard.