Meet the AdAstra Collective
Rachel O'Leary Carmona
Rachel O'Leary Carmona is the co-founder of and Managing Partner of AdAstra Management Collective. She has helped to inspire, equip, and mobilize people to shape the actions and policies that affect their communities for well over a decade. Rachel is a first generation Mexican American, from the north side of Milwaukee, Wisconsin.
A recognized expert on building transformational online and offline communities and decentralized networks, Rachel has held leadership positions with Movement NetLab, Women’s March, Women for Women International, Girl Scouts of the USA, the Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation, Wisconsin Public Television, and Amnesty International USA.
Rachel earned her Associates degree from Madison Area Technical College in Madison, Wisconsin. She went on to earn her Bachelors degree in African American Studies from the University of Wisconsin and her Masters in Public Policy from the Harvard Kennedy School of Government, where she focused on leadership development and non-profit management. Rachel lives in Clinton Hill, Brooklyn with her puggle, Della J. Beanz.
Allen Kwabena Frimpong
Allen Kwabena Frimpong is a cultural strategist, serial cooperative entrepreneur, resource mobilizer, and artist who organizes through social movements for a just transition in philanthropy towards a solidarity economy. He is a co-founder of and Managing Partner at AdAstra Collective. He is a co-host of the Old Money, New System community of practice that supports resource mobilization initiatives that strengthen social movement ecosystems to be relational, center community healing, and redistribution of wealth through learning and innovation. He is also a co-founder of ZEAL, a worker-owned multimedia group for Black artists throughout the diaspora.
He holds an interdisciplinary practice rooted in the Black radical tradition through community organizing, cultural strategy, transformative leadership coaching, resource mobilization, and participatory planning within complex systems. Allen’s body of work as a harm reductionist has been providing capacity-building in philanthropy within the public health sector and drug policy field internationally with organizations such as the Harm Reduction Coalition, Community Foundation of New Jersey, Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, Movement NetLab, and the Start Network in the UK. He also mobilized resources for the national ride to Ferguson that led to the formation of the Black Lives Matter National Network along with other local responses to state sanctioned violence nationally.
He is currently a board member of the oldest philanthropic organization for social movements in America, Resist Foundation. Allen is also an activist advisory member of the Solidaire Network’s Movement Research & Development Fund for high net worth donors supporting social movements as well as a giving circle member of ThriveAfrica. His body of work and contributions have been featured on NPR, WNYC, the Stanford Social Innovation Review, Chronicle of Philanthropy, Inside Philanthropy, and the New York Times.
Allen Kwabena Frimpong received his Master’s Degree in Urban Planning and Affairs at CUNY Hunter College. He also has attended the Center for Popular Economics Summer Institute at Amherst College and has received his graduate certification at Cornell University ILR School in Labor Leadership Skills. He is currently a fellow with the Bridging Studio in New York and a graduate candidate with the UPenn School of Social Policy Arts & Cultural Strategy program.
Aquib S. Yacoob
Guided by Paulo Freire's "Pedagogy of the Oppressed," Aquib S. Yacoob is a community organizer, storyteller and “fixer” utilizing the arts and culture as vehicles to (re)claim power in communities oppressed by difference. Aquib is the founder of #BrownManRunning Consulting, a social change strategy firm. At #BrownManRunning, the philosophy is simple: there are no problems, only creative solutions. He launched #BrownManRunning at age 24, after working at Amnesty International for 10 years. A graduate of Colby College, Aquib’s research in Human Rights, Violence + Social Change spanned the globe examining the intricacies and intersections of community health, identity, human rights and social movements.
The breadth of his work ranges from strategic advisory roles with City Agencies and National Foundations, to serving as Chief of Staff of the Women’s March, to generating millions of dollars in funding for community-led gun violence prevention groups in NYC.
Aquib is an avid home cook, runner and a Guyanese boy raised in Queens, NY. You’ll probably catch him mid-run at an ice-cream parlor.
Jiva Manske
Jiva Manske is a brother, son, strategist, facilitator, social justice educator, and organizer. He has dedicated the last 15 years to building power to change the world. He has been an entrepreneur in a 50+ year-old organization, a veteran in a start-up environment, an HR advisor, an executive coach, and a senior manager. He has built local and global strategy, trained leaders, and facilitated change with organizations, activists, youth leaders, inmates, educators, refugees, government officials, and nonprofit professionals in Afghanistan, Australia, Austria, Canada, England, Iran, Ireland, Japan, Romania, and throughout North and South America. When he is not on the road being inspired by the strength and resilience of communities leading change, you can find him in Albuquerque, New Mexico with his cat, reading speculative fiction in between meals drenched in green and/or red chile.
Malaika Elias
Malaika Elias is an environmental and racial justice advocate and currently serves as an Organizer at Waterkeeper Alliance. Coming from a diverse academic and professional background, Malaika has worked on campaigns that intersect environmental/gender justice and human rights. Malaika began drawing the link between human rights and the environment after traveling to the Brazilian Amazon in 2014 to learn from Indigenous leaders. There she witnessed rainforest destruction and hydroelectric dam-induced displacement provoked by profit-hungry extractive industries. She has since involved herself in environmental justice organizing to empower communities into taking action for the protection of their environment and health.
Kei Williams
Kei Williams is a queer transmasculine identified designer, writer, and public speaker. A founding member of the Black Lives Matter Global Network, the aims of Kei’s work is to transform global culture from the individual into a systemic analysis of structural racism. As Movement NetLab’s Strategic Network Mobilizer, Kei has helped to develop powerful conceptual and practical tools that facilitate the growth and effectiveness of the most dynamic, emerging social movements of our time.
As lead-organizer on campaigns such as Safety Beyond Policing, Swipe It Forward, and Trans Liberation Tuesday, Kei uses their platform to bring in the voices of those most marginalized by society — those who are queer, gnc, and transgender, and those living with mental illness. Recently, Kei returned for year 2 of the Organizers-In-Residency program at Civic Hall.
Passionate about their city – Kei invites you to check out the Black Gotham Experience, an immersive visual storytelling project that celebrates the impact of the African Diaspora on New York City since 1625.
Noor Mir
Noor is a mobilizer, organizer and trainer. Noor is a Pakistani immigrant to the United States and calls Washington, DC home. She studied Political Science, French and Post-Colonial Literature at Vassar College, and is currently completing a part-time Masters in Public Policy at Georgetown University. Noor’s organizing roots come from leading a global resistance network against US airwars in Yemen, Pakistan and Somalia, which fortified her passion for strong coalition-building. She spent several years at Amnesty International as a field organizer and then a campaigner leading their work around police accountability, ending gun violence and criminal justice. Currently, she is a partner at DC Action Lab, a worker-owned collective specializing in the magic of strong mass movements and direct action campaigns with progressive and left organizations; her current work there centers around repealing the Muslim Ban, building an immigration policy roundtable with Southern border communities and working with Latinx environmental justice advocates. Noor serves as the Board Chair of Collective Action for Safe Spaces, a grassroots organization focused on decriminalizing sex work and restorative justice frameworks for organizational and community accountability. She’s a nerd when it comes to rapid response frameworks and processes, ladders of engagement, surveillance and tech and consensus-building.
Tabitha St. Bernard
Tabitha is an artist and organizer. Tabitha is one of the women who spearheaded the organization of the Women’s March On Washington on January 21st, 2017, helping organize the largest demonstration in response to an election in U.S. history. She currently serves as the Director of Community Engagement at Women's March. She led the Youth EMPOWER team in organizing the Enough! National School Walkouts that saw over 2.1 million students walk out of schools demanding safety in their schools and communities from gun violence, making it the largest decentralized single day protest in the history of this country.
Tabitha is an ethical fashion advocate. She is the co-founder of Tabii Just, an artistic platform that celebrates ethical fashion. Tabitha has been featured on MTV, in MarketWatch, Al Jazeera and WWD for her work with Tabii Just. Tabitha also co-founded LIVARI, an ethical platform that marries art and activism with Claudine DeSola (Caravan Stylist Studio) and Alysia Reiner (Orange Is The New Black) that launched during Fashion Week Fall 2017 to rave reviews. LIVARI has been featured in WWD, NowThis, LA Times, Forbes, Nylon, Bustle, NY1, Huffington Post, Sourcing Journal among others.
Tabitha has held talks about the intersection of art and activism at several educational institutions including the Fashion Institute of Technology, St. Francis College, Gettysburg College, George Washington University and DePauw University, to name a few.
Tabitha consulted with Penguin on the kids book, Little Activists, released in Fall 2017. Together with 24 other Women's March organizers, Tabitha was recognized as one of Glamour Magazine’s 2017 Women of the Year. She has been featured in the book, 200 Women Who Will Change The Way You See The World and was named one of 100 Women Who Stood Up To Trump In His First 100 Days. Tabitha was also named one of Nylon's 8 Emerging Designers Who Are Changing The Game.
Tabitha is a leading voice on parenting anti-racist children and writes often about raising multiracial children in today's America.
Shawna Knipper
Shawna Knipper entered into organizing, facilitating, and educating around substance use/abuse awareness, disability advocacy, and women's rights over 18 years ago. Her deeply personal journey has taken her into political and social justice arenas, lobbying for meaningful structural change in governance as well as the minds and hearts of communities.
Shawna has provided education to diverse groups of youth entering the medical field, coordinated DEI education and planning of structural change for large networks, and co-facilitated environmental justice groups in base building and striving for more profound views on equity and justice. Her electoral experience ranges from leading field campaigns for United States Representative seats to leading a virtual field program that contacted over 5 million women in one weekend. She led 20 million women in a single electoral season to register and move other women to the polls, creating a surge of women voters.
Shawna holds a degree in Business Administration and is a founding organizer and current board member of Women's March. Women's March is a national women and family rights advocacy organization that has organized three of the five largest protests in United States history.