Founding Member Bergis Jules is an archivist and public historian. His research interests include race and the history of archives, Black archiving practices, web archiving, and community-based archives. He is an advocate for community-based cultural memory organizations that prioritize documenting the lives of marginalized and oppressed people. He works with these organizations to develop solutions that can grow their capacity and help them achieve long term sustainability. He is a co-founder of Archiving the Black Web and Documenting the Now, projects concerned with web archiving training and research. He also runs the Sustainable Futures blog which is an advocacy space for community-based archives. Bergis holds a Ph.D. in History from the University of California, Riverside, and also received a Master’s degree in Library and Information Science with a Specialization in Archives and Records Management, and a Master’s degree in African American and African Diaspora Studies from Indiana University. Bergis uses he/him pronouns.

Founding Member Jon Voss has implemented social justice strategies across sectors as diverse as finance, music, technology and culture. He helped build the Historypin network to over 4,000 cultural memory organizations, co-founded the Linked Open Data in Libraries, Archives and Museums Summit in 2011 and the Cultural Heritage and Social Change Summit in 2016, and has helped design and build community-centered engagement programs around the world. Jon led the Historypin project in the US for Shift since 2011, and founded the US non-profit that would become the Shift Collective. Prior to that his career spanned economic activism, impact investing, and technology consulting. Jon uses he/him pronouns.

Founding Member Lynette Johnson is a cultural historian working with cultural heritage institutions to create programs and tools to help them better connect with their communities, mostly around shared local history. Prior to joining Shift Design, Inc in 2017, she held positions as a journalist, art director, and digital media strategist at The Times-Picayune in New Orleans, The Journal News in New York, and The Los Angeles Times, overseeing various newsroom, corporate, and community engagement projects. She has a BA in Communications from the University of New Orleans, and a Master of Preservation Studies from Tulane University’s School of Architecture. In 2019, Lynette was named a National Trust Diversity Scholar by the National Trust for Historic Places.

Gretchen Barton is Principal at Worthy Strategy Group, LLC, Research Director at Future Majority, and former policy lead at the Harvard-founded research firm, Olson Zaltman. With a special interest in the psychology underpinning behavior change, Gretchen has designed and delivered a number of initiatives in the policy space, including studies around poverty in America for the Gates Foundation and Gender Justice for Story-at-Scale.

As a media and strategic communication professional, Dr. Paulette Brown-Hinds has over 30 years working in community media, and has served as an advocate for California’s ethnic and local media, as well as a strategist utilizing Black media as a tool for targeted outreach.

Makiba J. Foster is the manager of the African American Research Library and Cultural Center (AARLCC) for Broward County Libraries. Her most recent project funded by the Institute for Museum and Library Services is Archiving the Black Web, an historic project with national partners representing HBCU libraries and renowned public libraries like the Schomburg Center and Auburn Avenue Research Library.

Lae’l Hughes-Watkins is the Founder of Project STAND, and the architect of the reparative archive framework, mentioned in her article, "Moving Toward a Reparative Archive: A Roadmap for a Holistic Approach to Disrupting Homogenous Histories in Academic Repositories and Creating Inclusive Spaces for Marginalized Voices." She has launched workshops that focus on this archival praxis, which centers on community building as a first step.

Anthony R. Jerry is an associate professor of Anthropology and Black Study at the University of California Riverside. His academic research focuses on blackness, racial value, and citizenship in Latin America, Mexico, and the US Southwest. He is the Founder and Director of The Empathy Archive, a digital education platform focused on increasing Racial Literacy and Social and Emotional Learning Competencies in the US. He is also the CEO of Query, Qualitative Research Consulting, LLC.

Michelle G. Magalong, PhD is a Presidential Postdoctoral Fellow at the School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation at University of Maryland. Dr. Magalong serves as President of Asian and Pacific Islander Americans in Historic Preservation (APIAHiP), a national volunteer-run, nonprofit organization. Her research and professional experience focus on community engagement, historic preservation, and social justice.

Tayo Medupin is a researcher, facilitator, design strategist and design justice advocate. Tayo (she/her) brings with her 12 years of experience putting humanity at the heart of business, health and social equity issues. She has worked with some of the worlds largest brands including Wellcome Trust, Alphabet X, Impact for Urban Health and NSPCC.

Diego Merizalde has built his career in an intersection between public sector projects, private consulting, and politics, with extensive experience building social justice strategies and managing projects in cultural and philanthropic institutions.

Gabriel Daniel Solís (he/him) is a LA-based community memory worker that has consulted on a wide range of archives and public memory projects. He has consulted with the Ford Foundation’s Reclaiming the Border Narrative initiative, the NAACP Legal Defense Fund Oral History Project, the UCLA Archiving the Age of Mass Incarceration project, and Separated: Stories of Injustice and Solidarity, a National Endowment for the Humanities supported project documenting the lived experiences of parents separated from their children at the U.S./Mexico border.

Harmony Labs is a 501c(3) non-profit on a mission to create a world where media systems support democratic culture and healthy, happy people. They’ve been doing audience, narrative, and story analysis for more than a decade, helping storytellers channel the immense power of audience, story, and narrative to shape the future.

Monique currently works as the Managing Director for the Center for Art and Public Exchange. (CAPE) is a Kellogg funded initiative that uses artwork, exhibitions and programming as a vehicle to have conversations about race and equity. Monique is a CPA, and a graduate of Howard University.

Chris Panos is a long time social entrepreneur deeply interested in building communities that are mission driven, vital, and beyond the ken of existing, strictly political or economic organizational structures. He is Principal of Irinda Capital as well as being Board Chair for Zen Peacemakers International, Board President, Zen Hospice Project and an advisor for Wild Hair Media.

Heather Bornfeld, a Clinical Psychologist who has practiced in San Francisco for the past 20 years, is continually humbled by the power of personal storytelling, both for the individual and within relationships. She provides psychotherapy to adolescents, adults, and older adults, with a specialty in working with persons in late-life.

David Lubensky is Principal at Bagatto, Inc where he leads strategic research and design efforts, facilitates executive workshops and brainstorms, publishes sustainability and international health research insights, mentors external research and design teams, and patents novel technologies with his collaborators. His contributions have led to the acquisition of three startups with valuations at over $300M.

Abigail Phillips is General Counsel at 37signals. She brings invaluable experience in Internet law, digital copyright and content issues, open licensing, privacy and regulatory concerns, transactional and corporate matters, and general business legal counseling.

Nick is founder and CEO of Shift. Together with his team, he has shaped an innovative organization that brings together rigorous research, ambitious creativity and commercial expertise to design solutions to challenging social problems. Nick has grown the company from a tiny start-up to an international team, been actively involved in the strategic direction of all Shift's work and established many of the partnerships that have allowed their products, services and initiatives to reach scale and sustainability.