Director of Family and Community Engagement
1
MC
Amari is the epitome of a MC. Oakland California bread musical genius has won awards and toured honing his craft. His voice is delight to the ears reminiscent of hip hop 2000 with storytelling lyrics only top rappers could match. With talent like that he will be around for decades to come!
Managing Director of Business Development
Shoecraft is the Business Development Managing Director. Previously, he served a number of roles at the City of Seattle, including Special Adviser to the Mayor in the Mayor's Office of Policy & Innovation and Strategic Adviser at the Department of Education & Early Learning following years of leadership in regional education organizing, policy and advocacy. Anthony was selected for the inaugural cohort of the Harvard Business School’s Young American Leaders Program and graduated from the University of Washington (MPA, MSW) and Hampton University. He is a south Seattle native, proud husband and father of two young children, and an enthusiast of all things cooking and chess.
Managing Director of Media & Technology
Brenden Anderson is a mission-driven leader who works towards empowering and and vancing underserved communities by continuously expanding their opportunities for edication, skill development and career success. With a Masters in Ed Tech he is uniquely positioned at the convergence of education, journalism, multimedia production, and workforce development to support students of color in manifesting their life and career success. He strategically aligns and integrates his experiences, skills, and partnerships to close gaps and provide solutions to schools, youth organizations, educators, parents and students.
Executive Assistant to Chris Chatmon
Britt is the Executive Assistant to the CEO at Kingmakers of Oakland. She has been an administrative professional for over 10 years working with non-profits and tech companies all over the Bay Area. Britt is a Bay Area native whose heart belongs to Oakland, and the proud mommy to a beautiful and rambunctious little girl.
Sr. Communications Director
I create change through bold strategic planning and culturally competent storytelling.
My career has been informed by both private sector and nonprofit work with my leadership ability honed as a program director of an entrepreneurial organization and, the head of an agency.
I supported the launch of the first-ever Technology Field Office for a U.S. presidential election collaborating with some of the most successful developers and community engagement strategists in recent history.
Founder and CEO
Christopher Chatmon is the Director and CEO of Kingmakers of Oakland (KOO). Chatmon founded KOO and served as the first Executive Director of the African American Male Achievement (“AAMA”) for the Oakland Unified School District (“OUSD”).
Media, Comms, & Tech Assistant
Damari is a stagehand, audiovisual specialist, video editor, and aspiring creative thinker. He considers himself a conduit through which stories are told – stories that present struggle and endearment; a quest for self-understanding & systems relationships. Damari is here to document transformations of the self, community and beyond.
Contractor: Media Productions
James C. Earl-Rockefeller, III is a videographer and production specialist for Kingmakers of Oakland Communications Department. “Rocke” began his career in entertainment as a professional stand-up comic in 1986. Moving to Oakland, CA in 1992 presented him the opportunity to appear on BET's Comic View (1st Season) and work for The Soulbeat Television Network, a 24 hour "black owned" network, broadcasting music videos, entertainment and community programming. Rocke is a sports Public Address Announcer for Stanford University, Laney and Merritt Community Colleges and the Oakland Athletic League.
Agape Advisor
Jerome Gourdine, Co-Founder of KOO, has served the Oakland Unified School District for more than 20 years, as a teacher, Assistant Principal, Principal, Program Manager and now Director of Targeted Strategies.
Family Engagement Coordinator
Jonathan Piper II is a Youth Speaker and Advocate for Kingmakers of Oakland. He also is apart of Kingmakers of Oakland Social Media Team that is housed in our Communications Department. Jonathan currently attends Chabot College with a major in Political Science and Government.
Contractor: Media Producer
Judd Fleming serves as video and film producer for Kingmakers of Oakland. With over 12 years experience Judd thrives in the film & video production industry working both independently and with partners as an Editor, Graphic Designer, and Producer. He has a curriculum based organization @u2cacademy Up To Code Academy (U2C) that creates engaging learning experiences that provides culturally relevant, video-based content to foster awareness and inspire action in today’s underserved youth.
Director of Teacher and Recruitment
Kenderick O. Wilson (K.O.) will manage the development and implementation of the KOO Department of Black Male Teacher Recruitment, Retention, and Certification.
K.O. is the founding Program Manager of the Academy for Rising Educators (ARE) program – Seattle Public Schools' "homegrown" teacher talent initiative focused on assisting SPS high school students, Instructional Assistants and community members in entering the field of education as certificated teachers, with an emphasis on Black Males teachers.
K.O. is an all but dissertation Doctoral of Educational Leadership candidate from the University of Washington, Tacoma. K.O. is a first-generation college graduate and master's recipient who graduated from Birmingham Southern College with a B.S. in Economics and Math and earned an M.S. in Educational Policy from University of Washington, Seattle. K.O.'s identity and experiences influence his commitment to behavioral economics and critical race research. During the past couple years, K.O. has worked in the Seattle community in non-profits, Seattle Public Schools, King County Housing Authority, and an Academic Counselor at University of Washington, Seattle-Office of Minority Affairs and Diversity (OMA&D).
Family Engagement Coordinator
An Oakland Native and advocate/activist for the lives and education of youth and people of color. Majoring in Anthropology at Sac State, coordinating Media for Kingmakers of Oakland, and teaching transitional kindergarten are the ways in which my passion aligned with purpose.
Program Manager, TFI Oakland
Obasi Davis is a 27 year old artist, designer & educator out of Oakland, California. Obasi believes in the power of art to create change as well as the influence dynamic educators can have on developing youth. In 2014 he created the AAMA summer internship and has been the lead facilitator every summer since. Obasi was also the Manhood Development facilitator at Redwood Heights Elementary in 2019 and is now the Program Manager for Kingmakers of Oakland.
Learning Collaborative Consultant
Dr. Rachelle Rogers-Ard is a published author, adjunct professor, organizational development specialist and former school district educator with over 25 years’ experience preparing adults to lead and manage numerous workplace spaces. Rachelle specializes in coaching agency leaders to dismantle racist policies, practices and procedures that threaten organizational health. Currently, Dr. Ard is the Principal Lead for Harvest Consulting, where she grows school, district, and business leaders through anti-racist leadership development.
Rachelle designs and facilitates customized training around leadership and racial bias utilizing Social-Emotional best practices; as a certified Dare to Lead and The Leadership Challenge trainer, Rachelle’s work showcases the necessity for organizational Core Values to drive employee retention and outcomes. As such, Dr. Rogers-Ard challenges leaders to interrogate systemic racist systems if they are to effectively lead across difference; her own Authentic Leadership framework provides guiding questions for personal reflection towards inclusive leadership.
Dr. Rogers-Ard also co-leads the Grow Your Own Collective, a Regional organization dedicated to the recruitment, placement, and retention of teachers of color. Her latest publication, “Black Educational Leadership” details the journey of African American Principals in racially oppressive systems and is currently available on Amazon.com.
For more information about Dr. Rachelle Rogers-Ard, please see her websites: www.rachellerogersard.com and www.criticalraceleadership.com.
Contractor: Media Producer
Born and raised in Oakland, California, Ramasses Head has produced a successful reality DVD series, Six independent feature films over 40 music videos along with many corporate and educational productions. Over the years he has produced projects in Los Angeles, CA, Atlanta, GA and Miami FL, in addition to the Bay Area. His work has been featured on HULU, VICELAND and BET Networks.
Program Manager, CRP
Sean Foster is an educator, mentor, artist and community worker that was born and raised in Oakland, California. Sean became committed to the work of empowering black boys after graduating with a bachelor’s degree in communications from his Alma Matter, Clark Atlanta University – an HBCU in Atlanta, Georgia. In 2012, Sean joined the African American Male Achievement Program (AAMA) whose guiding mission to engage, encourage and empower young black boys aligned with his. Within this work, Sean has taught and mentored throughout the K-12 system in Oakland and is currently teaching an AAMA class at Dewey Academy and mentoring kings at Met West High School. Drawing on his years of teaching, training and service within the AAMA organization, Sean has transitioned into the role of Senior Facilitator for Kingmakers of Oakland (KOO) where he will support other instructors on how to become transformative educators.
MDP Services Coordinator
My name is Shedrick L. Johnson Ill
I am a productive person who is mastering
leading but not afraid to follow. In my life, I
have realized in order to be a great leader, you
have to be a great follower. I enjoy public
speaking, serving, and inspiring people. Giving
people, something to believe in is a passion of
mine. I have made many connections and
concrete relationships along my journey, but
my main goal is never to stop learning as I
elevate in life and build my community, along
with influencing positive change in this world
with God leading me!
Managing Director of Operations
Shrim Bathey is the Managing Director of Operations and has spent her educational career working towards empowering students from underrepresented groups. She thrives as an architect around organizational processes, systems, and workflow and is always ready to roll up her sleeves to move projects forward. She is a seasoned education professional serving in various roles in higher education and nonprofits. She received her BS in Psychology from Trinity College, CT and MA in Higher Educational Administration from Santa Clara University, CA.
Director of Finance
Simba brings a wealth of accounting and financial management experience to the role, having had extensive experience across a wide variety of businesses, including start-ups, multinationals and international experience working for the big four accounting firms.
Simba has experience working for SEC registered public companies as well as Not for Profit organisations. Simba’s most recent experience was working as the CFO/Controller of New Forests Inc., a forestry investment company. Before that he was the CFO at the Sierra Club Foundation, a foundation that promotes conservation and climate solutions.
Simba has a Bachelor of Accounting Science – Honours, from the University of South Africa and in his spare time he volunteers as the CFO and Board member for the One Bread Foundation which aims to rehabilitate victims of child slavery.
Curriculum Designer
Uma Joshi-Garcia is a social justice educator in the Bay Area who is passionate about activism, ethnic studies and creating a holistic educational experience for youth, specifically students of color. Uma graduated from the University of San Francisco with a degree in Political Science and then received her Masters in Education from UC Davis. Since then, she has been teaching and growing the Ethnic Studies program at Oakland School for the Arts by creating her own curriculum through the lens of Afro-centrism, equity, justice and youth activism. Currently, Uma is a curriculum designer for Kingmakers of Oakland and will be working to build a culturally responsive and Black youth centered curriculum. Outside of education, Uma is also an advisory board member for the Youth Uproar Theatre Company, which is an all BIPOC led organization focused on inclusion within the arts. She enjoys spending quality time with family and friends and being outdoors.
Founder and CEO, Kingmakers of Oakland
Christopher Chatmon is the Director and CEO of Kingmakers of Oakland (KOO). Chatmon founded KOO and served as the first Executive Director of the African American Male Achievement (“AAMA”) for the Oakland Unified School District (“OUSD”).
Board Member
Darren Isom is a partner in The Bridgespan Group’s San Francisco office. He first joined the firm as a consultant in 2007, left as a manager in 2014 and returned as a partner in 2019. During his earlier tenure with Bridgespan, Darren was engaged with a diverse array of cases and was consistently lauded for building deep, enduring client relationships, helping clients develop bold yet pragmatic strategies, and his commitment to amplifying community voice and engagement in developing and leading innovative, high-impact youth and community programs, practices, and philanthropy.
Darren also speaks and writes on racial equity in philanthropy. His recent publications include: “Endow Black-Led Nonprofits” (Stanford Social Innovation Review, 2021), and “Race and Place-based Philanthropy: Learnings from Funders Focused on Equitable Impact” (Bridgespan.org, 2021). He is the host of the podcast, “Dreaming in Color” which offers leaders of color space to share how they have leveraged their unique assets and abilities to embrace excellence, drive impact, and more fully define what success looks like.
After leaving Bridgespan in 2014, Darren was the founder and executive director of the Memphis Music Initiative (MMI), an ambitious five-year, $20M grantmaking and community arts development initiative. He led efforts to use targeted investments and programmatic offerings to strengthen youth and community music engagement activities for low-income, Black, and Latino youth and communities. MMI leverages the city’s powerful musical legacy to develop a vibrant music and arts ecosystem for the city’s culturally rich, but historically underserved communities, and grew to impact 4500 youth, 50 schools, 100 musicians and artists, 10 neighborhoods, and 15 community organizations. It has also sponsored research to create a national conversation on the importance of community engagement and inclusion, disruptive philanthropy, and the powerful role of arts investments in driving equitable, high-impact community outcomes. To launch and lead the organization, Darren built strategic relationships with arts organizations, musicians, schools, funders, community, public, and private groups; built the team, including a diverse and inclusive board and 20 staff; and developed a robust infrastructure for delivering results in Memphis and the Mid-South, a particularly racialized region.
Before Bridgespan he worked as the art, design, and public programming director for Times Square Alliance, planning and implementing programming for public art and performance initiatives throughout the Times Square District. Prior to working at Times Square Alliance, Darren served as VP of Programs for Groundwork, a start-up youth services organization in East New York, Brooklyn, helping young people in underserved communities develop their strengths and skills through experiential learning and enrichment programs.
A seventh generation New Orleans native, Darren is a graduate of Howard University, Institut d'Études Politiques de Paris, and Columbia Business School’s Institute for Nonprofit Management. An activist for disconnected youth and LGBT communities of color, he has served as an advisor to the leaders of several Bay Area, Southeast US, and national foundations. He currently serves on the board of Beloved Community of New Orleans, Collage Dance Collective of Memphis, Springboard to Opportunities in Jackson, MS, and the National Guild for Community Arts Education.
Co - Board Chair
Vajra M. Watson is a scholar-activist, faculty director, and professor of educational leadership and racial justice in the College of Education at Sacramento State University, Sacramento. Watson has over twenty years of experience as a teacher, community organizer and researcher. She is the founder of Sacramento Area Youth Speaks (SAYS), an award-winning program that pairs community-based poet-mentor educators and teachers together to develop grassroots pedagogies that reclaim and reimagine schooling. She is the solo-author of two books, Learning to Liberate: Community-Based Solutions to the Crisis in Urban Education (2012) and Transformative Schooling: Towards Racial Equity in Education (2018), and has published dozens of peer-reviewed journal articles and book chapters.
Watson serves on a number of Board of Directors, including United Playaz in San Francisco (Board President), the National Urban Education Teacher Policy Project, the National Assembly for Expanded Perspectives on Learning, Kingmakers of Oakland, and Fathers and Families of San Joaquin in Stockton, CA.
Dr. Watson is recipient of the UC Davis Early Career Award, Sacramento’s 40 Under 40 Leadership Award, the Chancellor’s Soaring to New Heights Individual Achievement Award for Diversity, the California Educational Research Association’s Annual Award, the Congressional Woman of the Year Award, the NBA Sacramento King’s Woman of the Year Award, and the American Educational Research Association’s Social Impact Award as well as AERA’s Social Justice Leadership Award.
Watson is originally from Berkeley, CA and was deeply impacted by the courses she took in the Black and Xicanx Studies Departments at Berkeley High School in the mid-1990s. In 10th grade her final exam question was: “What are you doing to stop and/or curtail the spread of white supremacy in yourself, community, and this world?” This question still shapes her path and purpose.
Dr. Watson obtained her B.A. from UC Berkeley and holds two Master’s Degrees from Harvard University in International Education and Teaching and Learning. She received her Doctorate in Administration, Planning, and Social Policy from the Graduate School of Education at Harvard University.
Co-Board Secretary
Eliza co leads New Profit and oversees the work external affairs team (comprised of Development, Communications and America Forward as well as managing our emergent strategies – Inclusive Impact, Systemic Solutions, ECSO and LTE). She also works closely with several of New Profit’s portfolio organizations and currently serves on the Board of FoodCorps.
Eliza has always known that her career would be in service of closing the opportunity gap. Both because she was raised to believe that it’s a broken world and she must contribute to fixing it and because she sees that where she is today is a direct result of the accumulated advantage she’s been handed. Eliza came to New Profit after working in both the non-profit and government sectors in variety of direct service and leadership roles and seeing first hand the intergenerational and institutional barriers to social mobility in our country. Eliza believed that philanthropy could have a catalytic role in disrupting the status quo, inspiring R & D and spreading best practices. What drew her to New Profit is what keeps her at New Profit – shared values about putting equity at the center, a shared belief that transformative change requires upending systems and deep relationships and an unparalleled community of people.
Co-Board Chair
By the age of 16 George had found his passion, combining social justice and technology. George then decided to start a tech company at 16 years old, in hopes to help other kids of color gain entry into the world of technology as innovators not just consumers.
Since then George has developed a mix of mobile apps and web-platforms, lectured at multiple universities, worked with Colin Kaepernick, Oakland mayor Libby Schaaf, and Megan Smith, the ex-United States chief technology officer and assistant to President Obama.
George Hofstetter Technologies Inc. encourages people to help change the world’s perspective on race through technology.
George's most projects/events include Up to Code Vol. 1, a computer science and entrepreneurship curriculum sponsored by Capital One Dev Exchange, Head of Technology and Experience at TedxMenlo College “This is America”, a TedxTalk at the Seattle Academy of Arts and Sciences, and travelling to Johannesburg, South Africa with The Hidden Genius Project to teach computer science and design thinking at 5 LEAP Science and Math schools.
Co-Board Secretary
Co-Board Treasurer
Romero Wesson grew up in Oakland,California. He graduated from Castlemont High School as Student Body President Class of 2019. He is the Vice-President of Castlemont’s Alumni Association and currently attending Los Medanos Community College majoring in Kinesiology. Romero serves as a Spiritual Advisor to many families, organizations, and community leaders across the bay area. Romero is also a product of the African American Male Achievement Program(AAMA). Romero was apart of AAMA Student Leadership Council from 2014-2019 where he travelled and spoke at many different national and local convenings. He is also the founder of the Chosen Generation Community Foundation which he officially launched in June of 2018, where their bible based curriculum is building youth of today to be the leaders of tomorrow. Wesson is also a Humanitarian, working with churches across the globe to promote human welfare. Romero has done projects in Mexico, Costa Rica, Haiti, and the Philippines. Romero’s goal to reach and inspire youth that it doesn’t matter where you come from, all that matters is where you end up.
Work for a mission driven organization who centers Black boys.
