Banafsheh Madaninejad, PhD | Founder and Trainer
Banafsheh is an activist scholar of Feminist Studies and Critical Race Theory. She has been writing, teaching, researching, developing curriculum, and leading workshops on feminism, undoing racism, religious diversity, equity, and social justice for more than 10 years. Banafsheh used to be a programmer for NASA. She left the chilly corporate tech world for the even less nurturing environment of academia where she taught at The University of Texas at Austin, Middlebury College and Southwestern University. She lefy academia in 2019 and is currently the founding director of I-AMM, a socio-political identity platform “I”nterconnecting--”A”rabs, “M”uslims and “M”iddle Easterners. She is also the co-host of I-AMM: The Defining Moment, a podcast affiliated with I-AMM, working to bring the 90% unmosqued, the 10% mosqued, Christian and Jewish Arabs and Iranians, Black Muslims, Zoroastrians, Baha’is, and anyone else connected to the Islamicate world into dialogue in order to define the everyday strategies we can use to create a more cohesive and recognizable American community.
Lisa Fithian | Trainer
Lisa has been leading nonviolent movements for social change since the mid 1970’s. Nationally recognized as a social justice leader, she has been a student, labor, and community organizer on a broad range of issues. From the women’s movement, to environmental justice to student and worker rights, from peace and global justice to immigration and housing, Lisa continues to use a wide range of strategies and tactics and encouraged nonviolent direct action as one of the most effective strategies for change. Lisa is also the co-founder of Undoing White Supremacy Austin (UWSA) and a trainer since the early 1980’s, with the the leading Undoing Racism outfit in the Unites States, People’s Institute for Survival and Beyond (PISAB).
Check out Lisa’s new book: Shut it Down: Stories from a Fierce Loving Resistance, Chelsea Green Publishing. Lisa is currently on a national tour and recently appeared on DemocracyNow.org. To see if she’ll be visting your neck of the woods for a reading go to: https://shutitdownnow.org. Shut It Down is available online at Chelsea Green Publishing, IndieBound, Barnes & Noble and Amazon.
Nakia Winfield | Trainer
Nakia is a community organizer, political social worker, and professional trainer with deep experience in anti-racism, leadership development, and policy analysis. She uses an interdisciplinary, anti-oppressive lens to examine power dynamics across social systems and help organizations, and municipalities find effective, human centered solutions for their work. Nakia has spent two years at the Texas Legislature—in 2015 she was a policy analyst for the House, and in 2017 she advocated for better policy as the Mental Health Policy Fellow for the Texas Chapter of the National Association of Social Workers (NASW). While at NASW, she also co-chaired the REAL Committee, giving social workers the tools with which to use an antiracist framework. Nakia is currently an independent equity consultant and has been contracted with the City of Austin to facilitate the Austin Police Department through the Equity Tool. She has conducted anti-racist workshops and business analyses with non-profits and institutions of higher learning, including Indiana Youth Group and the University of Texas School of Social Work.
