Data Justice Futures

Michelle Shevin is a Senior Program Manager with the Technology and Society team. She is a technologist and researcher obsessed with shifting systems and the interplay of technological, regulatory, and cultural change. Prior to joining Ford, she worked in technology futurism, open innovation, and strategy consulting, helping organizations and institutions across sectors adapt and thrive. She manages the Public Interest Technology Catalyst Fund, a historic investment in cross-sector infrastructure to center public interest values in the design, development, deployment and maintenance of technology systems across sectors. She holds an MA in security studies from the Naval Postgraduate School and a BA in Anthropology: Ecology, Evolution, and Environmental Biology from Barnard College, Columbia University.

Learn More: Ford Foundation

Kate is a Program Officer at HFJ, facilitating community-led grantmaking programs and building deep relationships with our grantee partners. She comes to Headwaters with a long history in non-profits, having worked in land conservation, immigrant rights, cooperatives, criminal justice, community development, and voting rights. Her love for the people driving community change has led her to Headwaters, where she works to resource organizations that she knows are systematically under-resourced.  Kate is a midwestern-southerner, with roots in Michigan, Wisconsin, Texas and Alabama. She loves hosting people around her table, eating delicious food, and making pie, which she believes is the perfect breakfast. She raises two young people with her partner, and lives in South Minneapolis near Lake Nokomis. She practices community building with her neighbors and is deeply invested in the work of healing white culture so that we all may be free. 

Learn More: Headwaters Foundation for Justice

Tsega Tamene is a sister, daughter, friend, and more. Born to Ethiopian immigrants in Germany and then raised in Minnesota, Tsega calls many places and people home. She has lived, worked, learned, and played in Ethiopia, India, Vietnam, South Africa, Tanzania, and more. Her commitment to healing and justice is global and local, centering communities most impacted, and requiring her own liberation. She brings 10+ years of expertise in global public health, applied research, organizational capacity-building, and community-led social change. Tsega previously served as Head of Advancement at Pillsbury United Communities, across their 4 neighborhood centers and 8 social enterprises, serving over 50,000 individuals and their families each year. In previous roles over the past 5+ years at Pillsbury United, Tsega founded the Twin Cities Community Health Worker Hub, a data-driven model for sustainable and equitable community-based care.

Learn more: Saint Paul & Minnesota Foundation

Co-founder Twin Cities Innovation Alliance (TCIA) & Executive Director, Midwest Center for School Transformation (MCST) Twin Cities, Minnesota. As an interdisciplinary and cross-sector thought leader, and community advocate Marika Pfefferkorn is a change agent working towards systems transformation in service of marginalized communities, scaling successes across education, technology, and civic leadership through engagement, policy, research, training and narrative building. Ms. Pfefferkorn integrates the creative arts, storytelling and collective cultural wisdom while applying a restorative lens to upend punitive conditions across educational ecosystems to reimagine education through a liberatory lens. In ongoing efforts to disrupt the Cradle to Prison Algorithm, and to ensure digital justice. Ms. Pfefferkorn writes, teaches, trains and coaches’ youth, families, and systems on Data Justice through the No Data About Us Without Us Institute. Ms. Pfefferkorn takes a nuanced and agile approach to community engagement to meet people and systems where they are, to address the use of big data, predictive analytics, and facial recognition technologies across educational ecosystems and to amplify the impact student surveillance and monitoring have on racial justice, civil rights, and our democracy. 

Learn More: Twin Cities Innovation Alliance

Alicia Ranney is Vice President of Data and Evaluation at Metropolitan Alliance of Connected Communities (MACC). In her role, she leads MACC’s Data Services department, and leads a wonderful team of consultants who partner with 40+ member subscribers of MACC’s Data Services. Alicia feels most inspired about MACC’s role in supporting organizational incubation, capacity building and collaborative network building within the context of data keeping, data management and storytelling.  Alicia has over a decade of experience supporting nonprofit human service organizations in data strategy, database development, and uplifting data justice in all aspects of evaluation. She is passionate about social justice, organizational learning, her family and community. 

Learn More: MACC