Meet Our Team

Katrina is an experienced and respected leader with more than 20 years of experience working on a national and regional level. She has worked in the non-profit, philanthropic and public sector. She currently serves as the Chief Community Impact Officer at United Way of Greater Atlanta and is responsible for leading United Way’s Child Well Being Impact Fund, co-leading the Greater Atlanta COVID Response and Recovery Fund and launching the United for Racial Equity and Healing Fund. Katrina is also the recipient of Rockwood Leadership Institute’s Equity in Philanthropy Fellowship, Association for Black Foundation Executives Connecting Leaders Fellowship, Annie E. Casey Foundation’s Atlanta Results Based Leadership Program and Leadership America Class of 2018. After receiving a B.A. in English from Wellesley College, Katrina earned a M.Ed. from the Harvard University Graduate School of Education.

Melanie Allen comes to the fund from the Mary Reynolds Babcock Foundation where she launched the organization’s Energy Equity portfolio and managed relationships and grant making in South Carolina. Melanie is fiercely committed to supporting leadership across the South. With 12 years in the nonprofit and philanthropic sectors, Allen has considerable experience facilitating community-based solutions that ensure those most affected by policy are centered in the decision-making process. She also has a strong background with community development projects in many sectors, including conservation, affordable housing and workforce development. Melanie is a native of Greensboro, North Carolina currently residing in Durham.

Lavastian Glenn serves as the chair of Grantmakers for Southern Progress and has volunteered with GSP since 2010. Lavastian is the Director, Racial and Economic Justice at the Nathan Cummings Foundation, a national family foundation, based in New York. With decades of experience leading racial and economic justice through community-based problem solving and philanthropic strategy in the South and nationally, Lavastian has used her various roles to champion increased and equitable support for Southern movement infrastructure and justice oriented organizations working to advance racial and gender equity. Prior to joining NCF in 2018, Lavastian served as program director at the Mary Reynolds Babcock Foundation in Winston-Salem, NC, a critical partner in the development of GSP.

Rev. Allyn Maxfield-Steele has been Co-Executive Director of the Highlander Research and Education Center since 2017. Raised in Texas, Germany, and North Carolina, he was born into a family of educators, farmers, secretaries, salesmen, veterans, hotel managers, social workers, and small-town Protestant church folk of the southern Piedmont and South Atlantic coast. His movement work has focused on connecting people and grassroots communities to one another through high school and college education, faith and spiritual leadership, and organizing on a range of front-lines throughout the US South, Appalachia, and globally. He is committed to figuring out how people and organizations transform together and how rural and small-town people can work together to build powerful movements. Allyn is ordained clergy in the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) and lives in the mountains of Western North Carolina with his spouse, Erin, and their child, Ursa.

Ben Barge is the Field Director at the National Committee for Responsive Philanthropy (NCRP), a national nonprofit watchdog that holds foundations to higher standards of social justice and community accountability. In his role, Ben strengthens NCRP’s relationships with U.S. social movements to move money and power to community-led advocacy and organizing. He manages internal projects, oversees trainings and presentations, builds campaigns to shift foundation behavior, and manages a fantastic team working to organize the sector alongside our movement allies. Prior to joining NCRP, Ben worked at the Z. Smith Reynolds Foundation in North Carolina, where he facilitated grantmaking and special projects around the racial and gender wealth gap, democracy, criminalization, environmental advocacy and public education. Ben grew up in Georgia and has a special spot in his heart for singing, collective childcare, and Southern barbeque. 

Ola Osifo Osaze is a trans masculine queer of Edo and Yoruba descent, who was born in Port Harcourt, Rivers State and now based in NYC. Ola is the Co-founder and former Director for the Black LGBTQ+ Migrant Project, the 1st organization of its kind to exist nationally. Ola has decades of movement-building experience working with organizations such as Transgender Law Center, the Audre Lorde Project, Uhuru Wazobia (one of the first LGBT groups for African immigrants in the US), Queers for Economic Justice and Sylvia Rivera Law Project.

Felecia Lucky is the President of the Black Belt Community Foundation in Selma, Alabama.  The Foundation was established to support community efforts that builds on the strength, innovation, and successes in twelve of Alabama’s poorest counties – the Black Belt.   Lucky’s favorite African proverb…   

“To do something for us, instead of with us, does nothing for us at all.” 

It is with this mindset that this Alabama native works to transform the community with creative and astute investments in the areas of environment, health, human services, education, youth, arts and culture, and economic and community development. 

Latisha Latiker is the Director of Grants Programming for the Women’s Foundation of Mississippi. In this role she works on grantmaking, advocacy, and engagement activities for the Foundation. A native of Tulsa, Oklahoma, she earned her B.A. and M.A. in Political Science with an emphasis in public policy and public administration from Oklahoma State University. While at Oklahoma State, Latisha worked as a Political Science Instructor and received numerous awards and honors including the Thurgood Marshall Scholarship for outstanding graduate students. Prior to joining the Women’s Foundation, Latisha served as Regional Program Officer for the Children’s Defense Fund’s Southern Regional Office where she worked on advocacy initiatives that addressed the needs of children and families, paying particular interest to economically vulnerable families. Latisha is married to Dr. Tony Latiker and they are the proud parents of one son, Qadre; as well as aunt and uncle to numerous nieces and nephews. Latisha is active in her church and serves as a Sunday school teacher. Latisha is also an active member of the Jackson (MS) Alumnae Chapter of Delta Sigma Theta Sorority, Inc. She enjoys reading, traveling, and watching sports with her family. 

Marco Quiroga has a long history as an advocate for the LGBTQ+, immigrant, and racial justice movements. Marco is the Founder and Director for Contigo Fund, the first and only LGBTQ+ Latinx fund in the United States and largest LGBTQ+ participatory grantmaking organization in the US South. Contigo launched in the aftermath of the horrific 2016 Pulse nightclub massacre in Orlando to support the immediate recovery and healing of those impacted and advancing the long-term transformation taken root by building power for historically marginalized LGBTQ+ communities in the region, particularly Latinx individuals, immigrants, and other people of color. His commitment is a direct result of his own life experiences as an undocumented and queer person of color, including family separation through deportation, poverty, unstable housing and homelessness.

Samuel Jackson is the VP of Programs and Grants at The Healing Trust. He manages the Physical Health grants and implements THT’s advocacy work specific to that portfolio. He also engages with underrepresented communities to understand how The Trust’s work can further align with the community’s needs. Sam has 18 years of combined experience in education and the nonprofit industry, serving in a variety of roles. Sam has built programs and partnerships and has extensive experience in fundraising. He most recently worked with youth and families in Nashville, serving as the Executive Director of the Horizons program at the University School of Nashville. Sam earned his Bachelor of Science in Social Work and Master’s in Health, Physical Education, and Recreation from Tennessee State University.

Shannon Cofrin Gaggero (she/her) is a Donor Organizer at Solidaire Network, a community of donor organizers mobilizing critical resources to the frontlines of social justice movements. She is also a trustee at the Homestead Foundation, a small, family foundation based in Atlanta, Georgia. Shannon is passionate about resourcing Southern, social and racial justice movements led by impacted communities and holds an endless belief in the power of grassroots organizing. She lives in Atlanta, Georgia, where she was born and raised, with her family.

Teumbay (Tee) Barnes brings more than 15 years of experience in community organizing, advocacy, policy, grassroots leadership development, journalism, and higher education to her work. A passionate childcare and sexual assault prevention advocate, her philosophy is “creating change begins within.”

Tee holds a communications BA from Alabama State University and a master’s in post-secondary education from Troy University. She is also a 2010 graduate of the National Women’s Law Center PLAN (Progressive Advocacy Leadership Network), a 2011 fellow of the Inaugural Class of Greensboro Justice Fund Fellows at the Highlander Center, and a graduate of the Leading by Example Leadership Program and she serves as an Adjunct Instructor.

As Chief Equity Officer, Dwayne Patterson supports the Foundation’s grantee partners as they set and advance their equity goals, helps staff and board document and share their equity journey, and refines the way MRBF captures partners’ outcomes and demographics for a full understanding of their work. Dwayne serves on the management, program and equity leadership teams, contributes to MRBF’s ongoing culture work and manages grant portfolios. He also serves on the investment committee, an important role as the Foundation strives to invest its endowment in ways that advance economic opportunities for communities of color. 

Dwayne joined MRBF after more than a decade at the Atlanta-based Partnership for Southern Equity, an organization that promotes racially equitable health, energy, development and economic opportunities. As Vice President of Strategy and Engagement, he advised on racial equity, social justice and organizing, and fostered community-based solutions all over the American South. Dwayne coordinated organizational and programmatic strategy, led program and management staff, strategy development, alliance building and relationship management. He helped organizations grow and improve performance. Dwayne also served as PSE’s first Director of Civic Engagement and Regional Organizing. 

Through his consulting firm, The Sixth Group, Dwayne has provided training and strategic impact guidance to many nonprofit organizations and foundations. He holds a Bachelor of Science from North Carolina A&T State University. He has served on the boards of ProGeorgia, the Fund for Southern Communities and the Latin American and Caribbean Community Center. He lives in Atlanta with his wife and twin daughters.