Bix Gabriel
Writer, and Co-Founder, TakeTwo Services
Bix (she/her) started her career as a copywriter in advertising, but found that selling toothpaste didn’t quite measure up to the thrill of telling stories about transforming people’s lives. For more than seventeen years, Bix has been helping nonprofits tell their stories, and persuading people to care, give, and act. Her expertise is in developing memorable brands, creating and executing communications campaigns and strategies, storytelling, writing, and staff and board trainings. From her roots in college anti-caste activism, she remains committed to taking down structures and systems that perpetuate caste‑, race‑, gender‑, and immigration-based oppression, and building up people, communities, and narratives that uplift equity and justice. She has three Masters degrees: Communications, Media Studies, and an MFA in Creative Writing. She’s best at ‘using her words’, and after a cup — or seven — of tea.
Deepa Panchang
Nurse Practitioner
Deepa is a nurse practitioner living in New Orleans. She began her career in international health and human rights, working to hold humanitarian aid mechanisms accountable and uplift grassroots voices. In 2014, she returned to school to study nursing, and now works as a Family Nurse Practitioner at a community clinic, focusing on LBGTQ+ issues, sexual health, and harm reduction. She has been active in racial, health, and birth justice issues in the New Orleans community over the past decade. Coming from an upper-caste Indian family with roots in Maharashtra and Karnataka, she has been studying and unpacking the role of caste in her life and in the US context. She is passionate about building with other South Asian diasporic folks and across race lines towards a queer, anti-caste, anti-racist transformative justice vision.
Jayeesha Dutta
Artist, Cultural Organizer, Facilitator
Jayeesha (she/her/ella) is a tri-coastal, tri-lingual Bengali interdisciplinary artist, cultural organizer, pop-ed facilitator, and healing justice practitioner with 25 years of movement building experience. She was born in Mobile, raised in New York, aged in Oakland, and is deeply grateful to call New Orleans home. She is a co-founding member of Another Gulf Is Possible Collaborative, catalyzing the use of art, culture, media, direct action, and transformative justice from across the Gulf South to the Global South towards a just transition for our people and the planet. Jayeesha is also a trainer and coordinator for the Staying Power Healing Justice Program at Windcall Institute. In addition to SAALT, she serves on the boards of directors for Eyewitness Palestine, Alternate Roots, and the Climate Justice Alliance. Jayeesha is an avid traveler, home chef, live music lover, dancing queen, and adores being near (preferably swimming in) any body of clean, life giving water.
Maheen Kaleem, Esq.
Attorney
Maheen Kaleem, Esq., is a first generation Pakistani and human rights attorney who has dedicated her life to creating a world where girls of color are safe and free. She has almost twenty years of experience supporting youth and families impacted by personal and state violence, and making way for those traditionally marginalized from formal sites of power to lead efforts to advance racial and gender justice. In the various roles she has held in direct service, advocacy, and philanthropy, she has always grounded her work in the wisdom of women and girls who have survived the carceral system, sexual exploitation and abuse, and sex trafficking. Maheen currently serves as the Deputy Director of Grantmakers for Girls of Color, an organization committed to amplifying and resourcing transformative organizing work led by girls and gender expansive youth of color. She has advocated for the successful passage of numerous laws and policies at the federal, state, and local levels that protect the rights of survivors of child sex trafficking, as well as girls in the child welfare and juvenile justice systems. Maheen currently resides on unceded Piscataway land in Washington, D.C., also known as Chocolate City. She is from the Bay Area in California, and loves poetry, music, the Real Housewives of Atlanta and Potomac, and the Golden State Warriors.
Moneek Bhanot
Co-Founder and Leadership Coach, Reflecting Justice
Moneek Bhanot (she/her) is a systems-level strategist, coach, and leader. Being a Punjabi Sikh woman has taught Moneek the importance of honoring the humanity in ourselves and others, showing up in service to her community, and truth-telling. She is the Co-Founder of Reflecting Justice, a DEI coaching and consulting firm that works with individuals and organizations to dismantle white supremacy and create equitable systems. Moneek has fifteen years of experience in K‑12, higher education, and non-profit settings, where she has guided students, educators, and leaders to more deeply understand their role in challenging systems of oppression. She has also led organizations to examine policies and practices to ensure they are equitable at all levels, from performance management to strategic planning. She received her undergraduate degree from the University of California, San Diego, and her master’s degree in Higher Education Administration from the Harvard Graduate School of Education. She lives in the Bay Area with her husband and best friend, Ravi, and their two wonderful children.
Naji’a Tameez
Board Treasurer & Lawyer
Naji’a Tameez is a Pakistani-American lawyer in New York City. She became a lawyer in the hopes of using her career to give back to the immigrant communities she was raised in. She has devoted her legal career to working with, and for, marginalized communities, specifically in housing rights, immigration, and access to health care. Naji’a has a BA from Rutgers University, is also an alumna of Douglas Residential College, and has her JD from Syracuse University College of Law.
Nikita Chaudhry
Board Secretary & Artist, Activist, Educator
Nikita (she/hers) is a Punjabi/Indian American artist, activist, and educator currently based in Los Angeles. A graduate of NYU Tisch School of the Arts, with a major in Drama, minor in Performance Studies, and honors certificate in Theatre Studies, her projects have extended from stage to screen. She is most passionate about pushing for intersectional representation in media and entertainment, as well as creative work that uplifts underrepresented narratives and directly gives back to the community. Alongside her performance career, she consults with social justice organizations, most notably having partnered with the Women’s March National Team for the Women’s Convention in Detroit in 2017, and campaigning with Nithya Raman for LA City Council and Chalo Vote for the 2020 election. As an educator, she has taught fitness, dance/movement, and musical theater, and serves as a facilitator specializing in identity politics and performance.
Sabrina Singh
Attorney, Latham & Watkins, LLP
Born and raised in Kathmandu Nepal, Sabrina came to the United States for her undergraduate education and law school. Sabrina served on the board of Nepal Rising, a 501(c)(3) non-profit that mobilizes the Nepali diaspora in the United States for development efforts back home. A recent graduate of Harvard Law School, Sabrina served as a student attorney in the International Human Rights Clinic and the Immigration & Refugee Clinic. She has worked in the field of human rights, with Human Rights Watch and EarthRights International. In Nepal, Sabrina did business acceleration and community organizing with farmers and entrepreneurs in rural Nepal and conducted policy research on women’s economic empowerment at a non-profit called Daayitwa.