Mariela Cedeño is the product of her Venezuelan and El Salvadoran roots and Bay Area upbringing. She has spent her career cultivating local economies, resilient food systems, and new models of investment that center and uplift Black, Indigenous, and POC entrepreneurs, farmers, land stewards, and community-based organizations. She is a co-founder of Manzanita Capital Collective, a collective working to shift power and capital to BIPOC-led food, agriculture, and land stewardship to advance racial and economic justice. Prior to Manzanita, Mariela was the Interim Executive Director of Mandela Partners, an Oakland-based non-profit organization that works to increase access to healthy food, good jobs, and ownership opportunities. Mariela has a wide breadth of experience in community-rooted economic development, integrated capital, financial planning, collaborative stewardship, and more.

Nikishka Iyengar is the founder and CEO of The Guild, focused on building community wealth and power through cooperative models of real estate and entrepreneurship. She has over a decade of experience in building the solidarity economy as a consultant, entrepreneur, writer and organizer. She uses a ‘systems thinking’ and emergent strategy approach across her work in finance, racial justice, equitable development, and climate action.

Prairie Rose Seminole, Northern Cheyenne, Arikara, and Dakota, is an educator, culture bearer, and storyteller. She is the Co-Director of the film, We Ride For Her- a short documentary on the crisis of Missing and Murdered Indigenous Relatives. Prairie Rose has served on the Minneapolis Federal Reserve Bank, Midwest Advisory Board, and the Fargo Human Relations Commission. She currently serves on boards for the Olamina Fund, the Midwest Innocence Project Board, Gender Justice US, and Humanities ND, and chairs the ND Native Caucus. Prairie Rose has been a part of efforts, institutions, and organizations that have seeded, supported, and strengthened public history, cultural heritage, civic education, and community engagement on local, state, and national levels. Prairie Rose grew up in North Dakota and is an enrolled member of the Three Affiliated Tribes of ND on the Fort Berthold Reservation.

Cheryl Cherry is the former Managing Director for CornerSquare Community Capital and the NC Rural Center. Her diverse knowledge in the financial sector is largely due to over two decades of experience in various roles such as president, financial accountant, and lender and underwriter for consumer, small business, and mortgage loans.

Melanie (she/her) is motivated by the dire need to have a more equitable world, and channels this motivation through leading efforts that rebuild institutions and create new means for marginalized communities to have access to finance, power, and decision-making.

Adriana Abizadeh is the executive director of the Kensington Corridor Trust (KCT) in Philadelphia. The mission, duty, and purpose of the KCT is to utilize collective ownership to direct investments on the corridor that preserve culture and affordability while building neighborhood power and wealth in Kensington. Adriana is also a policy fellow at Princeton University and Rutgers University. With deep interests in public policy, Adriana has taken every opportunity to utilize her privileged position as a nonprofit leader to speak out for what she believes in and to lift the voices of impacted community members. Immersed in policy initiatives, she has facilitated community collaboration to address the intersectionality between immigration status, housing, poverty, and race.