Collaborators

What Alexis loves to do — and what she does best — is support those who are accomplishing extraordinary feats. She first developed this skill as a network television producer for CBS Atlanta, Turner, and Speedvision.

Feeling that those feats weren’t quite extraordinary enough, she turned her attention to the theatre, working as a stage manager and joining Actors’ Equity Association. Having managed everything from actors to chickens, Alexis then transitioned to nonprofit administration.

Alexis spent close to a decade as a development director, raising millions of dollars for causes she believes in, before pursuing an independent career as a nonprofit operations guru. She is now proud to head up operations for LightBox Collaborative and to design client engagements.

A southern transplant to the left coast, Alexis lives in Oakland with her husband, son, and a big-eared dog that is often mistaken for a dingo. When not working, she can often be found at the barn riding her favorite Westphalian. She holds a B.A. in journalism and a M.A. in nonprofit management from the University of Georgia.

Alicia Walters believes in building effective movements from the inside out, which she does through transformative facilitation, creating messages and campaigns that shift narratives and culture, and supporting organizational collaboration. As a consultant, Alicia has worked with organizations to develop innovative programs, create strategic and bold messaging campaigns, and sustain thriving networks. Some recent clients include ACLU of Northern California, Forward Together, CoreAlign, and the Center for Media Justice, among others.
Her most recent organizational post was as the Movement Building Director at Forward Together, where she managed Strong Families—a network of 200 organizations working at the intersections of race, gender, and sexuality. Trained initially as an organizer, she now knows the stuff movements are made of – networks of people willing to bridge divides, say it plain, and take risks for the benefit of the whole. As an organizer and policy advocate, Alicia has focused on developing campaigns and initiatives that challenge the dehumanization of Black people and other people of color. She has authored groundbreaking legislation to prohibit the shackling of pregnant people in California jails and prisons, and co-authored Who Pays: the True Cost of Incarceration on Families, based on the participatory research of 23 organizations across 13 states.
For five years she directed Echoing Ida, which she founded to raise the visibility of Black women’s expertise through the media, generating narratives that affirm Black people’s humanity. Through this intensive fellowship, Alicia has trained 25 Black women who have published more than 350 articles in over 70 online and print media outlets.
Alicia has worked closely with Lightbox Collaborative on a number of projects and campaigns as a client. Now on the other side as a collaborator with the team, she is adding value with coalition building, facilitation, and strategic organizing/media campaigns to round out the team’s strengths.

Amanda is passionate about solid strategy, meaningful messages and the allure of alliteration. She takes pride in helping her clients reach new heights, whether it’s winning a national campaign, nailing a presentation or interview, or crafting a persuasive message.

Amanda comes to consulting with more than fifteen years of experience working with organizations in labor, legal rights, children’s services, and food insecurity. She has placed thousands of stories in every medium of the mainstream press and created buzz for her campaigns in social and progressive media. She has used the latest opinion data to create media strategies, messages, and even picket signs and chants with broader appeal. She revolutionized the training of worker spokespeople, bringing them inside the strategy so that they became more focused, passionate, and effective. She is proud to have extraordinary organizations like Forward Together, Transgender Law Center and the Ella Baker Center for Human Rights as repeat clients.

Amanda is a member of the Board of the National Association to Advance Fat Acceptance (NAAFA), the nation’s first and oldest organization fighting for rights and respect for people in all bodies. She previously served on the Board of Directors of the Guttmacher Institute, which advances sexual and reproductive health worldwide. She is also a proud member of the Radical Communicators (RadComms) Network, and the founder of the NYC Progressive Public Relations Professionals.

Amanda’s tenure as a dancer with Big Moves helped her realize a bucket list goal she never knew she had: playing fat Rizzo in the emFATic Dance reinvention of Grease. She lives and Jazzercises on the municipal island of Alameda, CA, with her husband, daughter, and Felix the Dog.

Anna Castro thinks like an organizer, strategizes like an attorney, and does research like a policy advocate.

Anna partners with organizations that are looking to create transformational change led by impacted communities. She builds culturally competent and trauma-informed communications strategies that give impacted communities more than a voice — she works towards restoring power and nurturing leaders. From developing a binational communications strategy to reunite families separated by unjust deportations to getting out the Latinx vote in battleground states, she anticipates challenges and thinks beyond short-term political wins to effect long-term change.

She has worked for the ACLU of San Diego & Imperial Counties and Mi Familia Vota, and as a consultant on projects with Lift Up Contra Costa, Open Society Foundation, Partnership for the Advancement of New Americans, Open Society Foundation, and Transgender Law Center among others.

Cross-movement bridge building is the foundation of Anna’s work. She is a part of the Solidarity Is project team, founded by South Asian activist Deepa Iyer. The Solidarity Is project provides individuals and organizations with tools, resources, and ideas to foster meaningful solidarity practices that bring about power, equity, inclusion and justice.

Anna received her B.A. in Black Studies from Amherst College. She’s a proud member of the Beyhive and loves her cat more than words. She did yoga sculpt teacher training but refuses to do inversions. She lives in Austin, Texas.

As a consultant, she works with organizations who are looking to mission shift from serving impacted communities to creating transformational change alongside communities. She is currently the coordinator and lead communicator for a campaign designed to improve conditions for LGBTQ immigrants in the United States, anchored by Transgender Law Center, Black LGBTQIA+ Migrant Project, and Familia: Trans Queer Liberation Movement. In collaboration with South Asian activist Deepa Iyer, she also launched the Solidarity School, an online training series designed to foster cross-movement solidarity by providing tools that bridge the gap between theory and practice in combating anti-Black racism, Islamophobia, and anti-immigrant sentiment.

As a creative artist with a background in theology, religion, and cultural studies, Cat brings a deep understanding for how people’s spiritual and cultural orientations operate beneath the surface of our daily interactions and influence how we find meaning and communicate with one another.

Cat has been serving the non-profit, public health, environmental, education, and social science sectors as a communications professional for more than 15 years. She is the founder and creative director for ColorThisWorld Communications, a mission-driven, communications consultancy dedicated to serving organizations and initiatives working for social change.

Cat’s work has spanned everything from developing communications strategies that activate audiences on broad public health and environmental campaigns to providing visual design and storytelling communications support through writing blog articles, designing infographics, creating company websites, producing videos, developing brand identities, engaging in social media and more. Her work includes communications support for Community Health at Kaiser Permanente, the Greater Good Science Center at U.C. Berkeley, the California Health Care Foundation, Bay Area Ridge Trail, the Multicultural Center of Marin, and numerous other social good efforts and organizations. She recently earned her accreditation in public relations (APR).

When not enmeshed in the virtual world of her computer, Catherine can be found adventuring through the more tactile world around her. She enjoys outdoor sports, culinary adventures, and playing music with her husband. She is a practitioner of regular meditation and yoga. And she makes killer pies.

Chris Sams uses improvisation as a tool to enhance collaboration, communication, creativity, connection, and adaptive leadership. Through leading training sessions, facilitating workshops, and delivering customized engagements, Chris has worked with over 250 companies and organizations, promoting the development of the cornerstone skills of effective team work.

Chris has a strong background in serving stand growing successful programs in the nonprofit sector. He led BATS Improv's corporate training engagement wing for eight years, grew the volunteer service program at the San Frnacissi Food Bank as Volunteer Services Manager for five years, and helped to organize the first ever Sierra Club Summit back in 2004. He graduated from Duke University as a Benjamin N. Duke Leadership Scholar.

Currently, Chris serves on the nonprofit Board of Directors of BATS Improv and coaches as part of SNP Communication's Global Faculty. By night, you may find Chris freestyle rapping or hosting the occasional live action local game show.

Claudette Silver's work blends progressive politics with art, music and popular culture.

For the past 20 years, Claudette has worked on message development, fundraising, strategic communications and event production for clients such as Welcoming America, Forward Together, ACLU of Northern California, Deep Center, and Animating Democracy, among others.

With a strong emphasis on using events and public performances to deliver the message, Claudette creates cause-related communication strategies that reflect the individual needs of each client. From planning a post-Katrina benefit concert for The New Yorker to designing get-out-the-vote events for Gloria Steinem during presidential election years, Claudette creates compelling cause-related campaigns that tell the story effectively and with integrity.

Claudette is also interested in the connection between thriving local economies and healthy communities, and she is a past steering committee member of the Asheville Grown Business Alliance.

Prior to her foray into communications strategy and public event production, Claudette received her B.A. in design from the American University and taught art in the D.C. public school system. While she’s never been asked to prove this, Claudette boasts that she can sing every word to the Jesus Christ, Superstar soundtrack. She currently lives in Asheville, North Carolina.

Eliza (she/they) believes that stories have the ability to transform and connect us. Well-crafted stories help us imagine and work towards a more liberated world. Eliza comes to LightBox as a designer and communications organizer with over a decade of community organizing experience. They continue to be deeply rooted and involved in community-led movements for social justice. With a background in environmental justice, she’s spent the last seven years fighting for decarceration with organizations like the California Coalition for Women Prisoners, Ahimsa Collective, and Me Too Behind Bars. Their grounding in community work allows her to develop community-responsive communications strategies and craft messaging like an organizer. Her words and visuals compel diverse audiences to take action.

As a consultant, she integrates her diverse political and professional experiences to invigorate projects and catapult organizations’ impact to the next level. They work in digital, print and web mediums and utilizes creative illustration, captivating messaging, and strong layout to communicate ideas boldly and accessibly. Both a strategic thinker and a skilled project manager, Eliza balances big-picture visioning, collaborative process, and acute attention to the nitty-gritty details. She values relationship building at every stage of shared work and is attuned to both the needs of her clients and their audiences.

She’s honored to have worked on a recurring basis with organizations doing critical political work including the National Lawyers Guild, Young Women’s Freedom Center, the Stable Homes for Oregon Families coalition, and International Rivers. They live with their partner and two ever-so-perfect and quirky cats.

Eliza Wee is the lead pixel pusher at Dogmo Studios, a collaborative design studio that uses their powers for good.
With over 25 years experience in design that runs the gamut–print, web, and mobile–Eliza combines a thorough understanding of technology, production, and business issues to develop comprehensive strategies that work with the client’s mission, strategic goals, and budget. She brings to the team a broad combination of visual design skills, knowledge of front-end development and a thorough understanding of business goals and best practices.
She is honored to have worked with some of the world’s most incredible and inspiring clients, including the Astraea Foundation, Amnesty International, the ACLU of Northern California, the California State Labor Commissioner’s Office, and Code for America.
Eliza received her Bachelor of Arts in Fine Arts from Amherst College, where she established a strong foundation in painting, printmaking, and illustration. Her creative practice uses landscape to explore the interactions between community, time, and memory. At her Tol (돌) ceremony, she grabbed a pen and has spent the rest of her life living up to it.

Elizabeth Dawes Gay is the founder of Sisu Consulting, where she works with organizations to advance social, racial, and reproductive justice for women of color across the world. Elizabeth is a strategist, advocate, communicator, and convener who turns research into social impact. Her life’s mission is to create a world where women of color have what they need to achieve their ideal health and well-being. She combines her technical expertise in reproductive, racial, and social justice and skills in strategy and communications to support her clients.

Elizabeth is a recognized thought leader on women of color, reproductive and maternal health, and social justice who has been published in The Nation, Rewire, The Root, EBONY.com, TIME Motto, and Huffington Post. She has been featured on MSNBC and other news outlets and is quoted in the Los Angeles Times, Mic, EBONY.com, The Nation, Vice, Bustle, and Quartz among others. Additionally, Elizabeth is a co-founder of the Black Mamas Matter Alliance.

Elizabeth holds a Master of Public Health in Health Policy from George Washington University and a Bachelor of Arts in Urban Studies from the University of Pennsylvania. She is a global citizen based in the Washington, DC metropolitan area.

Holly has spent her entire career helping do-gooders do better.
She launched the LightBox Collaborative to harness fresh talent operating in an increasingly networked world.

Holly has served as long-time communications counselor to the Evelyn and Walter Haas, Jr. Fund, and enjoys working with grantees of the Levi-Strauss Foundation, as well as a range of community foundations across California.

Her work has been honored by the Council on Foundations for Excellence in Public Policy Communications. Holly was named by PR News as a creative practitioner in the industry. She was editor of “Loud and Clear in an Election Year,” a guidebook created to help nonprofits convey their messages in the crowded election environment. She is a frequent speaker for nonprofit and academic audiences alike, and her efforts to launch the LightBox Collaborative were featured in Chris Guillebeau’s book The $100 Start Up.

Holly co-created and for 20 years led The SPIN Academy. This important communications training and talent-development effort grew out of the SPIN Project, of which Holly was director.

Holly’s experience also includes her work at Spitfire Strategies, where she created communications programs for grantees of the nation’s largest foundations. Holly started out as press secretary for the Sierra Club, alternately doing battle with and cozying up to the Washington, D.C. press corps. She was primary contact for the national media, and created national, regional and local campaigns.

Holly has served on the board of directors for the Ella Baker Center for Human Rights and the Center for a New American Dream, the San Francisco Bicycle Coalition, Young Nonprofit Professionals Network, and the Green Media Toolshed.

Because she wanted to be an English teacher when she grew up, Holly holds a B.A. in English literature and language from the University of Southern California. She lives in San Francisco with her Dexter, who can frequently be heard on conference calls and webinars, weighing in with his opinions at inopportune times

Irene loves listening closely for language, narratives and strategies that will spark movement for social justice and human rights. In recent years, this has taken the form of partnering with clients such as the Center for Racial Justice in Education, Change Elemental, Prospera—International Network of Women’s Funds, If/When/How, Provide, and PEAK Grantmaking to craft communications strategies and messaging for rebranding efforts and campaigns.

Irene is also drawn to the challenge of solving complex research problems and writing and editing for a wide range of audiences. Over the years, she has contributed to a number of publications, from annual reports and activist profiles, to in-depth investigations of LGBTQI social movements and Indigenous women’s health and human rights.

Before becoming a consultant, Irene worked for the Ms. Foundation for Women where she led a communications capacity-building program for grantees and spearheaded communications investments in areas such as health care reform and child sexual abuse prevention. Prior to Ms., she worked for MADRE where she conducted research, public education, and press outreach on US foreign policy and gender justice in Latin America, the Middle East, and Africa. As a former dancer and graduate student of dance and politics, Irene believes deeply in the unique power of the arts and artists to ignite social change.

Irene lives in Brooklyn, NY, her home for many years, and is proud to hail from the Land of 10,000 (though in truth, so many more!) Lakes.

Isobel’s life’s work is to bring progressive ideals into the mainstream. She does this by linking smart communications strategy to an intuitive sense of what makes for a compelling narrative. She has employed these skills in campaigns ranging from Justice for Janitors to advancing LGBT civil rights to winning broad support for early education funding.

With over 20 years’ experience, Isobel is a seasoned writer, editor, and media strategist. She’s successfully pitched her clients into top publications around the country. Isobel’s diverse array of recent clients include Tipping Point Community; Tracking California; and the David and Lucile Packard Foundation, with whom she has worked on multiple early education projects.

Isobel has also worked with the ACLU of Northern California, the National Center for Lesbian Rights, and Mi Familia Vota, in each case using communications to further an agenda for equity, inclusion, and civil rights.

Isobel’s academic background – including a B.A. in Public Policy from Brown University and an M.A. in Urban Planning from UCLA – provides her with just enough understanding of policyspeak to translate it into language that resonates with grassroots constituents and journalists.

Isobel leads a Solidarity Sundays chapter and co-writes the monthly national action script. When she’s not writing, pitching, or strategizing, Isobel volunteers in her daughter’s Berkeley public school, plots what to plant next in her garden, and cultivates equanimity.

Janna A. Zinzi (also known as jaz) is a strategist and storyteller using language and performance to uplift the voices and stories of people of color, especially women and gender non-conforming people. She has over a decade of experience in strategic communications and public relations working with social justice organizations and advocates, artists and entrepreneurs. Janna has worked with Black Lives Matter, Forward Together, Color of Change, California Latinas for Reproductive Justice, National Advocates for Pregnant Women, the Guttmacher Institute and others providing media strategy and training, op-ed writing, and organizational assessment. She loves to train advocates and activists in speaking with media and telling their stories powerfully and succinctly.

Janna is also a travel, arts, culture content creator sharing stories about domestic and international adventures. Her work has appeared in Teen Vogue, The Daily Beast and The Root; and she also writes for the Marguerite Casey Foundation’s Equal Voices News. She also uses dance to challenge stereotypes and explore themes of artistic expression, race and feminism, and will be leading sensual movement workshops based on her studies of burlesque as a liberatory practice.

She is currently based in Los Angeles but loves being on the road as a global citizen.

Meena believes that the answers are inside of you, and they just need to be brought up to the surface. Communications can be a rigorous field of work, and it is often undervalued. In her work, Meena seeks to uplift communications professionals by providing the training, coaching and strategic direction they need to achieve their goals.

For the past decade, Meena has explored digital strategy with social justice groups. As a nonprofit consultant she has worked on a variety of issue areas—from foster youth empowerment to climate change. She facilitates organizations in developing a strategy for digital communications, and trains staff on best practices and tools to effectively communicate their campaigns to their audience. She has also grown into becoming a professional coach, working with communications professionals to sort through the chaos and approach their jobs in a mindful way.

Meena built her unique organizing and strategic expertise during her time at Greenpeace USA, where she ultimately managed all of the nonprofit’s social media assets. As the Email Engagement Manager for Amnesty International USA, she managed the email marketing for 1.6 million human rights advocates in the United States. And most recently at a new project of Climate Nexus called the Water Hub, she co-built a brand and training program from scratch that supports the water justice movement in the West.

Aside from work, Meena loves to cook and hopes to one day write recipes from her culinary diasporas. She also tends to her thriving plants and creates plant medicine for herself and for her friends.

Shana DeClercq taps into the power of story to shift public narratives. She helps organizations tell their part of our shared new story: people coming together, bringing to bear our unique lived experiences, cultural backgrounds, and skills to build sustainable, abundant, just, communities and futures.

Shana specializes in engagement: working with organizations to communicate from their core values; building authentic online supporter relationships; and extending those connections into real-world spaces. She supports her clients in identifying the tools that best serve their needs, and works with them to identify the best message and channels to reach core audiences. She is passionate about online accessibility.

Shana has championed a range of important progressive causes, mostly from a lens of climate justice. Joining LightBox Collaborative in 2019, her work there has supported Oakland Starting Smart and Strong, the Campaign for Smart Justice with ACLU of North Carolina, UC Berkeley Labor Center, ACLU California Action, and the Evelyn and Walter Haas, Jr. Fund among others. She runs her own consulting practice and has previously led engagement programs for Youth Outside, The Story of Stuff Project, and Alliance for Climate Education. Her movement home is the Radical Communicators Network.

Shana graduated cum laude with a Bachelor of Arts in English Literature. She lives in South Berkeley with her wife.She tweets at @SolveForBetter.

Veronica Anderson is an experienced media and communications professional with expertise in public policy. She partners with organizations that set their sights on equity. Veronica advises leadership teams on strategic planning, mission and vision development, engaging key stakeholders, reputation management and effective messaging.

She has worked with leadership teams at foundations, universities, school districts and grassroots nonprofits to facilitate visioning, community outreach and new research. She developed workshops in communications planning and founder-led nonprofits. Previously, Veronica was an award-winning print journalist who won a John S. Knight Fellowship at Stanford University to develop a parent engagement technology tool for K-12 schools. She was editor-in-chief of an education news and policy magazine and website, and she co-led a team to expand the franchise to urban markets around the country. Veronica also served on the Steering Committee for the University of Chicago Consortium on School Research and sat on the board of several nonprofits.

She has experience working as a communications strategist and coach for grantees of the Chicago Foundation for Women; developing a half-day communications planning workshop for grantees of the Pierce Family Foundation; curating and writing a compendium on equity in public education for Illinois Humanities; facilitating a community strategic planning and visioning process for the Truth and Narrative team of Truth Racial Healing and Transformation Greater Chicago, part of a national initiative funded by the Kellogg Foundation; and engaging institutional and grassroots stakeholders on the Boys of Color work group of Oakland Starting Smart and Strong, an early learning and health equity initiative funded by the David and Lucile Packard Foundation.