Our Team
Tina Vasquez, MS
CEO and Manager of Emerging Equity
(she, her, hers) is the founder and CEO/Manager of Emerging Equity, LLC. A first generation American of Puerto Rican, Cuban and Jamaican descent, she has over 15 years experience working in and alongside community-based organizations, non-profits, schools, universities, government agencies, and philanthropic institutions. She specializes in systems and processes, training and development, change management and social equity development. Her work has and continues to span from local to global contexts that include institutional capacity building, state level strategy and capacity development, systems implementation, and developing equitable policies, structures and workflows for globally operating entities. Tina is a Certified Movement Analyst by way of the Laban Institute for Movement Studies, has a B.A. in Individualized Study from NYU Gallatin and a MS in Organizational Behavior, Systems and Analytics from the NYU Tandon School of Engineering. She has also been trained by the People’s Institute for Survival and Beyond on Undoing Racism. As a former professional dancer, she maintains her dance and arts practices incorporating them into her consulting work as needed. Tina believes that organizations can only effectively serve people if their practices are fused with equitable visions and practices.
Itai Jeffries, PhD
EE Consultant and Lead Evaluator
(they/them/y’all) is a yésah/Occaneechi Two Spirit educator, qualitative researcher, and equity consultant. They earned a Bachelor’s in sociology at Guilford College, followed by an MA and PhD in sociology at Georgia State University. Itai’s specialties are qualitative methods, curriculum development, Critical Race Theory, health equity and public health approaches, and gender studies. Itai has done work in the field of organizational equity for roughly a decade.
Benjamin Knight
Emerging Equity Business Manager
(he/him/his) has spent most of his career working in the nonprofit sector focused on education, community development, and nonprofit operations and finance. He has led a national afterschool program as Associate Executive Director managing the New York and New Jersey programs where he impacted over 2000 students. Benjamin has also led school buildings supporting K – 8 populations in Brooklyn and the larger New York Metro Area. In Benjamin’s spare time he enjoys all things music and culture and leads TriBE, a cultural experience space aimed to create community, through dance, art and music.
Meenakshi Richardson, MS MPH
Emerging Equity Team Coordinator
(she, her, hers) also known as Minosa’ins (Little Moon) is a citizen of the Haliwa-Saponi Tribe and Asian Indian of Indo-Fijian descent. She holds a Masters in Public Health, a Masters of Science in Prevention Science. She is currently a PhD candidate, completing her doctorate degree in Prevention Science with the department of Human Development at Washington State University. She works alongside both reservation-based, urban Indian communities, government entities, and community-based organizations serving diverse populations to provide health and human services, community-based participatory research, and Indigenous informed systems of care. She pursued reciprocal collaborations through decolonial praxis to address intergenerational trauma, access, racial equity, and social justice. Her research interests involve trauma transmission amongst Indigenous populations and communities of color via kinship systems, socio-ecological determinants of health, and behavioral health outcomes through culturally grounded prevention and intervention strategies, centering critical and Indigenous methodologies.
Bianca Shaw, LMSW
Consultant
(she, her, hers) has over a decade of experience in social justice and nonprofit settings. Bianca is a consultant, restorative justice practitioner and coach. Bianca is deeply committed to shaping inclusive leadership practices, co-creating equity-driven organizational frameworks and cultivating holistic wellness strategies. As a former Executive Director, Bianca is adept at nurturing the leadership capacity of historically disenfranchised and directly impacted groups. Her leadership and facilitation approach is grounded in healing and people-centered management, relationship-building and a vision for just and equitable workplace cultures. In her work, Bianca blends elements of facilitation, change management, and leadership development to guide individuals organizations through transformative change, ushering them toward a more just and inclusive future.
