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 yesah/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 gender studies. Itai has done work in the field of organizational equity for roughly a decade. They also direct the Paths (Re)Membered Project at NPAIHB, a 2SLGBTQ+ health equity initiative out of the Northwest Portland Area Indian Health Board’s National Center for Clinical Support and Preventive Health Services. Itai serves as Board Vice Chair for the Yarrow Project based in Tacoma, WA, which encircles Indigenous survivors of violence by engaging community, connecting to culture, and dismantling systems of harm.
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, MA MS
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. She holds a Masters in Public Health, a Masters of Science in Prevention Science, and is currently a PhD student in the department of Human Development at Washington State University. She works alongside both Tribal and urban Indian communities to provide health and human services, community-based research, and Indigenous informed systems of care. She adapts Western approaches through decolonial praxis to address intergenerational trauma, access, racial equity, and social justice. Her research interests involve trauma transmission amongst Indigenous populations via the caregiver-child dyad, socio-ecological determinants of health, and behavioral health outcomes through culturally grounded prevention and intervention strategies as well as critical and decolonizing methodologies.
Iván Torres
Consultant
(he/him/his) has been working at the intersection of transformative movement building, regenerative economics, and decolonized collective healing for the past 17 years. As a grassroots organizer, he mobilized communities across California in support of racial, environmental, and economic justice at The Center for Third World Organizing and Communities for a Better Environment. In addition to his advocacy work, Iván was also trained as an organizational facilitator and coach through the Rockwood Leadership Institute. Motivated by the emotional, mental, and spiritual suffering he experienced and witnessed during his movement work, Iván chose to focus his energy and efforts on mental health and intergenerational healing in 2015. He would go on to serve as a training lead for the CA Psychological Association and a mental health specialist for the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Service Administration. In 2016, he was selected as a Culture of Health Fellow at the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, where he focused on cultivating community-based decolonized models of mental health. In 2018, Iván founded the Genesis Healing Institute which provided indigenous-centered, ancestral, and holistic healing support to communities of color. During his time at Genesis, Iván had the honor of accompanying hundreds of people on their healing journeys. In 2021, he was invited to design, facilitate, and expand holistic healing initiatives within the philanthropic sector.
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.
