Who We Are
We are professionals that hold ourselves to the highest standards and have an enduring passion for bringing brightness and “good” into the world. We are also dreamers, activists, mavericks, consultants, among many other words we could use to describe ourselves.
Meet Our Team
Abbie Cohen
Research, Learning, and Impact Manager
Abbie has worked across sectors to support organizations in designing accessible MEL frameworks for over 7 years . Her passion for advancing organizational learning blossomed during her service with the U.S Peace Corps in South Africa, where she employed participatory methods to support HIV mitigation programs in local communities. This was where one of Abbie’s biggest AHA moments came; she internalized just how interconnected the social drivers of HIV/AIDS (and all other health issues, for that matter) really are. Today, Abbie continues to foster a commitment to solving complex social problems by employing an interdisciplinary lens, with empathy as one of her most potent superpowers. If a genie were to grant her one wish for the social sector, Abbie would ask for greater access to reliable funding sources for community-led initiatives. Dependable funding that comes with little to no stipulations allows smaller organizations to focus on expanding their impact rather than engaging donors.
Malaika Cheney-Coker
Founder and Principal
When Malaika founded Ignited Word, it felt like a homegoing to a place where creativity could be let loose for the bettering of the human condition. Since then, she has applied tools from the literary and organizational learning toolboxes to help organizations with social missions apply uncommon approaches in their work. With 23 years of experience in thought leadership, coalition-building, creativity approaches, program management, monitoring, evaluation, and learning (MEL), and more, she brings versatility and constant innovation to her clients. Her superpower is that she is the author of the novel, Creature of Air and Still Water. She is also able to swop in tenacity for bravery when the latter is insufficient. If a genie granted her one wish for the social sector, it would be (unsurprisingly) that all in it would unlock their full creative potential.
Yulia Chuvileva
Senior Advisor
A bridge builder across boundaries, Yulia has amassed experience and expertise in multiple sectors, disciplines, and methods, which she combines in creative ways to help social sector groups better understand and improve their work. Her grounding in psychology, development studies, and anthropology have equipped her with the necessary tools to unpack contexts across multiple levels, starting from individuals and communities and zooming out to global systems. She brings those lenses to her work in research, monitoring, evaluation, and learning. Some of Yulia's biggest AHA moments have come from deep realizations of the relational interdependence and ecodependence of human beings. Using systems thinking, network analysis, and collective impact approaches to help groups collectively foster positive social, health, environmental change is among her superpowers. Her one wish for the social sector would be for more people in it to think relationally about all facets of their work.
Darnesha Tabor
Evaluator and Writer
While serving as a Peace Corps volunteer in South Africa working on HIV prevention and economic development, Darnesha grappled with a critical question: Why do communities in such close proximity exhibit stark differences in development and access to vital resources? South Africa has one of the largest wealth gaps in the world and it was in the midst of this experience that Darnesha recognized the parallels in wealth disparities between South Africa and the United States. Darnesha recognized that historical and present-day structural violence exacerbates social inequities across race and class throughout the world. This awareness continues to drive her work, which includes culturally responsive methods to develop, monitor, and evaluate projects and initiatives. Her superpower lies within her ability to approach each project that she takes on with empathy and an intersectional lens. If a genie granted her one wish for the social sector, it would be a transformative shift to address the root causes of social disparities and to collectively create a more equitable and just world.
Ena Taguiam
Research and Communications Assistant
Ena has always identified herself as a feminist and has always been critically aware of the inequalities among genders. It was in her college days that she realized that women's oppression is intersectional and pervasive— women and other marginalized groups are often disenfranchised by socio-political infrastructures. It seemed to her that the system was rigged to keep powerful people in power and disempower minorities. She then made an active decision to shape a career in the development sector, but one question remained: How could she influence change? She had her AHA moment as a project manager working on social marketing projects: effective communication served as a powerful entry point in influencing social change! Leveraging her skills in writing and research, she led participatory projects that aim to highlight the needs and capabilities of marginalized groups. Her superpower lies in her capability to tell accurate and impactful stories to help involve the often invisible groups in conversations about their own development. Her wish for the development sector is for social workers to be more intent on including participatory tools in their work.
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Jay Black
Writer and Videographer
"Lifelong-movie-fanatic" might best describe Jay's obsession with visual storytelling. After getting a master's in Communications, he lived a dual life: one as a university instructor, the other as a freelance videographer/moviemaker. He taught moviemaking for eleven years at the master's level, and simultaneously took on many professional roles and projects including director of corporate training videos, fiction movies, commercials, camera operator, lighting technician, and professional editor, to name a few. His AHA moment regarding the massive power of moving images to influence thought and action came after a study of the great Frank Capra movie, It Happened One Night. Clark Gable brazenly takes off his shirt in front of Claudette Colbert, revealing he was not wearing an undershirt. The undershirt business nearly failed in the months after the film was released. Gathering enthusiasm for projects in which he believes is his superpower. And that would be his wish for the social sector if a genie granted him one wish: a tidal wave of enthusiasm for worthy projects.
Christine Ristaino
Facilitation and Humanities Consultant
Christine Ristaino teaches Italian language, literature, and culture as well as justice-focused classes. She has co-authored an academic monograph titled Lucrezia Marinella and the “Querelle des Femmes” in Seventeenth- Century Italy through Farleigh Dickinson Press as well as the first edition of a teaching series called The Italian Virtual Class. Her most recently offered courses are titled, “Social Justice in Italy and Beyond Through Memoir," "Diaspora in Italy and Beyond," "and "The Baroque and the Marvelous." Dr. Ristaino is a certified life coach as well as a graduate of The OpEd Project Public Voices Fellowship. Christine is also an Atlanta author whose memoir, All the Silent Spaces, has earned numerous book awards in the categories of Inspirational Memoir, Social Change, Politics and Social Sciences, and Women’s Issues. Christine has published articles in The Guardian, Pacific Standard, The Washington Post, The Huffington Post, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Ms. Magazine, and Visible Magazine on child advocacy, changing the way we talk about violence, and education reform. She speaks and leads workshops on fostering social change, challenging and changing the paradigms around sexual assault, leadership through self-knowledge, trauma-informed teaching and learning, equity and inclusion in the classroom, talking about difficult topics, diaspora and connection through food, and creating a public voice. She is an award-winning advisor and teacher and has experience organizing powerful symposiums, seminars, conferences and events.
Robby Vaflor
Creative Communications Consultant
Robby’s restless head has worn a great many hats throughout his decade-long career as a communicator and creative. With a degree in journalism from the University of the Philippines, he started out as a tech journalist, interviewing and writing about key opinion leaders in the Southeast Asian tech space and beyond. He later crossed over to the private sector as a content writer, quickly realizing his love for communications strategy. Since then, Robby has thrived as a communications strategist, writer, and creative, helping small startups and international brands alike tell their stories to global audiences. In his work, he has taken on responsibilities across various facets of brand communications including: public relations, crisis communications, digital advertising, SEO, social media marketing, and content creation—even becoming a voice actor and score composer from time to time. Through his tenure at PR and marketing agencies, as well as through direct consultancy, he has worked on projects for the United Nations, the World Bank, the Philippine Red Cross, Lenovo, the NBA, WorldRemit, Merck Sharp & Dohme, and various agencies of the Philippine government, to name a few. His AHA moment is realizing in practice that the one true constant in communication is the human condition. This framework built on empathy has helped him in developing resonant and sustainable storytelling strategies that go beyond media trends and quantitative data.
Our Collaborators
Irmin Durand
Irmin comes from a patchwork of worlds and life experiences. Her story spans dozens of countries on four continents, four languages and 10 professional sectors. Over 20 years, Irmin has come to nurture connection, communication, collective imagination, collaboration, knowledge exchange and community among people working for justice, fairness and thriving for all. She weaves together knowledge, stories, ideas, relationships, energy and wisdom from all the spaces she has lived, worked, learned and grown in, and she cultivates interactions that enrich, energise and enable ideas and possibilities to emerge. Irmin cherishes story, laughter and play as powerful allies in this work. She once co-created a segment of an improv theatre performance with four people from the audience, none of whom knew each other, entirely through fits of laughter. A year later, they shared how the experience had stayed with them and still energised them although they had never seen each other again. Her one wish for the social sector: to liberate the creativity that lives in each of us.
June Holley
June Holley, author of the Network Weaver Handbook, has developed and implemented strategies for systems shifting, self-organizing networks that catalyze transformation. She is currently exploring how to network those working on transformation around the world and co-create the systems needed to support collaborative learning to advance the field. She had her AHA moment when she realized we are not trying to replace a "bad" system with a "good" one but to see all the healthy, creative and caring activity that already exists all around us and support and nurture it so we continually co-create a world that is good for all of us. Her superpower is her ability to research complex concepts -like transformation, systems and networks - and translate them into practical strategies and actions that people can easily apply to their work so it makes a difference.