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Salih Booker is the Executive Director.
Here is the Board:
Africa Action Board of Directors
James Early, President
James Early is the Director of Cultural Heritage Policy at the Center for Folklife and Cultural Heritage at the Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC. Prior to his work with the Smithsonian, Mr. Early was a humanist administrator at the National Endowment for the Humanities, Washington, DC; a producer, writer, and host of "Ten Minutes Left," a weekly radio segment of cultural, educational, and political interviews and commentary at WHUR FM radio, Howard University; and a research associate for programs and documentation at the Howard University Institute for the Arts and Humanities, Washington, DC.
Mobolaji E. Aluko, Ph.D., Treasurer
Dr. Aluko is professor of Chemical Engineering at Howard University, Washington DC. Tenured as an associate professor in 1988, he became a full professor in 1994, whereupon he also became Chair of the department, a position that he currently holds. In addition to being Chair, he has held several administrative and research positions at Howard University. His broad research interests include chemical reaction engineering analysis, information, communications and computer technology applications in engineering, as well as engineering education pedagogy. He received a US patent in coal research in December 2000. Dr. Aluko is president of the Nigerian Democratic Movement (NDM), a US-based pro-democracy movement as well as the US Representative of the United Democratic Front of Nigeria (UDFN), an umbrella pro-democracy movement organization also based in the US. He is a frequent commentator on Nigerian and African affairs.
Joe Volk
Joe Volk is the Executive Secretary for the Friends Committee on National Legislation (FCNL) a Quaker lobby in the public interest that was established in 1943 in Washington, DC. Coming to FCNL from the American Friends Service Committee (AFSC), Philadelphia, in April 1990, he is the third Executive Secretary in FCNL's 56 year history. FCNL, closely related to the Religious Society of Friends (Quakers), is the oldest registered national religious lobby in the United States. He serves on the Steering Committee of the U.S. Campaign to Ban Landmines. Volk is a Vietnam-era veteran. He refused deferments to teach, declined an offer of Conscientious Objector status, was drafted into the U.S. Army in 1967, refused to go with his mechanized cavalry unit to Vietnam in 1968, and, although a court martial found him guilty of being AWOL, he served only a brief sentence in the stockade at Fort Carson, CO. He was honorably discharged in 1969.
Hibaaq Osman
Hibaaq Osman is the V-Day Special Representative to Africa, Asia, and The Middle East. Based out of Washington, DC, Osman is currently working in partnership with diverse women's networks in Afghanistan, Egypt, India, Israel, Jordan, Kenya, Pakistan and Palestine. Ms. Osman spearheads efforts by the V-Day Foundation to build broad political and social movements for women's rights at national, regional, and international levels in those regions. Hibaaq works with women's networks to strengthen and support their common agenda of ending violence against women and girls specifically to end bride burnings, female genital mutilation (FGM), honor killings, sexual assault, rape and the many other forms of gender-based violence that plague these regions. The V-Day effort collaborates with organizations that have a commitment to working across ethnic, religious, and class lines. Born in Somalia and raised in Ethiopia and Sudan, Hibaaq Osman has been involved in women's rights issues in Africa for over 15 years. Through her work, she has helped to establish women's rights organizations and form coalitions around women's issues, most recently SIHA (Strategic Initiatives for the Horn of Africa) to promote women's rights, peace and human development. Ms. Osman has done extensive research on conflict resolution, FGM and women's rights in Islam, and was previously a Senior Fellow of the Academy for Political Leadership and Participation at the University of Maryland.
David Levering Lewis
David Levering Lewis joined the NYU faculty as University Professor and Professor of History in 2003. His field is comparative history with special focus on 20 th -century US social history and strong interests in 19 th -century Africa and 20 th -century France. In October 2003, Mr. Lewis was named Julius Silver University Professor and Professor of History at NYU. A 1956 Phi Beta Kappa graduate of Fisk University, B.A., in history and philosophy, he holds graduate history degrees from Columbia (M.A., > 59) and the London School of Economics and Political Science (Ph.D., > 63). From 1985 to 1994, he held the Martin Luther King, Jr., Professorship in the Rutgers-New Brunswick history department, and from 1994-2003 was King University Professor. He has taught at the University of Notre Dame, Howard University, University of California -San Diego; and Harvard. Mr. Lewis has authored seven books: King: A Biography (1970); Prisoners of Honor: The Dreyfus Affair (1974); District of Columbia: A Bicentennial History (1976); When Harlem Was in Vogue (1980); The Race to Fashoda: European Colonialism and African Resistance in the Scramble for Africa (1988); W.E.B . Du Bois: Biography of a Race, 1868-1919 (1993); W.E.B. Du Bois: The Fight for Equality and the American Century, 1919-1963 (2000). He has compiled two editions: The Harlem Renaissance Reader (1994) and W.E.B. Du Bois: A Reader (1995). A Small Nation of People: W.E. B. Du Bois & African American Portraits of Progress (2003), co-authored with Deborah Willis, was a commission from the Library of Congress. Mr. Lewis received the Pulitzer Prize for Biography in 1994 and again in 2001 for his two-volume life and times of W.E.B. Du Bois, also awarded the Bancroft Prize and the Francis Parkman Prize in 1994. He is writing a short monograph about a remote period in global history, under contract to Henry Holt and Company.
Elizabeth Drake
Elizabeth Drake is an international policy analyst in the Public Policy Department of the American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations (AFL-CIO). She researches the legal and economic aspects of trade and investment agreements, analyzes their impact on AFL-CIO members and workers around the world, and develops policy and advocacy approaches on global issues. She also works on issues of international debt, capital flows and the international financial institutions. Elizabeth received her J.D. from Harvard Law School, where she studied international trade and investment law and international human rights. As a student, her activities included researching innovative approaches to law and organizing and participating in a Human Rights Program clinic on the Multilateral Agreement on Investment. She has also worked on sweatshop issues, race and gender discrimination in Brazil, and migrant rights in California. She received her B.A. in anthropology from the University of California at Berkeley.
Derrick Ashong
Derrick is currently a PhD student in Afro-American Studies and Ethnomusicology at Harvard, studying the influence of music on the development of political identities. He is a founding member and current board of director of the Fannie Lou Hamer Project, a national non-profit organization addressing issues of Campaign Finance and Civil Rights, and is a recipient of a Paul & Daisy Soros Fellowship for New Americans. As an actor, Ashong played a featured role in Steven Spielberg's film Amistad . As an entrepreneur, he has begun and maintained a successful record label (ASAFO Productions). As a student, he was awarded the highest honor conferred upon an undergraduate at Harvard University. As a writer, he is well on his way to finishing his first major work of non-fiction. Born in Ghana in 1975, Ashong attended school in the Middle-Eastern States of Saudia Arabia and Qatar. He has also lived in Brooklyn, New York, New Jersey, and has spent valuable time in the Caribbean. His unique upbringing has shown him the value of diversity, as well as the importance of self-awareness and self-reliance in a changing world. In a little over three years Derrick has spoken at more than 50 high schools and universities around the U.S., in the Caribbean, and in West Africa. He has had articles published in online journals such as TomPaine.com and Africana.com and was one of the contributors to 9/11 8:48am: Documenting America¹s Greatest Tragedy published by BlueEar.com in partnership with Booksurge.com and the NYU School of Journalism.
Emira Woods
Emira Woods is co-director of Foreign Policy In Focus (FPIF), a "Think Tank Without Walls". She holds a BA in International Relations from Columbia , a certificate in Public Policy from the Woodrow Wilson School at Princeton, a Master's in Government from Harvard, and is ABD in Political Economy and Government at Harvard. She recently was Program Manager for the Committee on Development Policy and Practice at InterAction, serving as a principal staff contact for advocacy at the UN, and the international financial institutions, USAID and the Department of the Treasury. She designed and implemented a strategic campaign around the Monterrey Financing for Development conference, working with both InterAction members and a broader coalition of Southern and Northern agencies. Prior to this position, she served as Program Officer of Oxfam America's Africa program, which involved outreach to the heads of major international institutions and grassroots groups in the most remote communities.
Jim Winkler
Jim Winkler is the General Secretary of the General Board of Church & Society (GBCS), the international public policy and social justice agency of the 11-million member United Methodist Church. He heads up a wide-ranging ministry of global peace and justice with offices in Washington, D.C. and New York City. Mr. Winkler speaks widely across the United Methodist Church and has led delegations to the Middle East, Iraq, Democratic Republic of the Congo and Germany seeking peaceful solutions to global conflict. He has preached and led workshops and training events in Russia, Nigeria, and the Philippines, and is a frequent spokesperson for the justice work of The United Methodist Church to the national and international media. He is a member of the Justice and Advocacy Commission of the National Council of Churches of the United States of America, a member of the steering committee of the Campaign for a National Health Plan, board member of the Faith and Politics Institute, and board member of the Churches for the Middle East Peace.
Njoki Njoroge Njehu
Njoki is the Director of 50 Years Is Enough Network. Her responsibilities at the Network include policy analysis, media work, fundraising, Board & South Council relations, and she is the lead spokesperson for the Network. Njoki is a Kenyan national who worked with women's groups and the Greenbelt Movement in Kenya for over a decade. She grew up learning from the work of Kenyan women, especially her mother, Lilian Njehû, a grassroots and community activist. Before joining the 50 Years Is Enough Network, she worked at Greenpeace International for three years focusing on the international toxic trade and on biodiversity and oceans issues. She joined the 50 Years Is Enough Network in July 1996 and was named director in October 1998. She has testified before the U.S. Congress, on African debt; the IMF's Enhanced Structural Adjustment Facility (ESAF) which until 1999 administered the IMF/World Bank structural adjustment programs; and on the role of the African Development Bank in addressing, debt, HIV/AIDs and other crises facing Africa. She serves on the board of the Quixote Center and Jobs with Justice. She also serves on the coordinating committee of the Grassroots Global Justice (GGJ) coalition which organized and facilitated the participation of U.S. community-based, people of color, youth, and grassroots organizations in the World Social Forum (2002 & 2003) in Porto Alegre, Brazil and in Mumbai (Bombay), India in 2004. She is a founding member of the International Coordinating Council of the World Social Forum and the Africa Social Forum.
Howard Jeter
Howard Jeter is the Vice President of Good Works International (GWI Consulting). He was Ambassador to Nigeria from 2001 to 2003, and served as Deputy Assistant Secretary for African Affairs from June 1999 until July 2000. Previously, Howard was Director of West African Affairs from September 1997 until June 1999, and also served as the President's Special Envoy for Liberia. Jeter served with distinction as the U.S. Ambassador to Botswana from 1993 to 1996. A career diplomat, Howard Jeter was Deputy Chief of Mission in Namibia from September 1990 to July 1993. During that period, he also served as Charge d'Affaires, following the departure of the incumbent Ambassador in September 1992. Before going to Namibia, he was Deputy Chief of Mission and later Charge d'Affaires in Lesotho. He also held various political, economic, commercial, and consular positions in U.S. Embassies in Mozambique, Tanzania, and in the Temporary Liaison Office in Windhoek, Namibia. He holds a BA Degree in Political Science from Morehouse College in Atlanta, Georgia, a MA in International Relations and Comparative Politics from Columbia University, and a MA in African Area Studies from the University of California, Los Angeles. Ambassador Jeter is a former Ford Foundation Doctoral Fellow, International Fellow at Columbia University, Merrill Overseas Study-Travel Scholar, Legislative Intern in the Georgia House of Representatives, and a participant in Operation Crossroads Africa. He is a member of Phi Beta Kappa, the American Foreign Service Association and the Council on Foreign Relations.
Sonia Sanchez
Sonia Sanchez was born in Birmingham, Alabama. Sanchez attended public schools in New York City and then Hunter College, where she received a B.A. in 1955. Sanchez became an important voice in the revolutionary social movements of the 1960s and 1970s. Her first two collections of poetry, Home Coming (1969) and We a BaddDDD People (1970), reflect her militant stance, inspired in part by the example of Malcolm X. Sanchez unleashed some of her rage at America's Anglocentric educational system. Her criticisms, however, were followed by suggestions, and she has become a powerful advocate of black studies programs. Sanchez began a long teaching career in 1965 at the Downtown Community School in New York. After stints at several universities, including San Francisco State College, the University of Pittsburgh, Rutgers, Amherst, and the University of Pennsylvannia, she joined the staff of Temple University in Philadelphia in 1977, where she is currently a professor in the departments of English and women's studies. Her anthology, Three Hundred and Sixty Degrees of Blackness Comin at You (1972), collects poetry written by her students in a creative writing class in Harlem. Sanchez has written several plays and has also done considerable writing for children. Sanchez's later poetry volumes are more specifically feminist in orientation, treating Sanchez's personal growth while celebrating women in general. One of her most celebrated volumes is Homegirls & Handgrenades (1984), a collection of autobiographical prose poems. The volume received an American Book Award from the Before Columbus Foundation. Sanchez continues to teach and write in Philadelphia.
John Riggan
John Riggan, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of the TCC Group, leads the firm's practice in Corporate Social Responsibility specializing in customized strategies that make recognizable contributions to the community while serving legitimate business interests. Riggan also leads the firm's growing International Practice, advising multinational companies on Corporate Social Responsibility initiatives and other concerns. Skilled at policy formulation and the development of innovative education, health and human services programs in the public and private sectors, he is experienced in devising management approaches that target limited resources to highest-priority needs and create fresh opportunities for clients. His program expertise includes children and youth services, low-income issues, and integrated service delivery strategies. Before joining the firm in 1981, Riggan served as Special Consultant to the Ford Foundation on low-income and human services issues. In this capacity, he created a multi-state, welfare-to-work demonstration project, and headed a team of consultants to assist the governor and legislature in developing the Wisconsin Youth Initiative. Prior to that, he served the City of Philadelphia as its Drug and Alcohol Abuse Administrator and as Special Assistant to the Managing Director for Human Services Coordination. Riggan currently serves on numerous boards, including Oxfam America, where he also is convener of the Africa Working Group. He is a Board Member and past President of Philadelphia Citizens for Children and Youth and a Trustee of The Free Library of Philadelphia. A graduate of the University of Washington, he has additional training in public administration, economic development, organization and management. He spent more than seven years in Africa as a Peace Corps volunteer, development specialist and Country Director in Chad.
Ayesha Imam
Dr. Ayesha Imam has lectured and carried out research in women's studies and gender analysis at universities and research institutes in Nigeria, the U.K., Canada and Senegal. She has published widely for both academic and activist uses. Her formal publications include Engendering African Social Sciences (CODESRIA 1994, also published in French 2002) and two special issues of Africa Development, Re-Visiting Gender I and II, as well as numerous journal articles. She was the initiator and co-director of the first Gender Institute in Africa, initiated by CODESRIA in 1994 and held annually since, which brings together young researchers from across the continent and introduces them to gender critiques, methodology and research. Simultaneously, Ayesha Imam is a woman's human rights and democratic development activist. She is founding director of BAOBAB for Women's Human Rights in Nigeria, which undertakes research, advocacy and education to protect and develop women's legal rights issues under customary, secular and religious laws. With BAOBAB, Dr. Imam was the 2002 recipient of the John Humphrey Human Rights Award for the work in protecting women's rights under the new Sharia Penal Codes in Nigeria, which have been drafted and implemented in a retrogressive and discriminatory fashion. Ayesha Imam is a core group member of the international solidarity network, Women Living Under Muslim Laws (WLUML), and coordinated research in 8 countries in Africa and the Middle East on the ways in which different systems of laws and social practices combine to structure women's lives in Muslim countries and communities. Dr. Imam has also worked on gender training, evaluation
and research for activists in NGOs, for mid-level planners and functionaries in government, and for researchers. She is also the current chair of the Africa Democracy Forum, a network of African democracy activists which works on mutual solidarity, information and
skills exchange across the continent.
Mark Toney
Mark was the Executive Director of the Center for Third World Organizing (CTWO) in Oakland, California from 1999 to 2003. He initiated a major realignment of CTWO organizing, training and communication resources to focus on advancing racial justice through a unified campaign GROWL (Grass Roots Organizing for Welfare Liberation). From 1996-1999 Mark worked as Senior Research Associate for the Applied Research Center in Oakland, CA. Previously, Mark founded Direct Action for Rights and Equality (DARE) in Providence, Rhode Island, working on such issues as benefits for home daycare providers, parent involvement in bilingual education, and preventing utility shut-offs in the winter for low-income families. He was the Executive Director/Chief Organizer at DARE from 1986-1994. From 1982 to 1985 Mark worked as the Lead Organizer with Workers Association for Guaranteed Employment, a welfare rights organization based in Providence. Mark is a Doctoral candidate in Sociology at the University of California in Berkeley. He is a Kellogg National Leadership Fellow and his leadership accomplishments have been featured in Mother Jones, and Brown Alumni Monthly.
Makani Themba-Nixon
Makani Themba-Nixon is Executive Director of the The Praxis Project, a non-profit organization working on issues of health justice. Her current projects include media assistance and training for activist organizations as well as work on local policy development to address public health and other social issues. Makani has published numerous articles and case studies on media and public policy advocacy. She is co-author of Media Advocacy and Public Health: Power for Prevention. Her latest book is making Policy, Making Change available from Jossey-Bass. Makani has extensive background and experience in the field of non-profit management and community development. She is a highly experienced and sought-after speaker in the area of media and policy advocacy. She has extensive expertise in developing policy concerning public health and community development with special emphasis on innovative local policy.
Reverend Dr. Tyrone S. Pitts
Dr. Pitts, General Secretary of the Progressive National Baptist Convention, Inc., is the chief administrative officer of the Convention and responsible for executing the policies and programs of the Convention. He is the former Director for Racial Justice, Division of Church and Society, National Council of the Churches of Christ in the USA (NCC). As Director for Racial Justice, Dr. Pitts worked with NCC member communions, the World Council of Churches, the All African Conference of Churches, other ecumenical agencies and community groups to combat racism in the US and throughout the world. Other positions include Director, Mutual Assistance Endeavors Program (MATE) and American Baptist Urban Ministry program in Los Angeles, California; Associate Minister of Church Mission, Calvary Baptist Church, Washington, DC; Art Teacher and Crisis Counselor, Rochester City School District, Rochester, New York. Dr. Pitts is an ordained minister in the Progressive National Baptist Convention, Inc .
Inca Mohamed
Inca Mohamed is internationally recognized for her group facilitation skills and has over 25 years of experience working with and managing nonprofit organizations addressing gender equity, sexual and reproductive health and rights, youth development and diversity. Inca has served as a senior manager, trainer, and service provider at local, national and governmental levels including Planned Parenthood in San Francisco, the Hawaii Department of Health, and The Door youth center in New York City. During her tenure at the YWCA of the USA, Inca provided leadership development and management consultation to YWCA affiliates across the country. Prior to joining MAG, Inca was a program officer at the Ford Foundation, where for 7 years she was responsible for both domestic and international youth development programming. Among the organizations she has assisted are DC Agenda, National community for Latino Leadership, the Moriah Fund, I Am Your Child Foundation, the National Women's Health Network, the Economic, Social and Cultural Right Network, The Funders Network for Population and Reproductive Health and Rights, the American Civil Liberties Union, the Ford Foundation and the Alan Guttmacher Institute.
Congresswoman Barbara Lee
Barbara Lee was first elected to the House of Representatives for the Ninth District of California in a 1998 special election to fill the seat of retiring Congressman Ron Dellums. She is currently the Co-Chair of the Progressive Caucus, Chair of the Congressional Black Caucus (CBC) Task Force on Global HIV/AIDS, Whip for the CBC and a member of the CBC Minority Business Task Force. Congresswoman Lee came to Washington after serving in the California State Assembly from 1990-1996 and the California State Senate from 1996 – 1998. Throughout her political career, Barbara Lee has sought to bring her training as a social worker to bear on the problems and challenges that confront the East Bay, California, and the nation. She has worked to build bipartisan coalitions to provide for the basic and inter-related needs of Americans: health care, housing, education, jobs and the quest to create livable communities in a peaceful world. In order to meet these needs, Congresswoman Lee believes that Americans and their representatives must begin by reordering our priorities and redefining national security for the post-Cold War world: a bloated defense budget undermines rather than enhances our real national security. In Congress, Barbara Lee is carrying on a long tradition in the Ninth District of representing the voice of reason and compassion in the fight to reshape the national budget.
Rev. Dr. Wyatt Tee Walker, President Emeritus
Senior Pastor, Canaan Baptist Church, Harlem, NY; former Executive Director for Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.'s Southern Christian Leadership Conference
Wyatt Tee Walker is Senior Pastor of the Canaan Baptist Church of Christ in Harlem, New York. Dr. Walker holds an earned doctorate in African- American Studies with a specialization in Music. He is among the foremost authorities on the music of the African- American religious experience. Dr. Walker is the author of twenty-one books Including Common Thieves; The Harvard Paper; Afrocentrism and Christian Faith; Soweto Diary; Race, Justice and Culture and his newest work, Millennium End Papers. Wyatt Tee Walker's career history includes serving as Chief of staff to Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., Pulpit Minister, Abyssinian Baptist church and Special Assistant to Governor Nelson Rockefeller. He has been the Senior Pastor and CEO of the Canaan Baptist Church since 1967. In the 1999-2000 academic year, this Harlem pastor served as Interim Dean of Doctoral Studies at United Theological Seminary in Dayton, Ohio. In the 1993 Ebony Magazine poll, he was named one of the fifteen greatest African-American preachers in the nation. Wyatt Tee Walker was the co-founder, along with Canon Frederick B. Williams, of the Religious Action Network (RAN) of the American Committee on Africa in 1988 during the height of the Anti-Apartheid struggle. RAN is a network of over 300 congregations throughout the U.S.
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