Gery Paredes Vásquez (ella, tu, she, her), is a lifelong practitioner and collaborator for intersectional justice, healing and collective liberation. She is currently the Race and Gender Equity Director at YWCA Madison, in which role she collaborates with her beloved team and a growing community of artists, advocates, organizers, educators and practitioners in the co-creation of offerings such as the Racial Justice Series Community Series, YWCA Madison’s annual Racial Justice Summit, as well as intersectional race-based offerings such as the BIPOC Healing Justice and Co-Liberation Series. In her work, she also provides collaborative consulting services for equity to organizations via YWCA Madison’s Creating Equitable Organizations partnership program.

Like many Latinx people, Gery was born to families of mixed ethnicities and races due to colonization: Indigenous Quechua, Aymara and Guarani with Spanish. This reality shapes her personal journey of learning, unlearning and healing as well as continues to inspire her work for intersectional justice and collective liberation every day. In the twenty years of her professional practice, Gery has collaborated with people, communities, and organizations from around the world. These experiences gave her the opportunity to co-create programs, build capacity and co-facilitate learning experiences that deliberately centered social justice with young and adult populations from a very broad range of race, ethnic, gender, socioeconomic and ideological identities in countries such as Argentina, Bolivia, Colombia, Costa Rica, Guatemala, Mexico, United States, Swaziland, Netherlands, Sweden, Spain and Italy.

Gery has served as the Co-Curricular Director of United World College in Costa Rica, presided over the International Association for Experiential Education, as well as co-founded the community organization Wayna Hilaña Yanapaña together with youth peers in her home country of Bolivia. She is a graduate of the United World College of India, where she received a full scholarship to participate in a two-year multicultural and international residential experience centering education for peace while living and learning with two hundred peers from eighty-two countries. She received a bachelor’s degree in Interdisciplinary Social Justice Education from Prescott College, and continues to participate in multiple community-based learning, unlearning, and practice experiences that continue to shape her ongoing journey.

Semaj Sconiers (she/hers), is a respected educator, mindfulness & wellness practitioner, and certified yoga instructor in the Madison/Dane County area. For the past seven years, she has devoted her career to advocating for students’ & staff well-being & needs within the Madison Metropolitan School District (MMSD). Through her role as a Culture & Climate Coach and active participation on the MMSD Core Mindfulness Team (MiMMSD); she leads/co-leads, develops, & delivers professional development offerings on topics such as Restorative Justice, Adult SELs/Wellness, and mindfulness to educators throughout MMSD. When she is not tending to the well-being of MMSD staff, she supports several youth-led initiatives and has been instrumental in launching a district-wide team that focuses on bringing youth & adults together to co-construct foundational practices that foster authentic youth voice, agency, & empowerment for all students.

In 2021, she turned her passion for wellness & health into a wellness company. Through Semaj’s Treasures, LLC, she has partnered with several school districts in the Dane County Area, providing educational wellness coaching & consultation services. Semaj’s Treasures, LLC mission is to offer a plethora of inclusive & accessible resources to educators & youth that will guide them in enhancing & manifesting the treasures of their well-being, in a personal, professional, and collective way.

Abha Thakkar (she, her), and I feel deeply privileged to be joining this group of compassionate and brilliant practitioners at the YWCA on this journey of supporting healing and transformation. I am the owner of Mosaic LLC, a consulting firm that specializes in organizational systems development, facilitation and coaching for collective impact initiatives, nonprofits, and local government through an antiracist lens. I have spent the last 20+ years as a community organizer, nonprofit administrator, trainer and convener of systems-level work, including grassroots leadership development, community development and engagement, collective action, restorative justice, solidarity economics, food systems resilience and policy development.

I was born in India into a family of revolutionary leaders on two continents: my paternal grandfather was a satyagrahi in Gandhiji’s swaraj movement in India and went on to be a statesman, helping shape the newly independent democracy. My maternal grandparents were community leaders who helped protect a young Julius Nyerere as the leader of the resistance and future prime minister of Tanganyika (later Tanzania). My paternal grandmother in India was illiterate, making me the first woman in my father’s lineage to learn how to read, while my maternal grandparents built the first school for girls in Dar es Salaam and educated tens of thousands of women. These histories were a part of me before I was even consciously aware of them and shaped even my earliest instincts towards a lifelong commitment to liberation and wholeness, not only as a change-maker but as a daughter, sister, partner and especially as a mother to a fierce 11-year old daughter.

Libby Tucci (she/her) has been dedicated to social justice in one form or another for most of her life. She is currently a Race & Gender Equity Practitioner at YWCA Madison, and has been with the YWCA for almost 12 years. Libby’s work (for 10 years at the beginning of her “professional” life) in the field of supporting survivors of domestic violence in varying moments of their journeys led her to become further connected and committed to the exploration of healing from the violence of white supremacy and patriarchy. She is passionate about working to dismantle white supremacy in all of its manifestations—inside of her, in the ways that she shows up in the world, and in our collective culture and structures. She believes that, not only can we all heal from the violence of white supremacy, patriarchy, and capitalism, but we can also nurture more liberated, interconnected, and compassionate ways of existing together. We can take good care of each other and build a culture in which we can celebrate the beauty of our shared humanity.