Dr. Sikivu Hutchinson
Author, educator, playwright and founder of Black Skeptics Group and Black Skeptics Los Angeles. She is the founder of the Women’s Leadership Project (WLP), a high school black feminist of color mentoring program in South Los Angeles. Sikivu is the author of Imagining Transit: Race, Gender, and Transportation Politics in Los Angeles, Moral Combat: Black Atheists, Gender Politics, and the Values Wars, Godless Americana: Race and Religious Rebels and Humanists in the Hood: Unapologetically Black, Feminist, and Heretical. Sikivu was also a contributing editor for The Feminist Wire. Her novel, White Nights, Black Paradise, on Black women, Peoples Temple and the Jonestown massacre was published in 2015 and the play adaptation was mounted in 2018 and 2020 at the Hudson Theatre and San Francisco’s Museum of the African Diaspora through Third Rail Alive Productions.
Toni Bell
A documentary film researcher, screenwriter and book editor. Her primary focus is mental health issues within the African-American community, related to long-term physical and sexual abuse within families from a non-religious perspective. Toni has an M.F.A. in creative writing and a Master’s degree in MAT-TESOL. Toni also writes for the blog, “The Body is Not an Apology”.
Genethia Hudley Hayes
Genethia Hudley Hayes has served as an LAUSD school board member, director of L.A.’s Southern Christian Leadership Council and a policy deputy for former L.A. County Board Supervisor Sheila Kuehl.
Ashantee Polk
Ashantee Polk is 20 years old and a third year college/ first time student Antioch University. She is a Class of 2020 graduate of King/Drew Magnet High School and an alum of the Women’s Leadership Project. After receiving her Bachelor’s in Psychology, she plans to obtain her Master’s and Doctorate in Psychology as well. Ashantee is heavily involved in social justice, youth advocacy, and mentoring in her local community.