It's the last episode of our first season. To celebrate, we're ending with a conversation between host Kaytura Felix and producer Camara Aaron, who outside this podcast are mother and daughter. In this episode, we explore how our relationship has evolved over time from parent and child to collaborators and how we navigate injustice when it appears. We end with a look to our second season - stay tuned!

As we approach the end of our first season, we’re bringing you two special guests, Trish Adobea Tchume and Ericka Stallings. In this episode, host Kaytura Felix explores how the bond between these real-life friends elevates their lives and their work and how they redefine leadership to put justice at its center.

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More about Trish Adobea Tchume

Trish Adobea Tchume is a first generation Ghanaian-American and serves as Senior Director of Leadership Research and Practice for the Robert Sterling Clark Foundation. In this role, Trish collaborates with other organizations to explore, define, and support leadership and organizational approaches that prefigure a world where all of us can thrive. She is a Brooklynite, a proud auntie, a beach stan, and devotes her volunteer time to cool organizations like the Central Brooklyn Food Coop and to the boards of Change Elemental and the New York Foundation.

More about Ericka Stallings

Ericka Stallings is the Co-Executive Director of the Leadership Learning Community (LLC). LLC is a national organization and network of changemakers, bringing to the center leaders of color and those from historically excluded communities. At LLC she holds spaces for innovations, practices, and systems that are grounded in collective liberation.

On this episode of Griotte's Beat, we explore why empathy is important in research and science with social epidiemologist Zinzi Bailey. We also get into how she sustains her focus on justice and how immigrant identity shapes her anti-colonial spirit. Follow us on Instagram and Twitter @Griottesbeat and like us on Facebook to hear about new episodes as they drop.

More about Zinzi Bailey

Zinzi Bailey, ScD, MSPH is a researcher who is passionate about achieving health equity through the elimination of structural, organizational, and social inequities guided by community mobilization. She sees data and research as tools for achieving systemic change – not just for scientists, but also for community members, organizations, and movements. Being born in Jamaica and growing up in Miami, FL has contributed to her transnational, anti-colonial spirit.

Griotte’s Beat continues exploring Black histories, this week with artist Safiyah Cheatam. Safiyah and host Kaytura discuss how her work draws Black Muslim histories and Afrofuturism to address contemporary injustice.

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More about Safiyah Cheateam

Baltimore-based conceptual and social practice artist, Safiyah Cheatam is best known for her interactive photo installations portraying the duality of Black Muslim experiences using augmented reality and her co-produced, awards-nominated Afrofuturist narrative podcast OBSIDIAN featured in The Washington Post. Inspired by W.E.B. Du Bois’ data visualizations and resonating with Martine Syms’ The Mundane Afrofuturist Manifesto (2013), Safiyah has sought to illuminate real-life stories of Black uplift in the U.S. to show Afrofuturism’s presence in daily life. She has exhibited artworks nationally and has sustained relationships with several local institutions where she’s served as a teaching artist, collaborator, researcher, and advisor.

We continue our celebration of dark-skinned women with this week’s guest, Beverly Jenkins, whose historical romance novels honor Black women of all hues. Kaytura and Beverly explore how Beverly uses romance to fill gaps in the telling of Black history and how she showcases dark-skinned women throughout her work.

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More about Beverly Jenkins

Beverly Jenkins is an American author, who writes historical and contemporary romance novels that focus on 19th century African-American life. Her historical romances are set during a period of African-American history that she believes is often overlooked. She received the 2017 Lifetime Achievement Award in Romance Fiction and she has been nominated for the NAACP Image Award in Fiction. She lives in southeast Michigan.

Griotte’s Beat is back! We missed you. In this week’s episode, we spoke to Dara Sontan about using her life experiences and artistic expression to advocate for dark-skinned Black women and femmes on social platforms. Together, Kaytura and Dara explore their relationship with being dark-skinned and their sense of beauty. (A transcript will be coming for this episode.)

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More about Dara Sontan

Dara is a Nigerian-American in her 20s using her life experiences and artistic expression to advocate for dark-skinned Black women and femmes on social platforms. She is also a premed student and feels called to help others through every passion she pursues. Dara's platform For Mahogany Girls was recently highlighted by BET & Walmart during the 2022 BET Awards.

Following our conversation with Gwendolyn, we wanted a parent’s perspective. In this episode of Griotte’s Beat, we’ll be speaking to Auntieclare Rezin, a mother and educator. We go deeper into how parenting can be just and how children can be cared for in an unjust world. [CW: This episode has mentions of the murder of George Floyd.]

Find a transcript for our episode here and a full list of guests here.

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More About Auntieclare Rezin

Auntieclare Rezin is a Mother, an Educator and a Mindfulness practitioner. She believes that every human is a mine rich in gems of inestimable value. She is focused on helping individuals in underserved communities and children in particular unlock their hidden potential through mindfulness.

This week, we're picking up a question that was lingering from our conversation with Layli: how do we know when we’re being unjust to children? In today’s episode, we’ll be speaking to Gwendolyn Wallace, a children’s book author, about how injustice is baked into the way we see and engage children, and how we can learn to be more just in our interactions with them.

Find a transcript for our episode here and a full list of guests here.

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More About Gwendolyn

Gwendolyn Wallace graduated from Yale University in 2021 with a degree in the history of science and medicine, and is currently studying to receive her MA in Public History from University College London. She is a writer of both creative nonfiction and children’s literature, with two forthcoming picture books: "The Light She Feels Inside" from Sourcebooks and "Joy Takes Root" from PenguinRandomhouse.