Building Equity in Longevity

Tawanna A. Black is a nationally recognized thought leader known for influencing, inspiring, and equipping cross-sector leaders to transform a personal conviction for equality into actions that produce equitable and thriving communities. For more than 20 years, Tawanna has led multi-sector collaboratives, triple bottom line diversity and inclusion strategy development, and economic revitalization organizations in Kansas, Iowa, Nebraska, and Minnesota.

In 2017, Tawanna launched the Center for Economic Inclusion, the nation’s first organization dedicated exclusively to creating inclusive regional economies by equipping public and private sector employers to dismantle institutional racism and build shared accountability for inclusive economic growth.

As Founder and Chief Executive Officer, Tawanna leads a team of people who offer ground-breaking consulting products and services to move businesses and local and regional governments from diversity and inclusion programs to triple bottom line results that are good for employees, employers, and communities; foster shared accountability for regional inclusive growth; change the narrative about the economic imperative and value of closing racial wealth gaps.

Laura L. Carstensen is Professor of Psychology and the Fairleigh S. Dickinson Jr. Professor in Public Policy at Stanford University where she serves as founding director of the Stanford Center on Longevity. Her research has been supported continuously by the National Institute on Aging for more than 25 years and she is currently supported through a prestigious MERIT Award. In 2011, she authored the book, A Long Bright Future: Happiness, Health, and Financial Security in an Age of Increased Longevity. Dr. Carstensen has served on the National Advisory Council on Aging and the MacArthur Foundation’s Research Network on an Aging Society. She received a BS from the University of Rochester and PhD in clinical psychology from West Virginia University.

Abigail E. Disney is a filmmaker, philanthropist, activist, and podcaster. She is a Founder of the Daphne Foundation, whose mission is to invest in solutions that result in a more equitable, fair, and peaceful New York City. She is also president and co-founder of the documentary production company Fork Films, where she produced the groundbreaking Pray the Devil Back to Hell, co-created the subsequent PBS series Women, War & Peace, and launched a podcast entitled, “All Ears with Abigail Disney.” Abigail is also the Chair and CoFounder of Level Forward, a new breed storytelling company focused on systemic change through creative excellence.

Cheryl L. Dorsey is a trailblazer in the social entrepreneurship movement and the president of Echoing Green, a global nonprofit that supports emerging social entrepreneurs and invests deeply in their ideas and leadership. Before joining Echoing Green in 2002, Cheryl received an Echoing Green Fellowship in 1992 to help launch The Family Van, a community-based mobile health unit, leveraging her medical and public policy training to address racial health disparities in Boston.

As a leader in the social entrepreneurship movement, Cheryl believes that social innovation is key to driving social change in a world in which structural inequities are so entrenched— and that they require an equally powerful approach to dismantle the status quo. Here, she shares her thoughts on the role entrepreneurship plays in social change and how this moment could allow us to pivot in profound ways.

Helene D. Gayle is the president and CEO of The Chicago Community Trust, one of the nation’s oldest and largest community foundations. Under her leadership, the Trust has adopted a new strategic focus on closing the racial and ethnic wealth gap in the Chicago region. For almost a decade, she was president and CEO of CARE, a leading international humanitarian organization. An expert on global development, humanitarian and health issues, Dr. Gayle spent 20 years with the Centers for Disease Control. She also worked at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and launched the McKinsey Social Initiative (now McKinsey.org), a nonprofit building partnerships for social impact. Named one of Forbes’ “100 Most Powerful Women” and one of NonProfit Times’ “Power and Influence Top 50,” she has authored numerous articles on global and domestic public health issues, poverty alleviation, gender equality and social justice.

Dr. Rishi Manchanda is a physician, author, and healthcare leader who has spent his career developing novel strategies to improve health equity in marginalized communities. In his 2013 TEDbook, The Upstream Doctors, he introduced a new model of healthcare workers who improve care by addressing social and structural drivers of health equity, including patients’ social needs, like food, financial and housing insecurity. The book has become recommended reading in medical schools and universities across the world.

Dr. Manchanda is CEO of HealthBegins, a mission-driven firm that provides healthcare and community partners with tools to improve care and the social and structural factors that make people sick in the first place. Their work centers around their moonshot goal to train 25,000 “upstreamists” by the end of next year to drive radical transformation in health equity.

Wes Moore lives in Baltimore, Maryland, and from 2017 to 2021 was the Chief Executive Officer of the Robin Hood Foundation, one of the largest anti-poverty forces in the nation. He is a combat veteran, anti-poverty advocate, small business owner and bestselling author.

Wes was raised by a single mom in Maryland and New York. Despite childhood challenges, he graduated Phi Theta Kappa from Valley Forge Military College in 1998 and Phi Beta Kappa from Johns Hopkins University in 2001. He earned an MLitt in International Relations from Oxford University as a Rhodes Scholar in 2004. Wes then served as a captain and paratrooper with the U.S. Army’s 82nd Airborne, including a combat deployment to Afghanistan. He later served as a White House Fellow to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice.

Before becoming CEO at the Robin Hood Foundation, Wes was the founder and CEO at BridgeEdU, an innovative tech platform based in Baltimore addressing the college completion and job placement crisis by reinventing freshman year for underserved students. BridgeEdU was acquired by Edquity, a Brooklyn-based student financial success and emergency aid firm, in June 2019.

Liz Ogbu is a designer, urbanist, and spatial justice activist. She is an expert on engaging and transforming unjust urban environments. Her multidisciplinary design and innovation practice, Studio O, operates at the intersection of racial and spatial justice. She collaborates with and in communities in need to leverage design to catalyze sustained social impact.

From designing shelters for immigrant day laborers in the U.S. and a water and health social enterprise for low-income Kenyans to developing a Social Impact Protocol for housing with university researchers and the Local Initiatives Support Corporation (LISC), Liz has a long history of working on and advocating for issues of spatial and racial justice. Her work blends community-centered research methodologies, dynamic and creative forms of engagement and prototyping, spatial just architecture and planning principles, and tools to build participatory power and community-centered systems.

Brent Orrell is a resident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), where he works on job training, workforce development, and criminal justice reform. Specifically, his research focuses on expanding opportunity for all Americans through improved work readiness and job training, and improving the performance of the criminal justice system through rehabilitation and prisoner reentry programs. Before joining AEI, Mr. Orrell worked in the executive and legislative branches of the US government for over 20 years. He was nominated by President George W. Bush to lead the Employment and Training Administration of the US Department of Labor, and he served as deputy assistant secretary for policy at the Administration for Children and Families at the US Department of Health and Human Services.

James Johnson-Piett is the founding Principal and CEO of Urbane Development. He is an evangelist for a new kind of community development that emphasizes community anchor businesses and institutions as agents of change - solving local problems and building bridges towards the equitable distribution of wealth and power.

As an expert in building vibrant, sustainable, and thriving communities—James calls us to see the power in local connections to create more equitable wealth and lifespans for all.

Ari ben Zion Wallach is a futurist and social systems strategist. He is the founder and Executive Director of Longpath Labs, an initiative focused on bringing longterm thinking and coordinated behavior to the individual, organizational, and societal realms in order to ensure humanity flourishes on an ecologically thriving planet Earth for centuries to come. Wallach was also the founder and CEO of Synthesis Corp., a New York-based strategic innovation consultancy whose clients included CNN, Volkswagen Global, The UN Refugee Agency and the US State Department. Wallach was the co-founder of the 2008 presidential initiative “The Great Schlep with Sarah Silverman” and hosted Fast Company magazine’s Fast Company Futures with Ari Wallach. He is adjunct associate professor at Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs, lecturing on innovation, AI and the futures of governance and public policy.

Shelley Zalis is the CEO of The Female Quotient and an internationally recognized thought leader for advancing equality in the workplace. Through her organization, Zalis is advancing gender equality across industries and career levels. A firm believer in giving back with generosity, her legacy is to tap into the power of collaboration to transform workplace culture so that all people feel like they belong. Zalis authors a Forbes column that provides advice for women in the “messy middle” of middle management, who are looking to rise into leadership positions. She is co-founder of #SeeHer, a movement led by the Association of National Advertisers (ANA) to increase the accurate portrayal of women and girls in advertising and media. She is on the board of directors for MAKERS.

As an entrepreneur and thought leader whose focus has been on elevating more competent female leaders to the C-suite, Shelley looks at equity through a gender lens across all intersections of race, religion, and age.