Invested Faith Fellows
rooted in faith and working for justice
Invested Faith grants go to faith-rooted individuals who are working to change unjust systems while building a sustainable financial model. These folks are doing the hard work of healing the world in non-traditional ways.
We call these amazing people our Fellows.
Interested in becoming a Invested Faith Fellow? At Invested Faith, we don’t do typical grant applications. For more info, click here.
Meet our Invested Faith Fellows, Class of 2023
Jen Owens, FORAI, St. Louis, Missouri
Forai, Inc., is a faith-based, Christian 501(c)3 organization partnering with local refugee and immigrant women to enable the realization of economic, educational, and social goals through training and peer support, and by expanding market opportunities for artisans. Located in South City, St. Louis, MO, FORAI (Friends of Refugees and Immigrants) provides home-based and in-workshop incomes for women who can’t work outside home because of a barrier such as childcare needs or caring for another family member. FORAI offers artisan made jewelry and crafts to the St. Louis community.
Josh Hayashi, Mission Management Company, Honolulu, Hawai’i:
Mission Management Company provides churches with alternative property based income options by matching them with mission-aligned partners who range from non-profits to real estate developers. MMC works with both churches in decline and thriving churches who need assistance in fully utilizing the assets of their church facility.
Mina Aria and Antajuan Adams, New Roots Urban Farm, St. Louis, MO
Mina Aria and Antajuan Adams run New Roots Urban Farm on reclaimed urban land, providing healthy local food plus urban farming resources and education for their low-income North St. Louis community. Recently devastated by fire, the farm is being revitalized and expanded, with a greenhouse and outdoor kitchen, chickens, and bees.
Marisa Prince and Calvin Lee, [GOSPEL], Boston, Massachusetts
Marisa Prince and Calvin Lee founded [GOSPEL] as an initiative to curate creative spaces and campaigns to catalyze more for the American Christian Church. [GOSPEL] innovates disruptive faith formation strategies to eradicate our country’s biggest problems.
Emanuel ‘Boo’ Milton, Cure with Love Strategies, Baton Rouge, LA
Cure with Love Strategies creates spaces of hope through social impact initiatives and consults with companies, educators, non profits, and governments on best practices for serving their communities. Through programs like C.H.I.L.L, a conflict resolution program for teens, and Spark Box, Social Emotional Learning kits for children, Milton offers hope and connection for disadvantaged youth in Baton Rouge.
Kerry Brodie, Emma’s Torch, Washington DC
Kerry Brodie founded Emma’s Torch with the mission of empowering refugees, asylees, and survivors of human trafficking through culinary education. Now opening a location in Washington DC, Emma's Torch provides refugees with in-depth culinary training as well as employability, equity, and empowerment training. Read more about Kerry Brodie here.
Kamaile Pahukoa, Ke’anae Market, Maui, Hawai’i
Ke’anae Market was created by Kamaile Pahukoa, granddaughter of one of the church members of Ke'anae Congregational Church on the island. The market offers local vendors, farmers, and artists the chance to sell their products on the heavily traveled tourist road to Hana. Vendors at the market include farmers, local artists, bakers (the area is famous for banana bread), and candy makers.
Due to the legacy of colonization, generational poverty, and racism in Hawai’i, The church is in danger of losing their property; funds from the market will help with church expenses, maintenance and restoration. Read more about Kamaile’s work here.
Dustin Mailman, Deep Time Coffee, Asheville, North Carolina
Deep Time Coffee offers spiritual community, employment and personal development for persons impacted by incarceration. Located in Asheville, NC, Deep Time is developing a social enterprise that begins with roasting coffee. Mailman has purchased a coffee roaster and has begun selling coffee through popups and word of mouth, hiring returning citizens (recently incarcerated) who face overwhelming barriers to employment. Founder Dustin Mailman is a United Methodist pastor in Asheville who offers a “ministry of loitering” - connecting with those on the streets, the unhoused, and marginalized.
Nikole Lim, Freely in Hope, Berkeley, California
Freely in Hope is dedicated to equipping survivors and advocates to lead in ending sexual violence. Currently working in Zambia and Kenya, Freely in Hope is publishing a first children's book, promoting body automony and safety, which will be offered in the US along with a faith-based safe touch and body autonomy curriculum for churches and other organizations. Founder Nikole Lim is a survivor-advocate and educator on restorative storytelling and survivor-leadership models. Read more about Nikole Lim here.
Anna Clark, Lady 280, Colorado Springs, Colorado
Lady 280 is a safe, inclusive hair salon located in Colorado Springs, CO which also offers services for victims of sexual trafficking and violence. Founder and owner Anna Clark works with victims of violence whose hair has been shaved, dyed, or burned by those abusing and exploiting them as a "stamp of ownership" and as a way to make them look less reliable to law enforcement. She often works with clients just prior to court appearances for charges against their abusers to help provide confidence and to enhance their standing in the eyes of the court.
Carmelle Beaugelin, BeauFolio Studios, Princeton, New Jersey
BeauFolio Studio is an emerging art house at the intersection of Sacred Art, humancentered design, and restorative equity. Founder Carmelle Beaugelin, a Haitian- American multidisciplinary artist, offers CreatioDivina workshops, creativity consulting, and other opportunities to create art in worship spaces, as well as Lenten and other worship resources and commissioned art.
Johnetta Roberts, Blak Koffee, Louisville, Kentucky
Located in a newly renovated building in the West End of Louisville, a red-lined, low-income area, Blak Koffee was born when Roberts, trying to schedule a business meeting, couldn’t find a coffee shop with internet access in the neighborhood. Currently, Blak Koffee is run as a coffee cart “under the stairwell,” but will open in their own space in early 2023. Read more about Johnetta and Blak Koffee here.
Alexander Clemetson, Franklin County, Ohio, Together We Compost
Together We Compost is a Black-owned compost collection and creation service that works to ensure that members of the BIPOC community are offered equal access to composting collection.TWC offers compost services for residences and businesses along with education and consulting around composting, the climate crisis, and food accessibility. Read more about Alexander here.
Robert Rueda, Global Blends Coffee Shop and Deli, Edinburg, Texas
Global Blends Coffee Shop and Deli is a “pay what you can” coffee shop and deli located on the campus of the University of Texas Rio Grande Valley, on the Texas-Mexico border. After a study found that 40% of students at the university experienced hunger on an ongoing basis, Rueda opened the coffee shop, which offers affordable or no-cost food, along with leadership training and job skills for the students employed there.
Chelsea Spyres, Wilmington, Delaware, Wilmington Kitchen Collective
The Wilmington Kitchen Collective utilizes church kitchens, which sit empty and unused most of the week, to offer culinary entrepreneurs an affordable option for high-quality commercial kitchen facilities. The kitchens are used by caterers, food truck owners, bakers and other start-ups, helping entrepreneurs overcome a major obstacle in starting their business. Through the Kitchen Collective, Spyres offers advocacy, community, and pastoral care for the entrepreneurs. Read more about Chelsea and the Wilmington Kitchen Collective here.
Collective, Sanctified Art, Black Mountain, North Carolina
Sanctified Art is an artist collective that provides progressive visual art, poetry, and other creative resources for liturgical worship. Sanctified Art helps worshiping communities integrate art and creativity into their spiritual practice using resources with inclusive and affirming theology and an expanded imagination around the divine image. Creative team members include Rev. Lauren Wright Pittman, Rev. Anna Strickland, Rev. Lisle Gwynn Garrity, Hannah Garrity, and Rev. Sarah A. Speed. Read more about A Sanctified Art here.
Meet our Invested Faith Fellows, Class of 2021 and 2022
Tiffany Terrell, Albany, Georgia, A Better Way Grocers
Tiffany Terrell created the Mobile Grocery Store concept for A Better Way Grocers in 2017 after recognizing the deep need of local residents in surrounding food deserts. The mission of A Better Way Grocers is to drive nutritious food into communities struggling with food access issues across southwest Georgia. Using a retro-fitted school bus as a one-aisle grocery store, Terrell and her team offer reasonably priced, healthy and nutritious food to local communities, along with health education to address chronic food-related illnesses such as diabetes, high blood pressure and high cholesterol. Read more about Tiffany Terrell and A Better Way Grocers here.
Dr. Kit Evans-Ford, Davenport, Iowa, Argrow’s House
Dr. Kit Evans-Ford is a certified spiritual director, professor, and the founder of Argrow’s House of Healing and Hope in Davenport, Iowa. Argrow’s House is a safe space where free services are offered daily for women healing from violence in the greater Quad Cities area. Named after Dr. Evans-Ford's mother who was a survivor of domestic violence, this successful social enterprise provides women the opportunity to earn a living wage by creating bath and body products in a safe space that celebrates who they are. Read more about Dr. Kit Evans-Ford here.
Olatunji Oboi Reed, Equiticity, Chicago, Illinois
Olantunji Oboi Reed is the President & CEO, of Equiticity, a racial equity movement. The Freedom & Culture Bicycle Cooperative is Equiticity's vision for manufacturing bicycles in the North Lawndale neighborhood on the Westside of Chicago. Explicitly developed to remove the generational cycle of poverty, create living wage jobs, provide transferable and career oriented job skills to young adults, reduce hyper-local violence, and improve health and transportation related outcomes, all focused at the hyper-local, neighborhood level, the cooperative will manufacture beautifully designed, well built, and premium priced bicycles in North Lawndale. Young adults from the neighborhood will be worker-owners of the cooperative and will share collectively in the profits.
Stephanie Mayer, New York, NY, NARY
Stephanie Mayer is the Chief Everything Officer at NARY, a clothing line dedicated to ethical and sustainable practices and to the support of marginalized workers. NARY was founded by three sisters in May of 2020. Named after their Cambodian mother, Phannary, the company was inspired by their mother's amazing story of survival of the Khmer Rouge, the Cambodian genocide that killed almost two million people, that occurred in the late seventies in Cambodia. NARY started as a way to give back to the struggling country where their mother was born and to support the unique culture that helped shaped these three sisters and their Khmer-American identity. Utilizing the fashion education each sister attained through college and working in San Francisco and New York City, NARY aims to produce beautiful, ethical and sustainable products.
Drew Nagy, Richmond, Virginia, Living Water Community Center
Drew Nagy is the executive director of Living Water Community Center in Richmond, Virginia. Living Water is an attempt to reimagine what a faith community looks like and how it engages with the local ecosystem. The goal is to create a community committed to the flourishing of all of life on earth. To accomplish this, Living Water focuses on creating space for contemplative practices that support the physical and spiritual well-being of individuals, community and the earth. Living Water is a community center, bee sanctuary, and monastery. Through contemplative practices such as yoga, meditation, mindful beekeeping and urban farming, the hope of Living Water is to create a more sustainable and healthy community, both for the individual and the entire earth community. Read more about Drew Nagy and Living Water here.
Naz Georgas, New York, New York: Cordoba House Sunday School.
Naz Ahmed Georgas pioneered the establishment of the Cordoba House Sunday School, an award winning weekend education program in NYC. The program was launched to meet the needs of growing American Muslim families seeking a Sunday school education that is both authentically Islamic and relevant to contemporary American life. The program’s mission is to build a uniquely inclusive and nurturing learning environment that promotes the notion that our children can be both proudly Muslim and proudly American. Founded in 2017 in collaboration with educators from Muslim and interfaith institutions, including the Brick Presbyterian Church in NYC, the Cordoba House Sunday School has already received awards for community empowerment and service to the education of children and youth. Read more about Naz Georges here.
Biff Chaplow, Denver, CO: EEqual
Biff Chaplow is a parent, artist, and activist for economic justice. They currently serve as the Executive Director for EEqual, a youth-led nonprofit working to ensure homeless youth have equal access to higher education. EEqual believes housing is a human right, education is a human right, and intergenerational leadership is key to addressing these issues. EEqual takes a two-pronged approach to meeting the needs of students, providing direct resources to students experiencing homelessness as well as breaking the stigma surrounding student homelessness by opening chapters across the country and developing curriculum and education materials to meet the challenge of youth homelessness. Read more about Biff Chaplow here.
Heather McDuffee and Pryncess Favors, Colorado Springs, CO: Co-Owners, Creations @ The Edge.
Creations @ The Edge is a makers boutique that features handmade products by women. This boutique helps fund women who have a passion for their craft and want to turn a side hustle into a small business. Founded during the pandemic to empower women who left or were forced out of the workforce, often due to child care or elder care issues, Creations @ The Edge is helping women close the wage gap and gain greater purpose and financial freedom. Read more about Heather and Pryncess.
Eugene Kim, Burlington, Massachusetts: New Wine Collective
Rev. Eugene Kim is the founder and director of New Wine Collective, a non-profit organization with a mission to help heal the world through love and connection by making spiritual community accessible to all. New Wine is creating an innovative online tool that helps facilitate face-to-face spiritual conversations and community. This app/online platform would empower people to co-create their own spiritual community wherever they are, on their own terms and It would support a fundamentally different approach to "church" that lowers barriers, flattens hierarchies, and allows every voice to be heard. Read more about Eugene Kim here.
Andre G. Brown, Los Angeles, CA: A Soul Cleansing Documentary In a full-length documentary, filmmaker Andre Brown interviews lgbtq folk who have navigated the intersection of faith, sex, and sexuality after finding themselves on the margins of church.
A Soul Cleansing Documentary highlights the sins of hypocrisy that have had a long-standing reputation in some African American denominational churches, subsequently creating painful experiences for a large fraction of the Black queer and trans community. The documentary features interviews from lgbtq folk who have either left or remained in the church. A Soul Cleansing endeavors to bring justice, healing and reconciliation to the black church and all its members. Read more about Andre here.
Managerrie Winston, Houston, TX: The KIT Project Teacher Managerrie Winston, founder of the KIT Project, noticed a lack of diversity and cultural relevance in Social Emotional Learning (SEL) curriculum offered to students. The KIT (Keep It Together) Project offers SEL curriculum centered on Black and Brown experiences along with training and professional development for educators.
The vision of the KIT Project is to foster and ensure that underprivileged youth develop social emotional wellness while providing communities and schools with a diverse curriculum centered on Black and Brown experiences and resources. The "Be YourSELf" Program offers culturally relevant yoga, meditation and mindfulness events for teens. Read more about Managerrie Winston here.
Dorian Hollingsworth, Jr, Virginia Beach, VA: The Teen Care Network Dorian Hollingsworth Jr. is the CEO/Founder and Creative Director of the Teen Care Network whose goal is to support teens by connecting them with free mental health resources while working to break the stigma around mental health treatment. The Teen Care Network bridges the gap between care and community by providing the most necessary and most current programming efforts to Teens and the community in the hope of connecting communities to bring mental health center stage. Read more about Dorian Hollingsworth here.
Lizzy Case, San Diego, CA: Arrayed. Lizzy Case is the founder of Arrayed, a liberative people-first, planet-focused Christian apparel brand that aims to align the call for justice and wholistic flourishing found in Jesus’ life with the messages on and production of Christian t-shirts.
Partnered with TELAstory Collective, a Manila-based, worker-led community of designers, artisans, and seamstresses, Arrayed invests in its own supply chain to work towards equitable and sustainable long-term partnerships. The vision of Arrayed is to produce socially and environmentally conscious apparel while investing in organizations that further liberation of women and marginalized communities. Read more about Case here.
Safronia Perry, Carlisle, Pennsylvania. Black Economic Growth Alliance. Safronia Perry established the Black Economic Growth Alliance (BEGA) to meet the needs of Black business owners in Carlisle and central Pennsylvania. BEGA will offer networking and a variety of supports to Black-owned businesses to help these businesses become autonomous, self-sustaining, and economically successful. Read more about Safronia Perry here.
Alisha L. Gordon, Harlem, New York: The Current Project Rev. Alisha L. Gordon is a faith leader, preacher, and educator whose work intersects faith, culture, and politics. Gordon is the founder of The Current Project in Harlem, NYC, an advocacy-centered mission-driven organization focused on supporting the well-being of Black single mothers. TCP supports the transformation of women by connecting mothers to the resources needed to attain and maintain economic stability, helping them launch careers or projects that sustain their families and help them build security. Read more about Alisha Gordon here.
Ronnie Farmer, Marion, Indiana The I Have a Dream Preschool Academy Rev. Ronnie Farmer is the managing director of the I Have a Dream Preschool in Marion, Indiana which champions racial reconciliation among children. The I Have a Dream Academy is a language immersion early childhood education program, whose mission is to cultivate a love for self, a love for God, and a love for one’s neighbor within the hearts of children. The academy employs native Spanish speakers and encourages racial justice, understanding, and global citizenry through age-appropriate programs. Read more about Ronnie Farmer here.
Leah Lonsbury, Atlanta, Georgia; Just Bakery of Atlanta. Rev. Leah Lonsbury is the Executive Director and Founder of Just Bakery of Atlanta, a nonprofit organization that trains, certifies, and employs resettled refugees to make and sell pastries, bread, and other baked goods. Just Bakery provides job training and a living wage to new Americans to create a more diverse, inclusive, and compassionate community. Founded in 2017, Just Bakery creates opportunities for refugee partners to build economic security as they recreate home in the Atlanta area. Read more about Leah here.
Coté Soerens, Chicago, Illinois: Coté Doodles
Update: Coté Soerens is the founder ofCoté Doodleswhere she uses visuals to inspire action. As a designer in social innovation and organizational psychologist, Coté brings decades of experience in place-making, community development, and social entrepreneurship to her work.
Coté Soerens was named an Invested Faith Fellow after helping to found the Resistencia Coffee shop in the South Park neighborhood of Seattle, Washington. Born in Chile, she came to the US at 25 and has since started a number of initiatives in both the private and non-profit sectors. She now lives in Chicago with her family.
Alysia Harris, Corsicana, Texas: Meeting House Revival Alysia Nicole Harris, Ph.D. is a Pushcart-nominated performance poet whose work is at the intersection of church and community building. The mission of the Meeting House Revival is to preserve Black history by restoring historical Black churches. Her first project, the East Side Chapel Revival Project in Corsicana, Texas, aims to restore and revive a historically significant Black church built in 1905 and create space for local artists to offer their work. Read more here.
My’Kal Lofton, Charlottesville, Virginia. Green Wall Street My’Kal Lofton is the founder of Green Wall Street, a collective working to strengthen social support connections across marginalized communities and to further understanding of ecological relationships. GWS began during the racial events in Charlottesville in August of 2017 and creates space and support for economic and social innovation both in Charlottesville and in partner cities. Read more about My’Kal Lofton here.
Simone Jenkins, Nashville, Tennessee. Lipstick Cult Simone Jenkins is an entrepreneur who started Lipstick Cult, a Black-owned lipstick brand that highlights global culture. Jenkins, who identifies as a person with a disability, is breaking through barriers as a business owner of color and plans to create programs for women with disabilities. Her Pink Door Project targeted breast cancer awareness, mammogram screenings, and survivor support. Read more about Simone Jenkins here.
Alisha Madden, Indianapolis, Indiana: Spolks. Alisha Madden is the project manager for Spolks Bike Shop in the Riverside neighborhood of Indianapolis, Indiana. Spolks was created by neighbors after a plea for an organization to address crime prevention in the area. Local youth are trained as bike mechanics, paid a fair wage, and are offered a safe, supportive space in a neighborhood where rates of crime and incarceration are high. Bikes are offered for sale or given to those needing transportation in exchange for work hours at the shop.
Interested in Becoming an Invested Faith Fellow?
For more information about Invested Faith criteria and the selection process, click here.
Nelson Crabbe and Nikola Rodriguez, ‘Awa Bird Nursery, Hilo, Hawai’i
‘Awa Bird Nursery is a small organic nursery committed to growing ancestral Hawaiian crops, including kalo (taro), ulu (breadfruit), and ‘awa (kava). These sister plants often grown together, are called '“canoe plants" because they were so important to the ancestors that they made it onto the canoes. Local availability of these crops will increase food security for native Hawaiians, offering locals more affordable, healthy options for food and beverages.