2025 EWOCC Workshop Hosts

Please find descriptions of our 2025 Workshops on our Agenda page

Melissa Charles 

Melissa Charles (she, her) is an educator-organizer and a teaching artist who writes across various genres. she has organized across various pan-afrikan spaces building movements for self-determination, bringing a lens of queer-socialist-feminism. she is the co-founder and minister of education for a TK-8 militant/liberatory community school based on nisenan land called Malcolm X Academy for Afrikan Education (@916mxa) and serves as a college and university professor in black and ethnic studies across the state of california. melissa’s work finds grounding in assata shakur’s poem, r/evolution is love, and she engages a personal-political “trial and error” practice in its message daily.

Ashley Kelly is a Black, queer, and southern, and lives in Oakland, CA. She’s been engaged in social justice work for over a decade, and is most interested in healing justice work in service of community-building. As a coach, Ashley has been focused on heart-centered leadership for many years. Ashley has focused her practice to include embodiment coaching in partnership with Southern Soul Wellness and transformative justice work in partnership with the Stronghold Collective. Ashley holds a Masters in Social Welfare from the University of California at Berkeley, and loves swimming, theme parties, and eating good food with loved ones! Learn more at southersoulwellness.com.

Crystal Bolton 

Crystal Bolton is an Oakland native, a homeschooling mother of two,  CEO/Founder of Nubian-KreativGoddess LLC and a passionate Spiritual Transformation Coach. She has answered the call of her ancestors by guiding women through profound healing journeys that foster self-awareness. Her mission is clear and impactful: breaking generational cycles, overcoming addictions, healing trauma, and empowering women to B.O.S.S. UP—Build On Self Sustainability. Crystal is committed to transforming lives and creating lasting change in her community.

Maiya Lanae Evans

Maiya Lanae Evans, MPH is a health educator, entrepreneur, and consultant. Much of her work examines the intersection between holistic health, public health, and social justice. She currently teaches courses in public health and holistic health at San Francisco State University and Skyline College, and was a 2020-2021 EPIC fellow at Stanford University. In addition to her work as a health educator, Maiya is a facilitator and consultant for the anti-racism organization, The Mosaic Project. From 2019-2023 Maiya was on a research team and was a mindfulness educator for SFBUILD, an NIH-funded organization that works to enhance diversity of the biomedical research workforce at San Francisco State University. Maiya additionally works as a consultant and lead facilitator for the anti-racism organization, The Mosaic Project, as well as a mental health consultant for the Santa Cruz Black Health Matters Initiative. Her podcast, the Hey Girl Health Show, focuses on health issues that impact women of color and the communities they live in. 

Maud Farquhar 

Maud Farquhar is a writer and poet that hails from Oakland, California. Since 2017, Maud has performed spoken word, facilitated poetry and writing workshops, and curated events around the Bay Area. In 2018, they co-founded Gold Beams, an organization that produced events to provide a stage and community for their fellow Black creatives. Maud authored a collection of poems, quotes, and micro-essays titled ‘Black Girl Flesh’, a necessary moment of reflection and uplifting of herself & Black femmes in 2020. She is currently writing a series of essays and interviews entitled, ‘on death, and life, and death,’ that works to release the taboo around death.

Selahm Beman

Selahm Skybird Beman (they/them) is an executive coach and founder of the Antioppression Reiki School, the Rage Camp liberated movement practice, and the Organizational Biomimicry Process. Their Unleashing Aliveness Liberatory Practices Deck coaches leaders and organizations to fully divest from white supremacy cultural norms and reclaim their power as living systems. Their work has been used by nonprofit leaders across the United States to institutionalize liberation in their organizations. Selahm has worked with leaders at The United States Department of Agriculture, Colorado State University, and the Johns Hopkins Center for a Livable Future. linktr.ee/selahmbeman 

Tiphereth Banks 

Tiphereth Banks aka T. Banks / Heru (April 1994 – ) I am a Multimedia Artist, Actress, Filmmaker, Muralist, Painter, Emcee, Writer & Entrepreneur, who was born & raised in the Bay Area. I graduated from Berkeley City College in the Summer of 2021, earning my Associates for Transfer in Studio Art. At an early age, I had grown a strong passion for art, music, and film. I have art that has been submitted into contests, competitions, art shows, exhibitions, & worked on mural projects between the years of 2007 up until now. While working at an art based youth training program as a junior artist, from the years 2011 – 2013, I discovered another passion of my own; to help teach & support the youth of the urban community. Spending a great amount of time at organizations like Urban Peace Movement, Green Eyed Media, United Roots Oakland, Youth Impact Hub, Youth Radio, Blackball Universe, and Beats Rhymes and Life opened my mind as well as many doors of opportunity. https://linktr.ee/reallyfebanksy/

Toshia Christal

A minister of “purpose and potential” Toshia Christal is an Oakland native. “Down to earth” and consistent, she is a realist, optimistic in her way of thinking and highly focused on addressing disparities that provide tangible solutions as it specifically pertains to those of the African diaspora. Currently teaching at Laney college, she is a graduate of Berkeley High School. With over 17 years of entrepreneurship experience she is an artist of many mediums. Toshia is a photographer, jewelry designer, licensed cosmetologist, poet, and spiritual healer to say the least. America withhold necessary information and its evident that artist and creators of the African diaspora have always been inadequately recorded and documented. This is why she has always felt the need for community connection and urban youth involvement. To create a circle of power and knowledge. Her work often represents shape/form, spirituality, self healing or politics.

Wakan Wiya

Wakan Wiya (Sacred Woman) Two Spirit Drum is our Native American drum founded and led by IndigeQueer community in the Bay Area. Our drum was gifted to us to support access to drum medicine for our IndigeQueer and Two Spirit peoples, our friends and familia, so that we might return to our Native drum traditions where healing medicine is for all. Our circles always center Two Spirit & Indigequeer TG/GNC LGBQIA+ peoples, and we ask everyone who attends to respectful of this focus.

Drumkeeper M. Zamora is a Chicana, Yoeme (Yaqui) and Tongva Two Spirit feminist educator and community organizer. Their ancestors come from the Los Angeles Basin and northern Mexico’s Sonora and Chihuahua regions. They served as ceremonial singer/drumkeeper in their Two Spirit community for over 18 years. Zamora has led several drums, and brought the Wakan Wiya Two Spirit Drum to Casa Tia Luna in 2020 where it is now the drum in-residence. Zamora has taught Ethnic Studies, Chicana/o Latina/o Studies, and Gender Studies and Feminist Theory at California State University East Bay, University of San Francisco and Stanford University.

Zuzu Gong 

Zuzu is an illustrator, instructor, and co-illustrator coordinator for Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators, San Francisco North and East chapter. Her love for reading and drawing since childhood leads her into picture book making. Through a variety of mixed media, Zuzu enjoys creating whimsical illustrations and exploring her voices as an immigrant and feminist. In her spare time, Zuzu gets her inspiration from reading, hiking and connecting with her community through Substack. You can find her at @zuzuart.substack or @zuzu.draws.creates on Instagram.

Shreya Chaudhuri

Shreya Chaudhuri is a senior at UC Berkeley, majoring in Environmental Science and Geography with minors in Global Poverty & Practice and Data Science. Passionate about Indigenous sovereignty, Traditional Ecological Knowledge, and equitable climate solutions, she runs Project Planet, a nonprofit for decolonial environmental education, including teaching the class Decolonizing Environmentalism at Berkeley that she created. As a Climate Action Fellow at the Student Environmental Resource Center and UC Office of the President, she advances equity in UC Climate Policy and leads the Decolonial Environmental Network on campus. She is also on council for the Students of Color Environmental Collective. For her senior theses, Shreya studied Indigenous ecological knowledge and climate resilience on her family’s ancestral tea farm in India. Her work integrates research, policy, education, and advocacy, uplifting Black and Brown communities globally.