Board Chairperson
Dr. Gail P. Myers, cultural anthropologist, earned her Doctorate in Anthropology from The Ohio State University, Masters in Applied Anthropology from Georgia State University and Bachelors in English from Florida State University. Dr. Myers is the founder of Farms to Grow, Inc. in Oakland, CA. She works with organizations locally, nationally, and internationally to improve the lives and future for socially disadvantaged and sustainable small farmers.
Board Treasurer
Fania E. Davis is a leading national voice on restorative justice. She is an author, educator, restorative justice practitioner and a long-time social justice activist and civil rights trial attorney with a PhD in Indigenous Knowledge. Coming of age in Birmingham, Alabama during the social ferment of the civil rights era, the murder of two close childhood friends in the 1963 Sunday School bombing crystallized within Fania a passionate commitment to social transformation. For the next decades, she was active in the Civil Rights, Black liberation, women's, prisoners', peace, anti-racial violence and anti-apartheid movements. Studying with indigenous healers, particularly in Africa, catalyzed Fania’s search for a healing justice, ultimately leading her to bring restorative justice to Oakland, California. Founding Director of Restorative Justice of Oakland Youth (RJOY), her numerous honors include the Ubuntu award for service to humanity, the Dennis Maloney Award for excellence in Youth Restorative Justice, World Trust's Healing Justice award, the Tikkun (Repair the World) award, the Ella Baker Jo Baker Award, the Bioneers’ Changemaker Award, the LaFarge Social Justice Award, and the Ebony POWER 100 award. The Los Angeles Times named her a New Civil Rights Leader of the 21st Century.
Fania's latest publication is The Little Book of Race and Restorative Justice: Black Lives, Healing and U.S. Social Transformation.
Board Member
Jay Coen Gilbert is cofounder of B Lab, the nonprofit behind the global B Corporation movement. Its vision is to change the operating system, culture, and practice of business so that all companies compete to be best for the world, and as a result we all enjoy a more shared and durable prosperity. Along with his B Lab cofounders, Jay is the recipient of the Skoll Award for Social Entrepreneurship and the McNulty Prize at the Aspen Institute, where he is as a Henry Crown Fellow. To build the broad coalition necessary for economic system change, Jay serves as executive co-chair of Imperative 21, a business-led cross-sector coalition that believes the imperative of the 21st century is to redesign our economic system so its purpose is to create value for all stakeholders. Founding coalition partners include: B Lab, The B Team, CECP (Chief Executive for Corporate Purpose), The Coalition for Inclusive Capitalism, Conscious Capitalism, and JUST Capital. In addition to serving on several boards, for more than a decade Jay has co-taught a class about the role of business in society at Westtown School, a 200 year old Quaker school. Prior to co-founding B Lab, despite having no game, Jay co-founded and sold AND 1, a $250M basketball footwear and apparel company. Prior, Jay worked for McKinsey & Co and several organizations in NYC’s public and nonprofit sectors. Jay grew up in New York City and graduated from Stanford University with a degree in East Asian Studies. Between AND 1 and B Lab, Jay enjoyed a sabbatical Down Under and in Monteverde, Costa Rica with his yogini wife Randi and two children, Dex and Ria, now 22 and 20. Jay and Randi live in Berwyn, PA.
Board Member
Natalie Baszile is the author of the novel, Queen Sugar, which is being adapted for a seventh television season by writer/director Ava DuVernay, and co-produced by Oprah Winfrey. Queen Sugar was named one of the San Francisco Chronicles’ Best Books of 2014, was long-listed for the Crooks Corner Southern Book Prize, and nominated for an NAACP Image Award. Her new non-fiction book, We Are Each Other’s Harvest: Celebrating African American Farmers, Land & Legacy, which was selected as an Amazon Editor's "Best Non-Fiction Pick," and a Wall Street Journal "Favorite Book of the Year." We Are Each Other's Harvest is a collection of essays, poems, conversations, portraits, and first-person narratives to tell the story of Black people’s connection to the land from Emancipation to the present. Natalie's non-fiction work has appeared in National Geographic, The Bitter Southerner, O, The Oprah Magazine, and a number of anthologies. She lives in San Francisco.
Board Member
Don Shaffer is a co-founder of Jubilee Partners (2018), Jubilee Gift (2019), and Jubilee College (2024), and serves on the board of Jubilee Justice. He also co-founded rePlant Capital in 2019, and currently serves as Managing Partner of the rePlant Soil Fund.
Don served as President & CEO of RSF Social Finance from 2007- 2017. RSF made nearly $300 million in direct investments, loans, and gifts to social enterprises during his ten years leading the organization, and became known as one of the most catalytic financial institutions in the world.
Don served on B Lab’s first Standards Advisory Council that created the B Corporation certification standards, and served on the board of trustees for many years. He was on the leadership team that passed “benefit corporation” legislation in the State of California in 2011. Prior to 2007, Don was Executive Director of BALLE (Business Alliance of Local Living Economies), a champion of innovative local ownership models and harnessing the power of business for ecological stewardship.
Don grew up in central New Jersey, and comes from Quaker ancestors in and around Philadelphia. He graduated from Cornell University with a BA in American History. After teaching high school to Native American students in New Mexico, Don has been a co-founder, partner, and/or management team member of San Francisco Bay Area-based social enterprises since 1994, growing a for-profit education business, a software company, and a sporting goods manufacturer.
Board Member
Konda Mason is a social entrepreneur, earth and social justice activist and Mindfulness teacher. She is the founder and President of Jubilee Justice, Inc, a nonprofit working to bring climate resilient farming and economic equity to BIPOC farmers in the rural South in order to restore and accelerate Black land ownership and stewardship and create thriving Black farming communities. Jubilee Justice also convenes deep transformational learning journeys with multi-racial participants exploring conversations at the intersection of Land, Race, Money & Spirit.
Konda is Co-Founder and founding CEO of Impact Hub Oakland (newly renamed Emerge Oakland), a beautiful co-working space that supports socially engaged entrepreneurs and changemakers. She is the Strategic Director of the Runway Project Oakland, a micro-lending fund for African American entrepreneurs, and the co-founder of the annual COCAP (Community Capital) conference in Oakland, with a focus on closing the racial wealth gap, restorative economics and a next economy just transition. Konda also leads Diversity, Equity and Inclusion trainings for organizations and businesses.
Along with her partner, actor Woody Harrleson, Konda opened the first home delivery service of organic food in the Los Angeles area and was responsible for negotiating the first organic food section in a major supermarket in the area. She is one of the co-founders and co-facilitator of The Well-Being In Business Lab - Oakland, a cross-sector initiative guiding prominent business owners, non-profit leaders and government officials to a deeper level of intention within themselves and their businesses.
An earth activist and volunteer for the Pachamama Alliance, Konda leads eco-tourism journeys to the Ecuadorian rainforest in order to wake people up to become active stewards of this vital earth ecosystem that is under threat. Konda teaches meditation and yoga, is a certified Permaculturist, and sits on the Board of Directors of Krista Tippett’s On Being, Lion’s Roar Publications, United Roots, and Spirit Rock Meditation Center. She is also a Trustee at Mills College in Oakland, CA.
Konda’s work is fueled by a passion to tirelessly work to help create a world that is environmentally regenerative, spiritually fulfilling, socially just and economically equitable. As a Buddhist practitioner and teacher, Konda understands all life on Earth as interconnected and longs for the day when humanity wakes up to this truth and builds a world based on interdependence, compassion and belonging...where all life is valued equally.