Entrepreneur / Community Leader of
Eritrean-American Community Center of GA
Yonas Abraha is a respected community leader, entrepreneur, and advocate for Eritrean unity in Georgia. Born in Eritrea and raised through hardship, he immigrated to the United States as a teenager, carrying a deep commitment to service, discipline, and faith. Over three decades, Yonas has built a life rooted in resilience, business leadership, and community empowerment. He is a long-time small-business owner and manages multiple ventures, including Oakland City Food Mart. From 2022 to 2025, he served as Chairman of the Eritrean-American Community Center of Georgia, where he strengthened governance, expanded programs, and fostered a culture of unity, tolerance, and youth development.
Poet, Author & Educator at
Stanford University
Aracelis Girmay is the author of four full-length poetry collections including the recently published GREEN OF ALL HEADS. She is also the editor of the anthology So We Can Know: Writers of Color on Pregnancy, Loss, Abortion, and Birth as well as How to Carry Water: Selected Poems of Lucille Clifton. Named a finalist for the Neustadt International Prize for Literature (2018), and a recipient of the Academy of American Poets Fellowship (2025) and the Whiting Award (2015). girmay is on the editorial board of the African Poetry Book Fund and teaches at Stanford University.
Jeweler / Educator
Jeweler and educator Sewit Sium has been crafting living history in the form of jewelry all of her life. Her work explores the animacy of objects — when her pieces are worn, they are activated, their ongoing story and felt sense of meaning brought to life.
Writer / Novelist
Bsrat Mezghebe is a writer from Washington, D.C. Her debut novel, I Hope You Find What You’re Looking For, released by Liveright in February 2026, delves into the secret lives of three women on the eve of Eritrean independence. Her essays about identity and migration have appeared in Guernica, The Paris Review, and the anthology Well-Read Black Girl. Bsrat received an MFA in Creative Writing from New York University and the Harper-Wood Creative Writing and Travel Award from Cambridge University.
Cultural Archivist / Musician
Tezez Tapes
Tezez Tapes is a project dedicated to preserving and sharing Eritrean music that has shaped generations, with a particular focus on cassette tapes from the 1980s and 1990s. By carefully digitizing tapes and sharing this music online, Tezez Tapes bridges the gap between analog listening and today’s digital world, connecting older generations with younger ones across the diaspora.
Director
The African Language House
Daniel launched African Language House in 2026, an online language learning platform dedicated to African languages. ALH partners with educators across the African continent to develop a standardized curriculum for learning African languages and making those languages more globally accessible. To date, ALH has four languages on its platform: Tigrinya, Amharic, Swahili, and Hausa as well as a fifth course on learning to read and write the Ge’ez script.
Daniel currently works as a Senior Data Scientist with 9 years experience working for major companies such as Boeing, Johnsonn & Johnson, and Kenvue. He holds two Master’s degrees one in International Affairs and another in Statistics.
Founder/Representative
Habesha Health
Almaz Nigusse Bland is the founder of Habesha Health and ANB Counseling Services, where she provides compassionate, culturally attuned mental health care for adults across California. She specializes in sleep and relationship challenges, offering practical, evidence-based support that helps clients build healthier, more grounded lives.
As a speaker, Almaz brings warmth, clarity, and a community-centered approach to conversations about mental wellness. Through Habesha Health, she is committed to increasing access to culturally relevant health education for Habesha communities across the diaspora by identifying community needs and developing tailored, accessible resources.
Journalist / Storyteller
Azieb is a senior creative leader, arts strategist, and writer, passionate about the power of culture to connect people, unlock hidden stories, and spark radical change. From 2019 to 2025, she led the Bernie Grant Arts Centre in London, UK, helping it become a nationally recognised home for bold, Black-led creativity. During her tenure, she secured Arts Council England National Portfolio status for the first time in BGAC’s history, founded the Tottenham Literature Festival and BGAC Windrush Festival, and developed exciting partnerships with brilliant organisations including Talawa, Dance Umbrella, LIFT, Greater London Authority, National Youth Theatre, Punchdrunk, and major funders such as Paul Hamlyn Foundation, Freelands Foundation, and Barings Foundation.
Prior to BGAC, Azieb was Senior Programmer for Contemporary Culture at Southbank Centre, London, where she led Africa Utopia, an annual festival celebrating African and diaspora arts and ideas.
She also played a key role in expanding the Women of the World festival (WOW), including its international editions in Somaliland, Nigeria, and Baltimore, USA. She has served as a trustee of LIFT, an Artistic Advisor to Manchester International Festival, a patron of the SI Leeds Prize, a member of the Mayor of London’s Black Cultural Events Advisory Group and co-curated the International Read My World festival in Amsterdam (2023).
Azieb began her career as a journalist, writing for The Guardian for over a decade and contributing to The Times, Stylist, and Vogue UK. She is the editor of Fashion Cities Africa and the author of My Fathers’ Daughter — reprinted in 2022 as part of Bernardine Evaristo and Penguin’s Black Britain Writing Back series. She believes that truly ambitious work must be inclusive and collaborative. Her specialist areas include creative ambition, vision, artistic strategy, artistic development, racial and gender equity within the arts, and embedding diverse practices.
Reporter
Minnesota Public Radio (MPR)
Feven Gerezgiher is an award-winning journalist based in Minneapolis. She works as a reporter and producer at Minnesota Public Radio, where she creates stories for radio, digital and video, with a focus on serving younger audiences.
Feven’s journalism career began with a high school journalism camp. A decade later, she joined the “Racial Reckoning: Arc of Justice” radio project covering police trials and community reactions following the murder of George Floyd.
She has a background in political campaigns and community engagement. Between 2018 to 2019, she spent 10 months volunteering, studying Tigrinya and drinking boon in Eritrea.
Prior to MPR News, Feven freelanced for the Minnesota Spokesman-Recorder, Minnesota Native News and other local and national outlets.
Actress / Theatre Artist
Atlantic Theater Company / NYU
Banna Desta (She/they) is an Eritrean and Ethiopian-American writer for the stage and screen who crafts stories about and for the African diaspora. She is the author of The Abyssinians (Audible); Midnight in Abyssinia (La MaMa’s CultureHub); Red Taxi; Bygone Fruit which premiered at the 2024 Women in Theater Festival and Pining which premiered at Rattlestick Theater and was published in Samuel French in 2019. Her work for the stage has been supported and workshopped by Atlantic Theater Company, The Apollo Theater, National Black Theatre, The New Group and the Dramatists Guild Foundation. She has held residencies at SPACE on Ryder Farm, Art Omi, Marble House Project and Tofte Lake Center. She was a staff writer for the BET+ series First Wives Club (Netflix Top Ten). She has assisted multiple television series in both the writers room and on set, including FOX’s Filthy Rich, NBC’s This Is Us, and AMAZON’s Harlem. She has held fellowships with Sun Valley Writers Conference, Marcie Bloom Fellowship in Film and The Gotham Film and Media Institute. She is a writing professor and arts educator at NYU, Rehabilitation through the Arts and Harlem Children’s Zone.
