The weekend in upon us and so is the inaugural noirpress Town Hall!
Town Halls will be monthly conversations around relevant topics for the Black community.
The first one will focus on Bridging the Gap: Healing intra-racial relations between Africans, Black Americans, Black Caribbean people and ALL Black people.
Learn more about our incredible guests below:
Lanice C. Williams is the Advocacy & Partnerships Manager at Friends of the Global Fight Against AIDS, TB, and Malaria. In this role, she coordinates Friends’ partnerships with business, faith-based, youth, and other civil society communities in united advocacy for U.S. leadership fighting the HIV, TB, and malaria epidemics through the Global Fund and bilateral programs. She also contributes to Friends’ research and writing on the Global Fund, ending the epidemics, global health security, and women and girls.
Prior to joining Friends, she served as a 2016-2017 Global Health Corps fellow at Global Health Council. Previously, she was a Program Specialist with the Government of the District of Columbia. She has also worked on programs, research, and policy initiatives focused on gender-based violence, sexual and reproductive health, and disease prevention in the U.S, Latin America and the Caribbean. She is a proud Jamaican-American.
Lanice earned a B.S. in Biology and M.S. in Health Education at Howard University, where she serves as an adjunct lecturer.
Demar F. Lewis IV was born in Los Angeles, CA and was raised in Denver, CO. He received his BA from the University of St. Thomas’ Opus College of Business and MPP from the University of Michigan’s Gerald R. Ford School of Public Policy. Professionally, Demar has 7+ years of experience spanning the private and nonprofit sectors in corporate finance, process improvement consulting, project management, partnership building, and institutional policymaking. He also has experiences as an entrepreneur and in local government providing program development, operational consulting, and fundraising expertise to mobilize new initiatives.
Currently, Demar is a PhD Candidate in the Departments of Sociology and African American Studies at Yale University. His research leverages multiple methods to broadly examine health consequences of lynching, policing, and incarceration in the United States. Demar’s dissertation explores how the lived experiences of Black people living in a large Midwestern city shape their relationship to the institution of U.S. policing and, in turn, influence their visions for the future of community safety in America. In 2018, Demar was selected to participate in cohort 3 of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation’s Health Policy Research Scholars Program.
Ifeanyi is an engineering professional who has led teams in Nigeria, Brazil, and now the US. Born and raised in Nigeria, he recently completed graduate school in the US and is now working in the tech industry.
Described as a “human catalyst to everything she touches,” Uzomaka Obiocha recently joined NOIR Labs as Co-Founder and Acting COO, where she is living out her passion: creating a beautiful world through business, design and fashion. Prior to NOIR Labs, Uzo spent nearly a decade as Co-Founder of Koncept Consulting Group and Non-Profit, MD as a Brand, Business, and Financial Strategist.
Uzomaka has supported brands in entertainment, design, food, health care, fashion and non-profits, including Timothy Oulton, Girls Inc., Homestories, and PUKU Children’s Literature Foundation. She holds a BA in Finance from Georgia State University.
Jean-Louis is a Haitian-American from Miami, FL, USA. After completing his Bachelor’s degree in History and Political Science at Huntington University, Jean-Louis went on to obtain his Master’s degree in Religion and Ethics from Yale University. He is currently pursuing a MS in Social work with a concentration in Policy Practice at Columbia University. His interests lie in social justice, community engagement, and economic progress for marginalized communities.
We are excited to see you and our guests tomorrow for a rich and meaningful conversation.
We cannot wait to see you at 10pm EST tomorrow on Youtube!