Meet the first cohort of the Nourishing Power Advisory Council
Angelina Bell
Founder, Humble Mornings Coffee Co
Angelina is a mother, local business owner, and food activist. Locally sourced and supporting minority women is her thing. She also loves shopping at farmers' markets, eating at local restaurants, and attending community events. She understands the value of the local food, the local dollar, and the impact on the community.
Shirley Bell-Wheeler
Urban Farmer, Revolutionary Love Community Garden
Founder, Elements of Internal Movement
Leadership Team, Nourishing Power Advisory Council
Shirley is alumnae of Cleveland State University with a focus in education and counseling. She is the executive officer of Elements of Internal Movement Non-Profit Organization and works with Revolutionary Love Community Garden. She has spent the last couple of years providing fresh produce, programming, and resources to her neighbors in Ward 4.
Shawn Brown
National Director of Organizing, The Humane League
Shawn has been an organizer and an advocate for over twenty years. He has worked on issues from high school students in Chicago to working with Charter School parents in Southeast LA. He's looking forward to serving in this role.
Dawn Glasco
Manager of Engagement & Social Innovation, Cleveland Central Promise Neighborhood
Advisor and Project Supporter, Nourishing Power
Leadership Team, Nourishing Power Advisory Council
Dawn is a community organizer and engagement specialist. She focuses on improving community health and culture by supporting projects which promote neighborhood transformation. Dawn holds a Master of Arts in Psychology and Diversity Management from Cleveland State University and is trained in Gestalt theory and practice through the Gestalt Institute of Cleveland. Dawn is a graduate of Advanced Leadership Institute's Stokes Leadership Program and works at the Sisters of Charity Foundation of Cleveland as Manager of Engagement and Social Innovation for the Central Promise Neighborhood collective impact initiative.
Julian Khan
Network Builder, Neighborhood Connections
Julian is a creative entrepreneur focused on creating a model of grassroots collective action aimed at sparking citizen-led transformation and community restoration of Cleveland's Buckeye neighborhood. His most notable initiative, "Buckeye Summer Soul Series," is a thinly-veiled organizing effort tailored to fit the needs of the neighborhood by bringing community resources in the form of block parties and creating space to form/strengthen relationships on various streets throughout the neighborhood. As a small business owner, the focus isn't much different as his business efforts have been re-imagined at every turn to best amplify and serve other small businesses.
Lindsey Lott
Development Coordinator, Birthing Beautiful Communities
Lindsey is a proud graduate of North Carolina A&T State University. She is currently the Development Coordinator for a Cleveland nonprofit specializing in infant and maternal health. Lindsey is working towards a certificate in nonprofit management and a master's degree in community health promotion. I have three, four-legged children and a new human addition to my family. Lindsey is most interested in grant funding, grant writing, and budget management.
Shelby Kaemmerer
Director, Health Pathways, United Way of Greater Cleveland
Shelby Kaemmerer has a Bachelor's degree in Health Science from the University of Missouri and a Master of Public Health from the University of Texas Health Science Center. Growing up in a military family, she doesn't have a true "hometown", but she arrived in Cleveland in 2021 after five years in Austin, Texas. She has almost a decade of experience in community health, including nutrition, food access, and other social determinants of health. She's passionate about ice cream, to-do lists, and her dog Sugar.
Teela Patterson
Executive Director, Healing Spaces
Teela Patterson is the visionary and lead writer behind Healing Spaces, an environmental justice initiative that began as a Cleveland Documenters environmental justice project. In Spring 2021, with the support of a team of journalists, collaborators, and sponsors, she began a journey to address the issue of urban blight - that is abandoned, derelict land parcels that riddle low-income communities of color in Cleveland, Ohio. This initiative quickly evolved to include filming a documentary. The Documenters team surveyed to explore healing spaces across the city of Cleveland, a timeline of environmental justice in Cleveland, visual and creative art expressions, and ultimately the genesis of the largest, most impactful environmental justice movement to date!
Ismail Samad
Founder, Loiter
Ismail Samad is a native of East Cleveland, OH a social entrepreneur, enterprise developer and a closed loop food systems expert. Samad brings his experience as a board president, his ability to connect with others to put strategic partnerships in place, as well as his experience in managing local supply lines, to his organization, Loiter, to develop urban farming in East Cleveland to provide produce directly to businesses, and now to the Nourishing Power Advisory Council. While it may take years to repair the damage caused by neglect, economic disinvestment, and injustice, Ismail believes in the people of East Cleveland to build up a new cultural renaissance.
Michael Walton
Facilitator, Catalyst, Coach, Urban Farmer
In the field of Urban Agriculture, Michael has received certification in the OSU Extension Market Gardener Program and studied with Will Allen of Growing Power in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. He has built numerous Hoop House/High Tunnels in Greater Cleveland and has been active in connecting food and health and extolling the benefits of a healthy lifestyle and a diet comprised mostly of fresh, locally grown produce. Michael is passionate about reducing race and place-based health disparities and helping people live this truth: Real Food Matters. Michael has been one of the most active facilitators of experiential education in Northern Ohio and has demonstrated skill in applying this methodology to therapeutic gardening and smoking cessation as a chemical dependency counselor.