Meet 30 Women Shaping Baltimore’s Future

SONIA ALCÁNTARA-ANTOINE

Incoming Director of the Baltimore County Public Library, 42

Courtesy of Sonia Alcántara-Antoine

SONIA ALCÁNTARA-ANTOINE

Incoming Director of the Baltimore County Public Library, 42

“Each nice neighborhood wants a fantastic library system to be able to actually thrive,” says Sonia Alcántara-Antoine, the incoming director of the Baltimore County Public Library’s 19 branches. Though she’s initially from New York, and at present working because the director of the Newport Information Public Library in Virginia, her roots in Baltimore are sturdy. She labored for seven years in varied roles on the Enoch Pratt Public Library, together with a stint as assistant to former Pratt director (and now Librarian of Congress) Carla Hayden. Alcántara-Antoine, a first-generation American whose mother and father emigrated from the Dominican Republic, believes that libraries are nice locations to interrupt down systemic limitations to studying and expertise. “Public libraries are on the forefront of bridging divides and assembly with individuals the place they’re,” she says. “Realizing that by way of my work I’ve the power to change the trajectory of somebody’s life for the higher is what will get me off the bed within the morning.”

Courtesy of Erricka Bridgeford

ERRICKA BRIDGEFORD

Anti-violence Activist, 48

The chief director of the Baltimore Group Mediation Middle, Erricka Bridgeford can also be, in fact, one of many metropolis’s main anti-violence advocates and co-founder of the Baltimore Ceasefire motion, which now enters its fourth yr. Her personal brother, David, was murdered in 2007. Past her skilled work and activism as a social reformer, Bridgeford has change into a non secular chief and therapeutic presence in a metropolis all too usually in want of each. “I used to be born with one hand, so society treats me like I’m damaged, and I’ve watched individuals deal with Baltimore prefer it’s damaged,” she advised Baltimore final yr. “These various things are identification markers for me: Having one hand, being Black, being a lady, rising up in poverty, having to face homicide a lot. These are my experiences,
they usually give me this wide-ranging emotional and non secular wherewithal to navigate and
interact with homicide.”

Courtesy of Shashawnda Campbell

SHASHAWNDA CAMPBELL

Group Organizer, Free Your Voice and South Baltimore Group Land Belief, 23

Shashawnda Campbell was a scholar at Benjamin
Franklin Excessive Faculty in South Baltimore
when she started asking an important query: Why
did so lots of her classmates have bronchial asthma?
So, she and her associates did some analysis.
They came upon that a big incinerator and a
landfill had been in her neighborhood, proper close to the
college—and that an excellent bigger incinerator was
about to be constructed. In 2012, Campbell co-founded
Free Your Voice with some classmates, and
by way of analysis, marches, petitions, and direct
appeals to legislators, they stopped the constructing
of that incinerator. She now continues her
environmental work with Free Your Voice and
the South Baltimore Group Land Belief, a
nonprofit dedicated to Zero Waste. “I’m a neighborhood
organizer as a result of I’ve hope,” Campbell
says. “I’ve hope that in the future we’ll dwell
in a world that doesn’t jeopardize the lives of
some individuals due to how a lot cash they
have, the colour of their pores and skin, or just because
of the place they’re born.”

Headshot by Tatiana Mullin

CHRISTINE MICHEL CARTER

World Voice for Working Mothers, 35

The situations of teleworking mixed with elevated child-care calls for are an ideal
storm for bias towards working mothers—particularly Black girls. Enter Christine Michel Carter—herself a mother of two—who has lengthy advocated for the working mother, pandemic or not. Carter has not solely penned two books on the subject—MOM AF and Can Mommy Go to Work? (geared toward youngsters)—however consults with firms, clarifying misconceptions about working mothers. Believing that information is energy, Carter additionally pens a bimonthly column for ForbesWomen on matters starting from revisiting the Household and Medical Go away Act to “ditching the act and bringing our genuine selves to work.” Says Carter, “I imagine girls needs to be outlined by motherhood, even at work.” There’s no disgrace in having each as our identities, she insists. “Girls are multifaceted, and that doesn’t change as soon as we change into moms.”

Courtesy of Iya Dammons

IYA DAMMONS

Government director, Baltimore Secure Haven, 28

In mid-July, 4 daring, pastel-colored phrases had been painted throughout each lanes of North
Charles Road in Charles Village: Black Trans Lives Matter. With the assistance of artist Jamie
Grace Alexander, the hassle was organized by Baltimore Secure Haven, a neighborhood nonprofit that serves the transgender neighborhood based by Iya Dammons in 2019. Simply weeks
earlier, Dammons helped manage the town’s first large-scale Black trans protest, with a
march and rally that gathered some 200 supporters and graced, by way of {a photograph} by Devin
Allen, the quilt of Time journal. However it’s the day by day, frontline work that issues most to Dammons, from BSH’s drop-in heart and transitional housing companies to cellular outreach efforts and civic engagement, all the best way as much as Metropolis Corridor. “That is the struggle of all fights that I’m in,” she advised us final summer time, as she works to fight homelessness, present hurt discount, and foster upward mobility for her neighborhood. “The best achievement for me is simply having the ability to assist my sisters—to see them smile, and know that they’ve anyone.”

Headshot by Catrece Ann Tipton

CORI DIOQUINO

Founder and Co-Government Director, Asian Pasifika Arts Collective, 36

Underneath the management of Cori Dioquino, together with co-executive director Catrece Ann Tipon,
Asian Pasifika Arts Collective has change into an advocate for Asian-American and Pacific Indigenous American (AAPI) voices within the arts and past. “To ensure that our tales to be heard and thought of . . . we’ve got to be loud about it,” says Dioquino. “Particularly contemplating the truth that Asian Individuals have been pegged because the ‘mannequin minority’ who’re very quiet and preserve their head down and don’t communicate up, I believe being a loud Asian and empowering individuals round you to be as nicely, it’s stunning how a lot of an announcement that may be.” To that finish, this previous yr the collective produced a digital model of their AAPI Voices storytelling collection, hosted on-line workshops, and partnered with #RacismIsAVirus to launch #UnapologeticallyAsian, a marketing campaign to empower all Asians and “change the dialog about belonging in America.” The group’s 2021 theme, “Crossing Borders,” will assist information its occasions all year long.

Courtesy of Rabbi Dressin

RABBI JESSY DRESSIN

Government Director, Baltimore, Restore the World, 40

You typically overlook Jessy Dressin is a rabbi. And that’s a part of her energy. She’s younger, she likes to put on ripped jean shorts with leggings, vibrant sun shades, and a Ravens jersey, and she or he sermonizes not from the bema of a temple, however from her place at a Jewish nonprofit that connects neighborhood members to volunteer alternatives. The concept of tikkunolam—repairing the world—has been Dressin’s message ever since she turned an ordained rabbi 9 years in the past. First, as founder and director of Allure Metropolis Tribe, an initiative to interact younger adults serious about Jewish tradition, and now by way of her work at Restore the World Baltimore, which mobilizes Jews to take motion to pursue a simply world. “Jewish custom teaches . . . that there are issues we are able to accomplish collectively we couldn’t presumably accomplish on our personal,” Dressin says. Constructing relationships which can be substantive and never simply transactional is so essential in a hyper-segregated metropolis like Baltimore, she says. “The actual callings and imperatives of Judaism require me to work intently with those that usually are not like me—who don’t share the identical religion, or the identical pores and skin shade, or the identical historical past—however who share within the work to construct a extra entire and simply world for all individuals.”

Courtesy of Diane Fink

DIANE FINK

Government Director, Emerge Maryland, 60

Since its top quality in 2013, Emerge Maryland, which recruits, trains, and offers Democratic girls with a community to run for workplace, has assisted greater than 100 candidates. Web site Maryland Issues describes the group, which is overseen by govt director Diane Fink, as “a significant powerhouse” on the political scene, with alumnae now holding places of work throughout the state, together with college board members, metropolis and county council legislators, and state delegates and senators. “We are actually electing individuals who haven’t had a seat on the desk and haven’t had their voices heard previously,” Fink, who beforehand served as legislative employees within the Normal Meeting, advised Baltimore in 2019. “The problems they increase, about youngster care, rising the minimal wage, home violence, for instance, usually are not heard, not in the identical approach, when girls deliver their voices to the desk. Fifty-two p.c of the inhabitants is feminine, and our illustration ought to replicate that.”

Headshot by Will Kirk (Johns Hopkins College)

LAUREN GARDNER

Creator, JHU COVID-19 Dashboard, 36

It’s not day by day that an engineer creates one thing that can be utilized by the complete world. However Lauren Gardner, an infectious illness specialist and co-director of the Johns Hopkins College’s Middle for Methods Science and Engineering, made historical past final January when she and her graduate scholar constructed the COVID-19 Dashboard that might observe the novel
coronavirus pandemic’s fast unfold across the globe. The net information tracker would ultimately garner greater than 4.5 billion views a day from public well being authorities, researchers, and most people. It additionally landed Gardner a spot on Time journal’s checklist of “The 100 Most Influential Folks of 2020,” the place Baltimore’s personal former well being commissioner Dr. Leana Wen declared the professor a frontrunner amongst us. “It’s essential for
individuals to acknowledge that engineers can contribute to society in a lot of other ways,” Gardner advised us final spring, “together with public well being.”

Courtesy of Nicole Hanson-Mundell

NICOLE HANSON-MUNDELL

Government Director, Out for Justice, 38

All through her life, Nicole Hanson-Mundell has felt strongly about the suitable to vote. “I took a number of honor in strolling into an elementary college or church to solid my poll,” she says. However after spending a yr in jail, she misplaced that energy. This previous yr’s Free the Vote documentary from the ACLU of Maryland made it clear that denying the suitable to vote for these incarcerated is rooted in a deeply racist system. The documentary shared Hanson-Mundell’s story, highlighting her advocacy work as somebody “main the struggle” to broaden voting entry. It’s simply one among a number of battles Hanson-Mundell has taken up on behalf of Out for Justice, a grassroots group led by former and at present incarcerated people working towards reform for native and statewide reentry insurance policies. Hanson-Mundell, an professional on felony justice coverage, can also be the one previously imprisoned lady on Governor Hogan’s Process Pressure to Examine Maryland’s Prison Gang Statutes. “When individuals return house from jail or jail, they’ve each intent to reform their lives,” Hanson-Mundell advised us. “The distinction between those who recidivate and those that don’t is solely who has entry.”

Headshot by Landon Mckinley

LANE HARLAN

Proprietor, Clavel, W.C. Harlan, Fadensonnen,
Angels Ate Lemons, 34

Only a few months again, foodie trade bible Saveur referred to as Lane Harlan “essentially the most attention-grabbing lady within the restaurant enterprise.” However that’s hardly information to these of us who dwell in Baltimore and have change into regulars at her eating places, together with the James Beard-nominated taqueria Clavel, the charming W.C. Harlan speakeasy, and Fadensonnen, Baltimore’s first biergarten/ sake bar (to not point out Angels Ate Lemons, a brand new pure wine bottle store). Sure, by way of the years, cool youngsters like filmmaker John Waters, former Maryland Governor Martin O’Malley, and the solid of Veep have frolicked at her haunts,
however just about everybody else flocks to them, too. And even the pandemic has not slowed her down: Harlan took that point to launch the Pisa Y Corre carryout idea at Clavel alongside together with her enterprise associate, Sinaloan chef Carlos Raba. Regardless of how difficult this yr has been for the enterprise, Harlan continues to try. “I’ve spent the final yr remodeling all the pieces I assumed I knew about my present companies,” says Harlan. “It’s crushing and exquisite to deconstruct. I’ll proceed to create in Baltimore.”

Courtesy of Chief Melissa Hyatt

MELISSA HYATT

Baltimore County Police Chief, 45

Melissa Hyatt’s fast rise by way of the male bastion of police work has its roots in her childhood, the place she soaked up info from her father, a retired Baltimore Metropolis police main. Now she’s a yr into serving as the primary feminine chief of the greater than 1,900-person Baltimore County police division, after twenty years of police work within the metropolis. Throughout that point, she rose to the rank of colonel, overseeing all 9 districts. Amongst her objectives is recruiting extra feminine officers—research have proven they’re higher at defusing probably violent confrontations earlier than they change into lethal. And, no, she hasn’t
uninterested in the work. “I all the time beloved the camaraderie that builds between officers from consistently not realizing what comes subsequent,” says Hyatt. “I beloved the journey of it, I beloved being out on the road; it made me joyful.”

Courtesy of Lynn B. Kahn

LYNNE B. KAHN

Founder and Government Director, Baltimore Starvation Mission, 51

Faculty methods place a number of emphasis on ensuring college students are fed all through the week, however what occurs to food-insecure households on Saturdays and Sundays? That was the precept that led Lynne B. Kahn to start out Baltimore Starvation Mission in 2014. What started as a lunch distribution operation out of her storage has grown right into a volunteer-based nonprofit that helps greater than 600 youngsters in 23 native faculties. And when COVID-19 hit, that output ramped as much as present groceries—full with handwritten notes
of encouragement, books, and artwork provides—to 2,300 households per week. “It’s about a lot
extra than simply the meals,” says Kahn, a mother of two and full-time CPA. “I need to hear how my youngsters are feeling and verify in on their psychological well being. I see us increasing the variety of youngsters we serve, but additionally determining how we are able to strengthen the our bodies and the minds.”

Courtesy of Girl Brion

LADY BRION

Spoken Phrase Artist; Founder and
Government Director, Black Arts District, 30

As a spoken phrase artist, trainer, and activist, Girl Brion believes within the transformative energy of artwork. “All of us stroll round with our personal baggage—these backpacks which can be stuffed with every kind of stress—and we’d like a option to unpack,” she says. “Artwork turns into a protected house to unpack our stuff.” To that finish, she is the cultural curator for Leaders of a Stunning Battle, the suppose tank dedicated to bettering the lives of Black individuals in Baltimore. In 2018, she proposed the thought of turning the historic space round Pennsylvania Avenue into a delegated Black arts district. It wasn’t a brand new concept—however she was the primary to have the community, coverage background, expertise, and “fireplace” to make it occur. A yr later, the Black Arts District (BAD) was formally designated. Her final imaginative and prescient is to make BAD the selection vacation spot for Black meals, arts, retail, and tradition. It’s a number of work, she says, however she’ll all the time make time for writing. “Poetry is my lifeblood,” she says. “It’s what feeds me.”

Courtesy of Ginny Lawhorn

GINNY LAWHORN

Restaurant Proprietor and Hospitality Trade Advocate, 38

All through her almost 20-year profession within the hospitality trade, Ginny Lawhorn has all the time
thought of her fellow bartenders and servers her different household. As such, she has seized each alternative to step up and help them—whether or not meaning helping the workforce at her aptly named Fells Level restaurant, Buddies and Household, with insurance coverage enrollment and making certain revenue stability, or organizing packages to assist the larger restaurant neighborhood defend their psychological and bodily well-being. Relating to the following era of feminine management, her highest hope is that, as soon as post-pandemic rehiring occurs, it begins with minority girls. “Each piece of illustration issues,”
she says. “Particularly in a metropolis the place the scene can really feel small, diversification can present
that you are able to do it—you could have the thought, you could have worth, you’ll be able to advocate for your self.
My subsequent hope is that you simply see the leaders, and then you definitely see the leaders change into homeowners.”

Courtesy of Brooke Lierman

DEL. BROOKE LIERMAN

State Delegate, forty sixth District, 41

Sworn into the Home of Delegates in 2015, Brooke Lierman rapidly made a mark. Representing Baltimore Metropolis’s forty sixth District, she has established herself as one of many state’s main voices on environmental and smartgrowth points. In 2019, she was named Legislator of the 12 months by the Maryland League of Conservation Employees. “The query just isn’t whether or not we’ll develop, however how we’ll develop,” Lierman says. She was additionally named Legislator of the 12 months by Maryland Starvation Options in 2017 for her work on meals deprivation points and stays a progressive legislator for Baltimore Metropolis in Annapolis, advocating for larger funding in public transit and equitable public-school funding. Two years in the past, she championed the state’s first complete gun violence initiative, the Maryland Violence Intervention and Prevention Program, persevering with to push for its full funding. In December, she introduced she’s operating for state comptroller in 2022—if she wins, she would be the first lady to carry the workplace.

Headshot by Matthew Freire

KRYSTAL MACK

Founder, In Absence Of Studio, 35

Many know Krystal Mack because the multitalented culinary inventive behind beloved companies BLK//SUGAR, PieCycle, and Karma-Pop. However lately, the Baltimore native has emerged as a transparent chief in an evolving meals world, utilizing her In Absence Of Studio to reimagine our relationship with meals as extra than simply Instagram fodder however a software
for social change. “I spotted that there are such a lot of extra ways in which I may very well be participating
with meals,” says Mack. “Meals is a automobile for storytelling. It’s a time capsule. It holds recollections and feelings. It may be highly effective in the best way it shapes how we view our relationship to 1 one other.” From artwork installations to neighborhood choices, her revolutionary work speaks to matters equivalent to race, gender, and trauma, and it has landed her on Cherry Bombe’s checklist of 100 influential girls, in The New York Occasions, and as a presenter at each The Walters Artwork Museum and Baltimore Museum of Artwork. Within the midst of COVID, her How To Take Care on-line cookbook helped increase greater than $10,000 for victims of home violence. Her debut print publication, PalatePALETTE, launches quickly.

Headshot by Jill Fannon

CARA OBER

Editor in Chief, BmoreArt, 45

Since 2007, BmoreArt editor-in-chief Cara
Ober has accomplished the seemingly unimaginable:
created a devoted arts publication that has
not solely survived, however thrived and grown
from a fledgling weblog to a beautiful print and
on-line product with a devoted employees and
contributors who deeply perceive and
chronicle Baltimore’s arts neighborhood. Ober’s
function as curator and champion for each the
metropolis’s artists and a subsequent era of writers
within the house is a useful one, and one not
replicated elsewhere within the metropolis. In a digital
graduation handle written by Ober for
the Class of 2020, she provided this recommendation:
“Notice that you’ve got energy and be taught to
use it properly. Be form. Be beneficiant. Consider
in your self and your objectives for the long run, however
work out craft a imaginative and prescient that advantages
everybody round you.” We’re grateful she has
been following it herself.

Headshot by Becky Stavely of Our Countless Journey

TIFFANNI REIDY

Founder, Reidy Artistic, 38

Take into consideration a few of the most lovely new restaurant areas in Baltimore and likelihood is that inside designer Tiffanni Reidy has created them. To wit, Wight Tea Co. and Crust by Mack, each in Whitehall Mill, with their classic trendy aesthetic, clear traces, and daring shade palettes. Reidy, who based her agency in 2018, has labored all around the D.C. metro and southern Maryland area. However regionally, she’s simply starting to make her mark with tasks together with Layers, a brand new occasion house for Amanda Mack’s Crust by Mack, and Vegan Juiceology, a cold-pressed juice bar in Howard Row. Each are scheduled to open in early 2021. (There’s additionally a multi-use mission and one other meals house for an area chef at present within the works.) Mack, who has a background in each images and graphic design, attracts inspiration from historic residential structure, adaptive reuse constructing, and nature, and likes to include the work of native craftspeople in her design. “Once I strategy a mission, I do know the consumer is drawn to my aesthetic,” says Reidy, “nevertheless it actually is about them and utilizing my strengths to create their imaginative and prescient and inform their story.”

Courtesy of Melanie Shimano

MELANIE SHIMANO

Director, Meals Pc Program, 30

Melanie Shimano’s Meals Pc Program, just like the herbs and lettuces its college students produce, has rapidly grown and enriched those that encounter it. The Forbes “30 Underneath 30” honoree and Hopkins lecturer turns code into crops for Baltimore schoolchildren with a STEM curriculum that teaches college students to construct and program tabletop greenhouses. Via her work with major and secondary faculties, Shimano has helped broaden STEM alternatives in metropolis faculties and interact a whole lot of scholars with citizen science and experiential studying, guiding them into careers that would profit all our futures. “A number of these issues that we’re dealing with, like local weather change, are big issues that one individual and even
one giant group can’t clear up, even when they put all their assets into it,” she
says. “We want a set of numerous minds, numerous backgrounds, numerous individuals to suppose collectively about doing higher.”

Headshot courtesy of Shelonda Stokes

SHELONDA STOKES

President, Downtown Partnership, 48

With every COVID-19 surge over the previous yr, and the restrictions that adopted, Shelonda
Stokes’ job received a little bit tougher. In spite of everything, because the president of the financial improvement company Downtown Partnership, her mission is to get individuals downtown once more for buying, eating, and occasions; assist companies reopen and rehire; and preserve industrial workplace and retail house stuffed.“Many individuals have discovered to make money working from home, they’re saving gasoline, they usually don’t have to decorate up within the morning—that’s a actuality,” says Stokes, “so we’ve got to present them a cause to go away that and are available again downtown and spend cash.” However she’s not chucking up the sponge. “The town has to discover a stability between individuals’s well being and the economic system. It’s going to be some time, however we’ll see incremental progress.”

Headshot by Jess McGowan

STEPHANIE YBARRA

Creative Director, Baltimore Middle Stage, 44

Since taking the reins at Baltimore Middle Stage three years in the past, Stephanie Ybarra has
put the town and its individuals on the forefront of the downtown theater’s mission, increasing
community-focused programming, diversifying the works offered, and even extending a
rolling invitation (emblazoned on the facet of a truck) to a horde of GOP leaders in Harbor East to see a efficiency of Miss You Like Hell, a musical about an undocumented mom and her daughter. Ybarra doesn’t shrink back from mixing artwork and activism, and as a substitute actively encourages engagement and dialog by way of her programming decisions. In asserting the 2021 Middle Stage season, Ybarra reaffirmed her dedication to entry, inclusion, and neighborhood on the theater. “The compounding results of a world pandemic and ongoing racial injustice have compelled a long-overdue reckoning, inspiring a renewed dedication to what we are saying we worth,” Ybarra stated. “And, to be able to transfer towards our highest beliefs, come what might, we are able to by no means return.”