Advisory Board

The Hive Fund’s Advisory Board provides governance oversight and helps set strategic vision and priorities for the Fund. Many of its members were instrumental in designing and launching the Fund in 2019 and continue to provide on-going guidance on the Fund’s the strategic direction, values-alignment, and funder engagement. The AB provides budget oversight in concert with the Windward Fund, our fiscal sponsor.

Esther Calhoun*
Alabama

Lifelong activist, co-founder and former president, Black Belt Citizens Fighting for Health and Justice

Based in Uniontown, Alabama, Ms. Calhoun is the daughter and granddaughter of sharecroppers who grew cotton and vegetables and raised hogs, cows, chickens and horses. Working on a family farm taught Ms. Calhoun to cherish the area where she lives. She is one of the founders and a former president of Black Belt Citizens Fighting for Health and Justice, a grassroots group that educates and organizes people around environmental and health harms. Ms. Calhoun organizes to help people hold on to their strength, to educate community members, and to ensure that everyday people have a voice.

Tamara Jones
Georgia

Co-Director, Clean Energy Works

Tamara Jones has served as Director of Programs and Policy for mayoral administrations in Atlanta and Houston, Chief of Staff to a Houston City Council Member, Executive Director of the Southeastern African American Farmers Organic Network (SAAFON), founder of the Social Justice Impact Project/Inquiring Systems Inc., and a consultant guide to organizations with over ten years of independent practice.

Ms. Jones has also been Director of Program Development & Government Relations at Southface Energy Institute and Director of Programs and Services for the Southeast Energy Efficiency Alliance (SEEA). At SEEA, she administered regional energy efficiency building retrofit programs for which she was designated a 2011 White House Champion of Change. Ms. Jones holds a Bachelor’s degree in Political Science and Philosophy from Long Island University Brooklyn Campus and a Master’s degree in Political Science from Yale University.

Felecia Lucky (Co-chair)
Alabama

President, Black Belt Community Foundation

Felecia Lucky is President of the Black Belt Community Foundation (BBCF) and co-founder of the Southern Black Girls and Women’s Consortium--roles in which her favorite African proverb has served her well: “To do something for us, instead of with us, does nothing for us at all.” After a career in finance, Felecia returned to Livingston, Alabama when she joined the Black Belt Community Foundation. BBCF was established to strengthen Alabama’s 12 poorest counties known collectively as the Black Belt. Felecia earned a Bachelor of Science degree in Accounting from Tuskegee University and a Master of Business Administration degree from the University of Alabama. She serves as the Minister of Music at First Baptist Church and she is a member of the City Council of Livingston.

Bakeyah Nelson
Texas

Consultant, Former Executive Director of Air Alliance Houston

Bakeyah S. Nelson, Ph.D. is a dynamic leader committed to moving resources to communities fighting oil and gas expansion in the Gulf South. Dr. Nelson has a diverse background in public health and public policy and has worked to reduce health inequities in Houston communities for 15 years. She previously served as the Executive Director of Air Alliance Houston, a research-based nonprofit organization working to reduce the public health impacts of air pollution and advance environmental justice in the Houston Region. Before that, she served in the Office of Policy and Planning for Harris County Public Health, where she was responsible for monitoring community health status, as well as planning and implementing community health initiatives to improve health equity.

Jacqueline Patterson
Maryland

Founder and Executive Director of the Chisholm Legacy Project

Jacqueline Patterson, MSW/MPH, is the Founder and Executive Director of the Chisholm Legacy Project: A Resource Hub for Black Frontline Climate Justice Leadership. Patterson served for 11 years as the Senior Director, NAACP Environmental and Climate Justice and has worked with organizations including Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, IMA World Health, United for a Fair Economy, ActionAid, Health GAP, and the organization she co-founded, Women of Color United. She also serves on the Boards of Directors for the American Society of Adaptation Professionals, Emerald Cities Collaborative, National Black Workers Center Project, Bill Anderson Fund and the Advisory Boards for the Center for Earth Ethics Equitable Building Electrification Fund, Mosaic Momentum General Assembly, and Environmental Justice Movement Fellowship.

Frances Roberts-Gregory (Co-chair)
DMV (DC, Maryland, Virginia)

Ecowomanist ethnographer and feminist political ecologist

Frances Roberts-Gregory, PhD, is an ecowomanist ethnographer, feminist political ecologist, and climate justice anthropologist. She currently serves as a postdoctoral researcher at the Harvard University Center for the Environment and is an upcoming AAAS Science & Technology Policy Fellow. Her doctoral research explored Gulf Coast Black and Indigenous women's contradictory relationships with energy and petrochemical industries and everyday resistance while advocating for environmental, energy, and climate justice. Her postdoctoral research investigates the role of US Afrodiasporic communities in UNFCCC climate negotiations and feminist climate policy.

Frances earned a BA in Sociology, Anthropology, and Environmental Science from Spelman College and a PhD in Environmental Science, Policy, and Management from UC Berkeley. She formerly served as an Environmental Fellow with the Environmental Grantmakers Association, as a consultant for the Deep South Center for Environmental Justice, as a Climate Justice Program Officer for the Foundation for Louisiana, and as a Program Director of Leadership Development at the Initiative for Energy Justice at Northeastern University. Frances likewise serves on the steering committee of the Feminist Agenda for a Green New Deal, the board of the HBCU Green Fund, and as a Cecil Corbin-Mark Vanguard Fellow through the Green Leadership Trust. 

Yeshaq Tekola*
Arizona

Decolonial climate justice activist; Co-Director of Black Lives Matter Phoenix Metro

Yeshaq Tekola has a Ph.D. in Sustainability. Their dissertation research focused on the connections between climate change and colonialism and Western society’s inability to address the climate crisis which they termed “the pathology of modernity.” They are a co-founder, co-director, and minister of activism for Black Lives Matter Phoenix Metro. They were a lead organizer in Divest University of Washington, where after a 3-year struggle the university divested from coal. They helped to start a “Block the Bunker” campaign in Seattle that blocked another police station from being built in a community of color. They started a campaign at Arizona State University that won a multicultural center. Their activism has been featured in Democracy Now, CNN and Rolling Stone; they were named by Outside Magazine as one of the “30 under 30” in 2016; and they were a Ford Foundation Predoctoral Fellow from 2018-2021.

Monique Verdin
Louisiana

Another Gulf Is Possible and Land Memory Bank & Seed Exchange

Monique Verdin is an interdisciplinary storyteller who documents the complex relationship between environment, culture, and climate in southeast Louisiana. She is a citizen of the Houma Nation, director of the Land Memory Bank & Seed Exchange and a member of the Another Gulf Is Possible Collaborative, working to envision just economies, vibrant communities, and sustainable ecologies.  She is co-producer of the documentary My Louisiana Love and her work has been included in a variety of environmentally inspired projects, including the multiplatform performance Cry You One, Unfathomable City: A New Orleans Atlas, and the collaborative book Return to Yakni Chitto: Houma Migrations.

Sherri White-Williamson
North Carolina

Lifetime activist and Co-Founder of Environmental Justice Community Action Network (EJCAN)

Sherri White-Williamson currently serves as the Environmental Justice Policy Director at the North Carolina Conservation Network (NCCN) where she focuses on incorporating the voices of impacted communities in NCCN’s policy and outreach efforts. In addition, she is the co-founder of the Environmental Justice Community Action Network (EJCAN), which works closely with impacted communities in Sampson County, NC.

Sherri holds a Juris Doctor and Masters of Energy Regulation and Law from Vermont Law School, where she co-founded the Environmental Justice Law Society. She received the Marc Mihaly Environmental Leadership Award in recognition of her commitment to the environment and environmental justice. She retired from the U.S. EPA, Office of Environmental Justice, where she served in many roles including as Manager of the Interagency Working Group on Environmental Justice and Designated Federal Officer to the National Environmental Justice Advisory Council.

* Advisory Board representative who also sits on the Participatory Decision-Making Working Group (PDWG)