Jamila's Bio
I am a changemaker and relationship weaver who helps organizations transform as well as an educator and advocate for growing the solidarity economy movement. I thrive when working with start-ups - non-profits, foundations, and cooperatives - as well as established organizations on the precipice of emergent and designed change. With a background in organizational development, I support organizations in operationalizing their values through highly participatory processes related to governance, strategic planning, resource generation, leadership development, and more.
Since 2021, I have stewarded The Partnership Fund’s Collective Courage Fund to support Black-led and serving food and land cooperatives in strengthening the connection between economic and independent political power building. I am a part of Solidarity Resource, a multi-racial collaborative of co-op developers, educators, and labor organizers that builds the tools co-ops need to launch with intentionality. I have also been a collaborator with the Solidarity Economy Principles Project and Securing the Roots. Currently, I serve as board chair of the Independence Public Media Foundation and is board secretary for the Food Co-op Initiative. My contributions make an impact at the intersections of transforming philanthropy, strengthening cooperative enterprise development, and growing the solidarity economy movement.
​From 2012-2021, I served in governance roles and then as executive director of the Philadelphia Area Cooperative Alliance (PACA) - a nonprofit and co-op of co-ops that exists to improve the lives of people in the Philadelphia region by supporting democratically organized businesses, promoting the principles of the international cooperative movement, and growing the cooperative economy. There, I partnered with other cooperators, elected officials, movement organizers, and funders to position co-op enterprises as a robust and equitable economic development solution to economic and racial injustice in the Philadelphia region.
I hold a M.S. degree in Organizational Dynamics from the University of Pennsylvania and earned her B.A. degree in Urban Studies from Connecticut College. I am the founder of the Black Women at Home Project which visibilizes the ways in which Black women embody, make meaning of, and celebrate home.