The 2025 Changemakers
Dev’n M. Goodman
Dev’n M. Goodman is an educator and advocate working to grow community culturally and equitably. No matter the initiative, their goal is always to provide access and opportunity to those whose voices and talents have too often not been amplified.
Writing project: Dev’n’s book is a historical fiction detective novel, set during the post-Reconstruction Era. In their novel, the first Black American nun leads the charge to find missing Black girls in the city of New York. Along the way, she encounters places and people who are pivotal in American history.
Fabiola Santiago
Fabiola Santiago is from Santiago Matatlán, Oaxaca, Mexico and belongs to the Central Valley Zapotecs. Her experiences as a formerly undocumented person and her connection to Oaxaca’s rich culture anchors her commitment to community, equity, and possibility. She’s the founder and executive director of Mi Oaxaca, an organization whose purpose is to combat Indigenous erasure through narrative change, cultural education, and collaboration with compatible organizations across borders. Fabiola imagines a world where Indigenous people are attributed for their cultural and culinary contributions and have sovereignty over it. She earned her bachelor’s degree in sociology and master’s degree in public health from the University of California, Los Angeles.
Writing project: Fabiola’s creative non-fiction book explores the commodification of Oaxaca, Mexico, through an intersectional-diasporic-Indigenous lens. The book focuses on the prevalence of cultural appropriation and indigenous erasure in the mezcal and food industry. Through interviews and talking circles, she shares experiences of Oaxaqueñas/os who are the backbone of the commercial industries. It offers thought-provoking and reflective stories aimed at challenging consumerism as a way to build systems where Indigenous peoples and lands are respected and sovereign.
Fin Leary
Fin Leary (he/they) is an autistic and transgender author, a program manager at We Need Diverse Books, and a faculty member at Emerson College, where he teaches in the MFA in popular fiction. Fin is the editor of the science fiction anthology Future States of Stars (OwlCrate Press, 2025). His short fiction is forthcoming in the young adult horror anthology These Bodies Ain’t Broken, edited by Madeline Dyer (Page Street Publishing, 2025). His fiction has been supported by a Lambda Literary fellowship, the Tin House Winter Workshop, and the GrubStreet Novel Generator program. Fin lives with his orange literary cat and a rainbow bookshelf outside of Boston, Massachusetts.
Writing project: Fin’s novel, Son of a Book Ban, is the story of Nat Gallagher, a transgender high school senior, as he fights against the censorship of his late mother’s final novel. Nat and his fellow students reckon with the reality of censorship and transphobia in their school and local community as he faces layers of his grief.
Jennifer Thuy Vi Nguyen
Jennifer Thuy Vi Nguyen (she/her) is a queer Vietnamese American writer who writes about belonging, assimilation, and power. Her essays have been a “Notable” selection for The Best American Essays 2024, nominated for a Pushcart Prize, and appeared in Longreads, The Offing, and Foglifter. She was the editor of Emerge: The Anthology for the 2023 Lambda Literary Writers Retreat. Her writing has been supported by Tin House, the Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity, and Macondo, among others. A proud native Houstonian, she holds a master’s degree in English from Georgetown University where she was the winner of the Bernard M. Wagner Medal for Excellence in Writing. For the past six years, Nguyen has been a director at a spend-down foundation based in San Francisco, managing the deployment of nearly $100 million dollars to education initiatives across the West Coast.
Writing project: Jennifer’s book argues that the opaque world of private philanthropy—including the foundation of her employment—creates more harm than good because it is driven by the donors’ outsized influence over what a community gets. Through a series of punk-style reportage essays, Vision/Statement uncovers how foundations are contradictory entities that value the status quo over systems change and should be subject to strict tax regulations leading to institutional philanthropy’s eventual abolishment.
Lina Srivastava
Lina Srivastava is a strategist, advocate, producer, and founder of the Center for Transformational Change, a social enterprise that applies narrative strategies to cultivate community power and build just futures. Lina has collaborated with civil society organizations and international NGOs and has worked on social engagement strategy for award-winning film, media, and art projects. She has taught in the SVA Masters of Design for Social Innovation Program, has been a Rockefeller Foundation Bellagio Center Fellow, a Rockwood Institute/JustFilms Fellow, a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts, and is a graduate of New York University School of Law. Lina’s writing has appeared in venues such as TIME, Ms. Magazine, and the Stanford Social Innovation Review. She is the co-producer and moderator of The New Humanitarian’s Power Shift podcast.
Writing project: Lina’s book offers a framework for creating more just and vibrant futures grounded in narrative power. At a time of global precarity, we are facing the combined effects of climate crises, displacement, authoritarianism, and rising inequality. But we still have time to transform our systems. Built on two decades of her work, the book will feature case studies from Lina’s own portfolio as well as those of other creative advocates, demonstrating how shifting narratives can fuel collective action toward justice, equity, and shared prosperity.
Mick Moran
Mick Moran is a queer, nonbinary, white, fat, disabled artist and radical full-spectrum doula living in unceded Lenape territory (Brooklyn, NY). They have self-published more than a dozen zines on topics such as self-advocacy, disability, body size, gender, and end-of-life. Mick is the co-creator of My Choice Always, in All Ways: A Zine about Abortion for Trans and Nonbinary Folks and the editor of DIY Doula: Self-Care for Before, During, and After Your Abortion. Mick has taught workshops on reproductive justice, creating screen-reader accessible zines, and media activism, and their comics have been published in Comics for Choice and Narratively. A 2024 Emerge Fellow with the Longmore Institute on Disability, they are a “disability doula” for people navigating the complex systems and feelings that come with a change in ability.
Writing project: Mick’s book is a graphic memoir-in-progress that demonstrates, through personal stories of interactions with healthcare providers, that the consequences of implicit bias are more than just “hurt feelings.” Rooted in disability justice, reproductive justice, and fat liberation, this book questions who is seen as deserving of care and how that care is delivered.
Naro Alonzo
Raised in Davao, Philippines, Naro Alonzo is a tagahabi, or psychosocial accompaniment for a collective offering ginhawa (wellbeing) and care support to social justice defenders and communities struggling against human rights violations, extractivism, and colonization. A clinical psychologist-in-training in the University of the Philippines, they practice as a decolonial, trauma-informed, human rights-based psychosocial security specialist focusing on victim-survivors of political repression. Naro’s writings (poetry/fiction) have been anthologized in Danas (Gantala Press), Busilak: New LGBTQ Poetry from the Philippines, and Tingle: Anthology of Lesbian Writing.
Writing project: Naro’s queer YA speculative fiction novel centers on community care and courage in a time of enforced disappearances and militarization. It explores how political repression appears in the lives of ordinary people, such as in their emotions and relationships, and the psychological journeys.
Olga Lucia Torres
Olga Lucia Torres (she/her) has been sick her entire life: starting with severe asthma, a pituitary adenoma, later developing lupus and multiple other autoimmune diseases, and ultimately experiencing a devastating brain injury that left her disabled. Olga was a founding attorney of the Bronx Defenders. After recovering from the brain injury, she pivoted to patient advocacy, serving as the inaugural Northeast region advocacy chair for the Lupus Foundation of America. She is a member of the Patient Engagement Collaborative, on the medical advisory board of Hear Your Song, teaches in the Narrative Medicine program at Columbia University, chairs the Multicultural Media & Correspondents Association Board of Trustees, and is the American Society of Journalists and Authors’ treasurer. Olga’s articles have appeared in the New York Times, New York Daily News, Parents, Next Avenue, and other publications.
Writing project: Olga’s book is a comprehensive look into the deeply ingrained structural racism of the American healthcare system. The book offers both an analysis of systemic biases and their historical roots, as well as actionable advice that will empower marginalized patients and increase their chances of surviving in a system stacked against them.
Raquel Villagra
Raquel Villagra is a New York-based lawyer working to address the economic harms of systemic discrimination by fighting predatory financial practices and advocating for institutions rooted in cooperation, equity, and sustainability. She provides legal aid to low-income people on financial justice issues, litigates cases targeting harmful corporate and government practices that impact thousands, and organizes groups across New York to push for transformational policies, centering marginalized communities. In law school, she was co-editor-in-chief of the N.Y.U. Review of Law & Social Change, a publication for social change-oriented scholarship; a Helaine Barnett Fellow with Legal Services Corporation; and a student advocate defending children in juvenile delinquency cases.
Writing project: Raquel’s book is a contemporary romance following an introverted law student who confronts her fears, finds her voice, and learns about love and the power of women of color to create change along the way.
Rona Fernandez
Rona Fernandez is a writer and sustainable housing, racial and environmental justice activist who was born and raised and still lives on the unceded territory of the Lisjan people in the East Bay area, California. Her writing has appeared in publications such as The Masters Review, The Rumpus, Yes! Magazine, Greater Good Magazine, and What God Is Honored Here? An Anthology on Miscarriage and Infant Loss—the first collection of writings by Native women and women of color on this topic.
Writing project: Rona’s book is a climate fiction novel which centers on a mother struggling to heal and keep her children safe in an increasingly hostile world, with the help of strangers she must learn to trust. Her work pushes readers to not only imagine humankind’s future but to question their assumptions about their needs, and what they would be willing to sacrifice to make collective liberation possible.
Sol Garcia Jones
In their career, Sol Garcia Jones has focused on creating learning and healing spaces around identity, social justice, leadership, and education. She is currently the national director of curriculum and instruction at the Surge Institute, a leadership development accelerator for BIPOC education leaders.
Writing project: Sol’s book is the first of a climate fiction fantasy trilogy. The series follows a young woman from a remote tribe with unique abilities to manage extreme climate challenges that has remained separated from the mainland. Born in unusual circumstances, her bold protagonist seeks out answers by going to the mainland and defying tradition.
Tanuja Devi Jagernauth
Tanuja Devi Jagernauth is an Indo-Caribbean PIC abolitionist, writer, theatermaker, and yoga educator who believes in the necessity of creation during times of destruction. She is the Interim co-executive director for the Little Village Environmental Justice Organization and co-facilitator of Understory, a biweekly virtual space for activists and organizers to gather and contemplate that which they hold sacred. In her writing, inspired by healing justice, caste abolition, and PIC abolition, Tanuja employs comedy, magical realism, the fantastic, and the absurd to raise questions about how we live, heal, and fight back against the prisons, police, and various oppressions that occupy our bodies, hearts, minds, and communities. Tanuja is a two-time VONA alum and lives in Chicago with her partner and dog.
Writing project: Tanuja’s book, Primal Scream Club, is a beach read for radicals, but it will hit with anyone who has tried to create something within the confines of white supremacist heteropatriarchy and racial capitalism. It’s 2020, and Chicago is locked down due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Toilet paper is scarce, misinformation abounds, and the whole city is getting stir crazy after baking bread and socializing on Zoom for weeks. Three femmes of color, initially strangers to each other, decide to break the monotony and wind up on Hollywood beach, one of Lake Michigan’s best. When one of them wades into the water and lets out a deep primal scream, the other two join her, and Primal Scream Club is born. It becomes popular quickly. Shenanigans ensue.
Zach Norris
Zach Norris is the former executive director at the Ella Baker Center for Human Rights and has worked for over two decades advancing racial, economic, and gender justice in California through changes to the criminal legal system. As the California climate director at Greenpeace, he still fights for a world where people aren’t treated as disposable. Norris also co-founded Restore Oakland, an advocacy and training center empowering Bay Area community members to transform local economic and justice systems. He is also the co-founder of Justice for Families, which works to end youth incarceration.
Writing project: Zach’s book will examine the root causes and impact of family separation in the United States. Paradoxically, families being torn apart might be the one story that binds Americans together. As a quintessential story of our past and present, family separation demands a new shared vision for our future: collective care.