I’d like to talk about racial justice, disaster recovery, and the pandemic with some of the experts I’ve been honored to get to know these past 2 years. Let me introduce them:
Joy Banner, Ph.D. is the Director of Media and Marketing at Whitney Plantation. She is a native, and resident of Wallace, LA and a descendant of Whitney Plantation. Inspired both by Whitney Plantation’s mission and her desire to help her largely descendant community, Joy returned home to advocate for economic and environmental rights. Joy has recently started the first chapter of “Coming To The Table”, an organization aimed at addressing the legacies of slavery by bringing together descendants of the enslaved and their enslavers. 
Felicia Henry is a licensed social worker and a Ph.D. student in the Department of Sociology and Criminal Justice at the University of Delaware, where she is also a Bill Anderson Fund Fellow. 
Monica Sanders is the managing director of the Georgetown University Environmental Justice Program. She is the founder of "The Undivide Project", an organization dedicated to addressing the legal and policy changes needed to address the intersections between digital and climate equity. She also teaches Law, Policy and Practice in Disasters and Complex Emergencies at the Georgetown Law Center.