Board of Directors
Tony Willis - Board President
Tony Willis is a professional resource charter and economic development strategist. Over the past decade, Tony has been deeply involved with economic development; specifically, when it comes to developing an entrepreneurial ecosystem for the greater Lansing region to foster increased company formation, Seed and VC investment, resources to enhance connection between entrepreneurial support organizations, and a culture where people and ideas can move rapidly to the market. Tony is currently the Director of New Economy at the Lansing Economic Area Partnership (LEAP) and is also the President of PROTO Accelerator, the regions first startup accelerator program.
Matinga Ragatz - Director
Matinga Ragatz is a multiple-award winning educator, keynote speaker and consultant using education for positive social change. Her experience as teacher and instructional innovator has led her to redefine learning and has developed a trusted voice through which she strives to revolutionize the way children learn and the way teachers teach. Matinga's international background inspires a unique perspective on classroom instruction, learning and innovation. Her passion for teaching has led her to work to inspire, support, and influence creative educators worldwide. In 2017, she founded a school in rural Tanzania for Masai children as well as other education projects in West Africa. Among many accolades, Matinga has served as Michigan Teacher of the Year and has been inducted in the US National Teacher Hall of Fame.
Paul Schmidt - Director
Paul is a storyteller, business owner and community member that is extremely active in ventures that bring about positive impacts. His video storytelling agency has spent the past twenty years visually depicting the journeys of non-profit organizations and the people they serve. He brings to the board of directors his vast experience in helping to shape the narrative that dynamically shares the mission to a wider audience
Suban Nur Cooley - Board Vice President
Suban is a researcher and teacher of issues pertaining to the cultural and digital, global and local. She is most interested in how all these elements intersect to impact and inform us individually, and how we then interact as parts of larger communities within and across the world. Suban cares about the micro and macro. Her dissertation research was a multi-location geographic comparative study which focused on elder women of the Somali diaspora and how migration and displacement can initiate a rhetorical inquiry of one’s culture and identity, manifesting in temporal and spatial constructions of a nation.
Rashad Muhammad - Director
Rashad comes to the organization with a long history of community service and employment in Lansing area. Rashad has over 20 years of experience working in course development, instructional design, and training and works at MSU as a Learning Experience Designer. As a lifelong participant in the hip hop community, Rashad is passionate about the capacity of hip hop to lead culture change, job creation, and activism.
Cristian Lambaren Sanchez - Director
Cristian works as an Academic Specialist for MSU’s College of Social Science – Office for Experiential Learning. In addition to advising, coordinating internship and education abroad programs, he teaches classes about Critical Community Engagement – Service Learning with an emphasis on youth development. Most recently, Cristian started teaching a class about Hip Hop and Community Engagement. Cristian is originally from the West coast and comes from a family where service to the community is part of their identity; he loves to share his nana’s words, “si no sirves para la gente, no sirves para nada,” which loosely translates to, “if you don’t serve the people, you are useless.” Cristian appreciates the opportunity to compliment his love for hip hop culture with his experience of community-university partnerships.
Joseph Mole - Board Treasurer
Joseph believes it is his mission is to help everyday people develop strategies for financial success. With two decades of leadership and service in the nonprofit social services sector, he has witnessed first-hand the struggles good people faced as a result of poverty and lack of access to financial resources. With a foundation built on trust, his goal is to partner with people from all walks of life to become forward-thinking about their finances, develop sound retirement plans and prepare for the big moments in life, both expected and unexpected.
Clara Martinez - Director
With a passion for community building and a foundation based in dance, Clara sees the world through the lens of movement and connectivity. She enjoys bringing people together by providing opportunities for dance, creativity, and shared experiences. Through her various personal, professional, creative, and leadership roles, she early on sparked an interest in how community is formed and how we function within it. Making her way as a current Dance Educator, Choreographer, Director, and Leader, Clara bases much of her pedagogical and facilitation intent not only on how to better connect the group to one another, but also how to serve the individuals in the room through an equity, justice, and trauma-informed approach. Clara also enjoys serving her communities through various boards, commissions, and councils.
Dan Wolford - Board Secretary
Dan has spent the last five years creating student-driven learning experiences that elevate student voices in his Detroit high school classroom. He engineers educational systems centered around student expression, creativity, and high performance, such as his extracurricular hip-hop program Lyrical Crusaders. Dan brings a passion for merging hip-hop and student achievement and valuable insight on educational accountability to the Board of Directors.
Derrell Slaughter - Director
Derrell is a native Michigander and a proud graduate of Michigan State University.
Currently, he serves on the Ingham County Board of Commissioners as the Commissioner representing the 3rd district, South Lansing. Derrell chairs the County's Law and Courts Committee and Ingham County Racial Equity Taskforce.
Outside of his work on the Ingham County Board of Commissioners, he works for the Natural Resources Defense Council, NRDC, as their Michigan Clean Energy Advocate. He is also a member of the ACLU of Michigan's Board of Directors, where he serves as the organization's Vice-President.
