Our Team
Erin Dale McClellan
She/Her/Hers
Erin Dale is the executive director of The Partnership and Partnership Action Fund. She joins TPF after 12 years leading Blueprint NC. Erin took Blueprint from an organization of 4 staff and a budget of 900,000 to an organization with over 20 staff and a 4 million dollar budget in 2018.
Erin dale is the board chair of Fertile Ground Food Cooperative. Her deepest passion is to build a cooperative economy where her people can own their own labor and live in their purpose. Fertile Ground is an effort to build a multistakeholder (workers, consumers, producers) grocery store and cultural center in southeast Raleigh. The core focus of Erin's work is building power with the people most impacted at the center. She believes that a winning strategy for transformative change must be rooted in deep relationships and unlearn white supremacy colonizing culture from the inside out. She is the former treasurer of Advance North Carolina - a black led c4 organization focused on building power for Black communities.
She has been awarded the Ella Baker Award from the Youth Organizing Institute, Women to Watch from Women AdvaNCe, SiStars Award from the National Coalition on Black Civic Participation, Annie Mackie Ward from NC Women United, the William C. Friday Fellowship for Human Relations, Local Hero Citizen of the Year for 2015 from Indy Week magazine and recently won Community Leader Award from the NC A. Philip Randolph Institute.
Erin dale is most proud of her accomplishments as a mother of two Prince Kings. She has a degree in Sociology from the College of William and Mary.
Contact Erin via email at erin@partnershipfunds.org
Rebecca Petzel
She/Her/Hers
Rebecca Petzel is our Deputy Director. Rebecca supports collaborative learning and strategy at the funds. She joins the team with ten years experience running the Emergence Collective, a consulting cooperative focused on increasing our ability to chart new paths in the social sector through strengthened collaborative practice. At the Emergence Collective she works with philanthropic and non-profit partners to shift practice and culture from one of top down, command and control ways of working to true co-creation -- centering the needs of those closest to the work -- that makes more possible in the world. Her gift is designing and holding space where individuals have full agency and dignity while the collective builds connection, alignment, and movement towards truly meaningful action.
Formally trained in the academic traditions of systems change, collective intelligence, and transformational leadership through a unique, interdisciplinary masters program at the Blekinge Institute of Technology in Sweden, her real teachers have been organizers in her home town of Chicago fighting every day for truly transformational change. She serves on the board of Chicago Votes, a collection of young folks regularly reminding her not to get stuck in an experience rut, and how to take on serious work without taking yourself too seriously.
Contact Rebecca via email at Rebecca@partnershipfunds.org
Laura Johns
She/Her/Hers
Laura Johns, our Director of Philanthropic Engagement was born in Jacksonville, Florida to the son of a gulf fisherman and the daughter of a tobacco farmer in the Kentucky hills. Her father joined the Navy, and she spent the first six years of her life in Rhode Island before her family settled in a small town in South Carolina. It was there that she was exposed to the overt racism and systemic oppression that began her radicalization. After studying political science and international studies at the College of Charleston, she moved back to Florida to start a family.
While the first few years back in Florida were filled with the joys of childbirth and new opportunities, things didn't go as planned in the marriage. Laura knew she had to make a change, and returned to her roots in activism. A Google search in 2004 revealed an ACORN campaign to raise Florida’s minimum wage through a ballot initiative, and her Movement career was launched when she became a canvasser gathering signatures to get the initiative on the ballot. Not only did it get on the ballot, it passed in the General Election giving Floridians making minimum wage a raise of $1 per hour -- a huge accomplishment for its time.
Since then, Laura has organized in communities around predatory lending and fighting the expansion of Walmart and other big-box stores, stopping one store from being built in a residential area and passing the first Big Box Ordinance in Orange County, which put limits on construction of new stores. She has run large-scale voter registration drives, managed large signature-gathering canvasses, organized door-to-door in communities, and raised millions of dollars for both charitable organizations and PACs - all while raising three incredible children on her own who are now out of the nest and thriving!
Contact Laura via email at Laura@partnershpfunds.org
Kay Dugan Murrell
She/Her/Hers/They/Them
Kay is our Senior Creative Designer. Kay uses mix media and digital tools to create compelling images from impactful topics, amorphous ambitions, and technical instruction. Weaving threads of raw dialog, shorthand notes, and complex data points, into visual narratives. As each conversation connects, each graph, each moment, each element comes together to instill and inspire holistic connection.
By portraying lived experiences, typography, symbolism, nature, and planetary wonder, the result is a collaborative work producing a call to movement; expressing stories about process, revealing progress, taking what was learned, where we are, and how to move forward.
Nature, human form, and bold color motifs are often found in Kay’s work intertwined with memory, fluidity, and resonance. Receiving a BFA in Visual Communications from Hussian College, blossomed into many artistic and technical opportunities with the Philadelphia Mural Arts Program, AmeriCorps programs: Digital Service Fellows and PromiseCorps, People’s Emergency Center, Philadelphia FIGHT, PMHCC, and the Philadelphia Department of Public Health. These opportunities lead to growing digital connection skills and visual practice using art as a mode of expression and medium of change culminating with many collaborative visual works with TPF.
Many of these Illustrations, Graphics, and Visual Boards support non-profit groups in Leadership, translating difficult and spacious themes such as Excellence Vs. Perfection, Grounding During Times of Uncertainty, Anti-Blackness, Work Culture, and Spirituality. More can be seen throughout the Partnership Fund webpage, and Compass Point: Self Care for Women in Black Leadership. Many thanks to the inspiration and guidance provided by the Soul Shifting Community, led and held by Dr. G and the mentorship and leadership of many elders.
Contact Kay via email at Kay@partnershipfunds.org
Tia Hall
She/Her/Hers
Tia is our Lead Editor and Strategic Adviser. Tia works from an ideology that all people have assets and strengths that contribute to the wholeness and overall health of their community. Tia’s 30 + year work history encompasses bank management, graphic design business operator and ownership, university researcher/ developer, community organizer and Reiki Master /healer. She owns her own consulting firm that centers wholeness, healing and racial equity. As a popular educator, historian, trainer and political developer in Durham NC, she is developing our narrative work and documentation as lead editor and strategic advisor.
Contact Tia via email at Tia@parthershipfunds.org
Jamila Medley
She/Her/Hers
Jamila Medley is our Collective Courage Moderator. For over 20 years Jamila has supported mission-based organizations in the non-profit and cooperative business sectors. She is passionate about supporting individuals and teams through highly participatory processes focused on organizational development. Racial, gender, and economic justice-seeking strategies are centered in her approach to moving organizations toward transformational change.
From 2012-2021, Jamila served in governance roles and then as executive director of the Philadelphia Area Cooperative Alliance (PACA). At PACA, she partnered with other cooperators, elected officials, movement organizers, and funders to position cooperatively-owned enterprises as a robust and equitable economic development solution to economic and racial injustice in the Philadelphia region.
Jamila holds a M.S. degree in Organizational Dynamics from the University of Pennsylvania and earned her B.A. degree in Urban Studies from Connecticut College. She was an inaugural 2020 fellow in the Securing the Roots Fellowship and was the 2018 Philadelphia Community Fellow for the Shared Economics in Equitable Development Fellowship.
She serves on the boards of directors for the Food Co-op Initiative, Independence Public Media Foundation, Movement Alliance Project, and All Together Now PA.
Jamila lives with her partner, daughter and cat. Writing, watching televised singing competitions, gardening, crocheting, and spending time with family and friends bring her deep joy!
Contact Jamila via email at Jamila@partnershipfunds.org
Erin Casey
She/Her/Hers
Erin Casey is a senior advisor supporting the develop and growth of the The Partnership Action Fund (c4). She has a rich experience and expertise building programs for a just, reflective and inclusive democracy driven by her passion for justice and equity and challenging the politics of power and privilege. She has built a reputation for being thoughtful and intentional in her approach to leadership and organizational development, strategic planning and program design and evaluation.
Her 25-year career in advocacy and electoral politics spans efforts in dozens of states and nationally. She was the founding Executive Director of Pennsylvania Voice and has served on the boards of State Voices and Conservation PA. Prior to her tenure at Pennsylvania Voice, Erin worked with several progressive organizations where she honed her skills as an organizer, strategists, trainer and leader.
Most recently, Erin led Pennsylvania Voice to become a critical architect of an enhanced 501 (c)3 civic engagement culture in Pennsylvania. Under her leadership, Pennsylvania Voice has been on the leading edge working with partners to expand civic engagement infrastructure, democracy and protect voting rights.
Throughout her career, Erin built a keen understanding of political landscapes, and an ability to work with different types of organizations to understand their strengths, identify opportunities for growth and expand their ability to execute programs. Her expertise includes evaluation and analysis, program design and implementation, organization and leadership development, political advocacy, collective impact, organizing, and training. She is currently providing consulting services to strengthen the progressive movement.
Erin is mom to a silly, observant little boy and has started to master keeping her houseplants alive. Outside of work, you can find her planning the next adventure for her family, cooking, spending times outdoors or reading.
Contact Erin via email at Erinc@partnershipfunds.org
Dr. Geryll Robinson
She/They
Dr. Geryll Robinson also known as Dr. G. Love is a new paradigm consultant and creator of the Evolutionary Changemakers Global Leadership program. She/her/they is a Doctor of Naprapathy, Cross-Cultural Shamanic Practitioner, Teacher, Writer, and Reiki Master. Dr. G. Love is the visionary spaceholder for SoulShifting Retreats; an International Movement dedicated to the Preservation, Practice and Protection of Ancestral Wisdom Traditions, and a dedicated QTPOC grounded Earth Steward, Reparations Emissary, and Vibrational Gaytekeeper.
Contact Dr. G. via email at 5directionswellness@gmail.com
Aquia Smith
She/They
Aquia was born in the Redwoods, raised in the desert, returned to her ancestral home at the bayou, and found a home as a land steward at a collective sanctuary space in the South. She is a Conductor for Drinking Gourd and the Director for Black Land Liberation Initiative. Aquia has worked in social and environmental justice for 23 years and spent the last decade working on land-based Repair-ations strategies. Aquia has facilitated thousands of leaders and hundreds of organizations through transformative and strategic processes. Aquia has created several collective governance models and continues to support leaders and groups to transform and build structures rooted in her learnings. She has been a part of building Black Movement infrastructure, Environmental justice networks, and campaigns. Aquia is building decolonial wealth redistribution models that directly support the building of alternative economies that can heal the earth and all relations. Rooted in Afro-indigenous and ancestral wisdom traditions, Aquia focuses her organizing and healing work to support Black Queer and Trans earth stewards and healers working to repair and build a new paradigm economy.
Contact Aquia via email at aquia@blli.org
Monife Balogun
Monife
Monife Balogun is our Executive Operation Manager. Monife Balogun was born in Wadesboro North Carolina in 1954. During her early years of development, Monife was raised by her grandparents who understood it took a village to incorporate a strong foundation and community. Monife began to fight for racial equality at the young age of 12. Graduated high school in 1972. She joined IBM and had a long career of 36 years. During the last 14 years of that career she focused on the Project Management profession. As the Team Lead for over 80 Worldwide Project Managers, it afforded her the opportunity to travel to India, Argentina, and Brazil. Monife was also involved and lead several community projects continuing to focus on her motivation regarding equality and change.
Monife was a Lay Midwife and assisted with over 500 home and hospital births between 1984 and 1993 to help alleviate and support the stop of C-Section misuse within minority communities.. From 1990 – 1996 Monife was the Director of The Egyptian Te GoJu Martial Arts school. This program taught the skills required to build expertise in martial arts with a focus on the youth in Westchester County in New York. Along with the martial arts training, the youth were taught to operate as one unit regardless of their background and origin.
Monife is a wife, mother, grandmother, aunt, and great grandmother. Extracurricular activities included serving as the PTA President for Bereshith Cultural Institute, Director of Advocacy for a Youth Dance Program and Director of Mama Bee’s in home Day Care. Monife has received the Queen Esther Award and Keeper of the Dream Award for her inspirational contributions to children. Monife is a member of the FGFC (Fertile Ground Food Cooperative) and has volunteered her services to support the Marketing Outreach team for this organization including the role of the program leader for the Summer Farmers Market for 2 years. Monife also supports projects for Advance Carolina, NC Black Alliance, and Blueprint.
Monife earned an Technical Associate degree from Westchester Community College and a Early Childhood Associate Degree from Stanly Community College.
Contact Monife via email at Monife@partnershipfunds.org