In this two-part conversation, Natasha Johnson, shares her impressive experience in both the nonprofit and academic sectors. For over two decades, she has been an activist, educator, lawyer, and artist working primarily on intersectional gender justice. She served as the executive director of several nonprofit organizations, as an anti-trafficking legal specialist drafting reform legislation in the Solomon Islands, and as a director of education working to support homeless LGBTQ youth. She is skilled at creating arts-based programming that integrates human rights and social justice awareness in elementary through graduate school environments. She has also taught courses in law, ethics, policy, civic engagement, education, nonprofit leadership, business development, and more. in her scholarly roles, she has been a professor and a director of academic programs at multiple colleges and universities, including Metropolitan College, St. Joseph’s College, Adelphi University, and Medgar Evers College.

In 2015, she founded Globalizing Gender, a nonprofit organization committed to creating a just world and preventing gender-based violence through capacity building, law, governance, and awareness. In 2018, she organized New York City’s inaugural march to end female genital mutilation and cutting (FGM/C) in the United States and was one of the lead contributors to a local statute that created a mayoral-appointed culturally aware task force on FGM/C, the first of its kind in the country.

After years of selfless work in diverse communities across the globe, Natasha is at an inflection point in her career and we’re fortunate to get a glimpse of how she’s approaching finding and settling into a new next.

Where to find Natasha?
On LinkedIn
On Instagram
On Facebook
Her TEDxFlatbush Talk on YouTube

What’s Natasha reading?
All the Sinners Bleed by S.A. Cosby
The Revelation of Dionne Daphne by Mara Brock Akil
Delicious Foods by James Hannaham

Other topics of interest:
About Flatbush, Brooklyn
About Brooklyn’s oldest High School - Boys and Girls High School
About the Solomon Islands
Melanesian, Polynesian and Micronesian peoples of the Pacific
Revist Glocal Citizen, Brigitte Perenyi’s own personal experience in the trokosi system
What defines Gender-based Violence?
What is FGM/C?
What is a B-Corp?
About Tower Records

Special Guest: Natasha R. Johnson.

We’re picking up more momentum toward African progress sharing the stories of dynamic diasporans making impact in the reparatory justice space. On the eve of Africa Day, I attended the premier screening of Omitted, a short film exploring reparatory justice and the legacies of colonialism by Lavinya Stennett, founder of The Black Curriculum. Raised in the UK with Jamaican roots, she founded The Black Curriculum in 2019 at age 22 shortly after finishing her studies at London’s School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) which included a study abroad program in New Zealand. Her learning and experience with indigenous communities in New Zealand joined with her activism as a student at SOAS are the framework for the craft of truthtelling that is at the core of The Black Curriculum.

Believing in the power of education, social impact and youth social entrepreneurship, her work has been recognised globally from Vogue and GQ to the historic Freedom of the City of London Award in 2024. She also has written on social and cultural themes throughout the African diaspora for outlets including the Guardian, Black Ballad, Quartz Africa.

Expanding her entrpreneurship journey, in 2024 Lavinya co-founded the Racial Impact Collective, an initiative supporting social entrepreneurs and seeking equity in the grant making world. The future is brighter with knowing that there is a generation fo social innovators with creative talents like Lavinya committed to justice for marginalized peoples.

Where to find Lavinya?
https://www.lavinyastennett.co.uk
TheBlackCurriculum.com
On LinkedIn
On Instagram
On Facebook
On YouTube

What’s Lavinya reading?
Material World by Ed Conway
Free: Coming of Age at the End of History by Lea Ypi

Other topics of interest:
Portland and Saint Thomas, Jamaica
Barbados and the Welcome Stamp Visa - Note: the capital is Bridgetown, not Christ Church
The SOAS Walter Rodney Prize
Dream New Scholarship
Univrsity of Waikato
About the Treaty of Waitangi and the latest on the [protest haka in the New Zealand’s Parliament seen around the globe](linkhttps://www.aljazeera.com/news/2025/6/5/new-zealand-parliament-suspends-maori-mps-who-performed-protest-haka)
About Omitted production partner, Transmission
About Peace First

Special Guest: Lavinya Stennett.