Depending on the nature of the engagement, Allies for Change draws in a number of resource providers, including the Ally Training Partners whose biographies are featured below. All Allies for Change engagements are negotiated by Melanie Morrison, Allies for Change founder and director.

• Melanie S. Morrison
• Julia Watts Belser
• Rachel E. Harding
• Rahnee Patrick
• Dionardo Pizaña
• Monique Savage

• Melanie S. Morrison
• Allyson S. Bolt
• Karen Pace
• Chris Paige
• Diane S. Schmitz
• Hillary Stephenson
• Aaron Wilson-Ahlstrom
  
  

Melanie S. Morrison

Melanie S. Morrison is founder and Executive Director of Allies for Change. She is a seasoned anti-oppression educator, activist, author, and spiritual director with 22 years experience designing and facilitating transformational group process. Melanie is passionate about working with individuals and organizations to better understand the connections between systemic oppressions and to nurture collaborative action and authentic relationship across differences such as race, age, gender, abilities, and sexual orientation. She believes it is possible to grow ever more aware of the depth and complexity of injustice without surrendering our capacity for compassion, joy, and hope.

Prior to founding Allies for Change, Melanie served as Executive Director of The Leaven Center, a retreat and study center in Lyons, Michigan dedicated to nurturing the relationship between spirituality and social justice. In that capacity she worked with facilitators and presenters who offered more than 200 workshops, seminars, and trainings attended by 3,000 people working in social change movements. She has designed and led numerous programs addressing multiple oppressions and the connection between spirituality and social justice. In 1994, she co-founded Doing Our Own Work. an intensive anti-racism program for white people, and has co-facilitated this program for sixteen consecutive years.

Melanie has been a keynote speaker at national and regional conferences addressing issues of racial and sexual justice. She served as consultant to the United Church of Christ's Sacred Conversation on Race, a national initiative launched in April 2008. She is the author of three books including The Grace of Coming Home: Spirituality, Sexuality, and the Struggle for Justice (Pilgrim Press,1995). She has written 45 articles for American and Dutch magazines including The Other Side, Journal of Current Social Issues, IFOR Report, Hervormd Nederland, and The Witness.

As a United Church of Christ pastor, she served three congregations; two in Michigan and one in the Netherlands.  Melanie has been doing spiritual direction for 17 years and is a graduate of the Spiritual Directors Internship Program at St. Francis Retreat Center in DeWitt, Michigan. She serves as adjunct faculty at Chicago Theological Seminary.

Melanie graduated with a Masters of Divinity from Yale Divinity School (1978) and received her Ph.D. from the University of Groningen in The Netherlands (1998). She lives in Lyons, Michigan with her life partner, April Allison.

Julia Watts Belser

Julia Watts Belser is a rabbi, scholar, activist, and anti-oppression educator with a passion for LGBT issues, anti-racism, and disability rights. She has taught in diverse university, synagogue, and community-based settings, including the Graduate Theological Union, the Leaven Center for Spirituality and Social Change, the University of California, Davis, and the Masorti Lehrhaus in Berlin, Germany. A strong supporter of the intersections between spirituality and social change, Julia received rabbinic ordination from the transdenominational Academy for Jewish Religion, California.

Julia is Assistant Professor of Judaism in the Religious Studies department at Missouri State University.  She completed her doctorate in Jewish Studies at the University of California in Berkeley and the Graduate Theological Union. She has co-authored A Health Handbook for Women with Disabilities, published by Hesperian Foundation and distributed to grassroots groups and health workers around the world. Her poetry and essays have appeared in Midstream: A Journal of Jewish Thought; The Journal of Women and Religion, Kalliope: A Journal of Women’s Art and Literature; and Fireweed: A Feminist Quarterly.

As a writer and Jewish ritualist, Julia is engaged in crafting feminist theology and nurturing earth-based Jewish practice.  As a spiritual teacher and facilitator, Julia strives to blend passionate scholarship with prophetic witness, bringing deep spirituality to the pursuit of justice and teaching classic Jewish texts in a way that speak to our contemporary longings.

Rachel E. Harding

Rachel E. Harding is a historian, writer and consultant specializing in religious traditions of the Afro-Atlantic diaspora and the intersections of faith, culture and activism in contemporary social justice movements. She earned a PhD from the University of Colorado in 1997 and is author of numerous published essays and a book on Afro-Brazilian religion, A Refuge in Thunder: Candombléé and Alternative Spaces of Blackness (Indiana Univ. Press, 2000). In A Refuge of Thunder, she examines how enslaved Africans utilized candombléé to create spaces of refuge and resistance in 19th century Brazil.

Rachel is consulting writer for the Beloved Communities Initiative, a project which documents organizations around the country connecting compassionate social change with spirituality and ritual. She was a featured scholar and consultant for the PBS series “This Far By Faith”on African-American religion. She is also a poet and has published work in Callaloo, Chelsea, Feminist Studies, The International Review of African-American Art, Hambone, and in several anthologies.

In 1998, Rachel joined the staff of the Veterans of Hope Project – an interdisciplinary initiative on religion, healing, and participatory democracy, based at the Iliff School of Theology in Denver, Colorado. From 2000 through 2004, she was executive director of the Project and is currently lead consultant. Rachel is also Assistant Professor of Indigenous Spiritual Traditions in the Department of Ethnic Studies at the University of Colorado Denver

She is currently preparing a manuscript – based on her mother’s unfinished memoir – about southern African-American mysticism and the role of compassion, forgiveness, and reconciliation in social justice activism. Rachel lives in Denver where she writes from her home.

Rahnee K. Patrick

Rahnee K. Patrick is Director of Independent Living at Access Living in Chicago. She is a local and national leader in ADAPT, a disability justice organization that engages in nonviolent direct action to advocate for systemic and organizational change. As an anti-oppression educator, Rahnee specializes in leadership training for young adults and has been instrumental in mentoring a new generation of disability activists across the country.

In 2008, she was the recipient of the Paul Hearne Award of the American Association of People with Disabilities (AAPD.) Since 2008, she has served on AAPD’s board of directors. A member of the direct action group ADAPT and Not Dead Yet, Rahnee is also a co-founder of Feminist Response in Disability Activism (FRIDA).

Rahnee graduated in 1996 from Indiana University at South Bend, where she co-founded Students Together Active and Respected (STAAR), a group of students with disabilities. Shortly after graduating, she became involved in the independent living and disability rights movements, primarily through ADAPT. In 2007, the Governor appointed her to the Illinois State Advisory Council on the Education of Children with Disabilities.

Rahnee is an award-winning writer whose short stories have been published and aired on radio. She is the oldest of four children, the daughter of a Thai immigrant mother and a European American father. She and her husband Mike Ervin celebrated their sixth anniversary in 2012.

Dionardo Pizaña

Dionardo Pizaña is the diversity and personnel specialist for Michigan State University Extension. He has 19 years experience developing, teaching, and facilitating diversity education programs through Michigan State University Extension, Adrian College, and Siena Heights University. He is a nationally-recognized, highly sought-after multicultural consultant, speaker and trainer.

Dionardo has been active in grass-roots community organizations for years, working to bring scholars and speakers to local schools, developing and presenting powerful community educational events, and working with local projects that provide multicultural childrens’ books and training in elementary schools.. He has received numerous awards that recognize his life-long commitment to social justice, including the Martin Luther King, Jr. Community Service Award in Michigan’s Lenawee County.

Dionardo’s work as an activist and educator is grounded in his conviction that deep and lasting institutional change requires an equally strong commitment to nurturing authentic relationships across difference. He believes that authenticity is far more than mere friendship or working affiliation. It is based on trust, honesty, risk-taking, mutual responsibility, humility, and acceptance that tension in relationships is a necessary component that leads to growth.

With colleagues at Michigan State University Extension, Dionardo will be leading a groundbreaking cultural competency series in 2008-2009 entitled Developing Multicultural Competencies from the Inside Out: Skills for Lifelong Learning.

As a lifelong learner around issues related to social justice and change, Dionardo has participated in foundational learning opportunities such as cultural bridges, VISIONS training, Opening Doors and The People’s Institute. His ongoing commitment to issues of social justice continues a legacy of community and social justice work inspired by his parents and grandparents.  He lives with his wife Denise in Tecumseh, MI and is deeply connected to his daughter Kristina, his son Carlos, his daughter-in-law Kim, and his three grandchildren, Aiyana, Joaquin and Mateo.

Monique Savage

Monique Savage, MSW,  has been the director of the Counseling Services at Adrian College for the past 23 years. She has taught classes in the Sociology department and the History department. Monique has 25 years of experience developing, lecturing and presenting multicultural and diversity programs throughout the country. She specializes in issues that impact African American women and is much sought after as a speaker.

She was born in Chicago, Illinois, and raised on a small farm in rural Western Michigan. Monique attended Olivet College where she earned a BA degree and received her MSW from the University of Michigan. She has worked for the Adrian Training School (then the Girl’s Training School) and the State of California Department of Social Services. She has partnered with Michigan State University Extension diversity training team for the past 10 years and is a frequent presenter at the Leaven Center in Lyons, Michigan, a place that promotes issues of peace and justice. She co-founded the Woodson /Wheatley children’s reading program and the Christ Temple Children’s writing club.

She has been the recipient of the Martin Luther King, Jr. Community Service Award award, the Hispanic Heritage award, the Phenomenal Woman award, and the NAACP Humanitarian Award.

Allyson S. Bolt

Allyson S. Bolt is a social worker, educator, and advocate for social justice. She has extensive experience working with survivors of domestic violence and with lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer communities, both in Grand Rapids and in Lansing. She currently works with people who are homeless, providing case management, employment seeking assistance, and group facilitation for people experiencing loss and trauma.

Allyson furthered her work in social justice advocacy at The Leaven Center, an organization committed to nurturing the relationship between spirituality and social justice. It was in her work there that she realized the urgent and critical work of continuous examination of her own privilege and that this work must be done from a place of love, hope, and patience. She believes that if we stay stuck, afraid, or silent, we contribute to the oppression. In her spheres of influence, Allyson is committed to uprooting the evils of racism and all forms of oppression. She has a Masters in Social Work from Michigan State University and currently resides in East Lansing, Michigan.

Karen Pace

Karen Pace is a program developer, educator and facilitator with Michigan State University Extension and her work is grounded in social and economic justice and change. She has worked as part of talented and diverse teams for more than 20 years to create efforts that address root causes of complex issues at the personal, interpersonal, institutional and cultural levels. She and her colleagues have provided hundreds of impactful programs and processes for thousands of people across the United States and her work has extended to youth and family agencies, schools, universities, juvenile justice organizations, faith-based communities, businesses, foundations, state and federal agencies and other groups.

As a white woman, Karen believes that a pathway to deep change is a lifelong process of learning and action focused on addressing white privilege, racial healing and racial equity – as well as the intersections and complexities of identities and forms of oppression across gender, class, disabilities, sexual orientation and other differences.

Karen’s expertise and experiences also include addressing issues of bullying, bias and harassment, building authentic relationships and partnerships across differences, and creating safe and inclusive environments that support the healthy development of children, youth, adults, organizations and communities. She is a published author, her print and video curriculum materials are used by a wide variety of organizations across the country and she has received numerous individual and team awards for her work.

Karen is grateful to the activists and teachers who have come before her and on whose shoulders she stands – as well as to the mentors and friends who continue to challenge and support her process of learning, growth and development. Karen’s life-work is centered in love, hope and healing as she works in “fiercely loving ways” to dismantle all forms of oppression at the personal, interpersonal, institutional and cultural levels. While she possesses extensive knowledge and experiences around issues of oppression, she sees herself as a committed and passionate learner who facilitates dialogue and discussion in powerful and transformative ways. She brings to this work great strength and powerfulness balanced with great openness and humility. Karen is honored to be part of the team of gifted educators and facilitators who comprise Allies for Change.

Chris Paige

Chris Paige is an organizer, educator, and writer who is particularly concerned with race, gender, and sexuality within the context of faith communities. She was on the staff of the award-winning progressive, ecumenical Christian magazine The Other Side from 1994 to 2003, including several years as publisher. Chris has been involved in organizing around issues of sexuality, gender, and racial identity for more than 10 years.

Having come out as a lesbian in 1994, Chris has been involved in LGBT faith-based organizing and education for more than a decade. With her partner, Beth Stroud, Chris spent several years (2003-2005) weathering a nationally publicized church trial and judicial process, which resulted in the loss of Beth's ordination credentials.

In 1999, Chris founded TransFaith Online to share in one place the few resources she could find at that time regarding the experience of faith from a transgender perspective. TransFaith was relaunched in late 2007 and now contains links to hundreds of resources on the internet.

Despite being raised in a liberal-minded, white household, Chris experienced an awakening in 2000 (at an LGBT Christian event, called WOW2000), making her aware of the on-going dynamics of racism among progressives. Chris has written about that experience and continues to work to educate others. She is a certified trainer in the Doing Our Own Work seminar, which is designed for anti-racist white people. Chris's experience as a foster-parent also informs her understanding of racism and systemic oppression.

In addition to her continuing work as an educator, Chris also works as a freelance consultant (www.ready-set-go.biz) to various small businesses and non-profit organizations with particular emphasis on website development.

Diane S. Schmitz

Diane S. Schmitz is an educator, minister, and writer focused on facilitating social change with an emphasis on racial equity. She is currently a director in Student Development at Seattle University, does organizational consulting, and is part of a team creating a new outreach ministry called “Sacred Action for Racial Justice.”

Diane has worked with individuals and organizations in a broad array of arenas including higher education, small & large corporations, nonprofit boards, and ministry. She has 17 years of experience providing spiritual direction, leading workshops and retreats, consulting, and has served as a United Church of Christ pastor. Twelve years of work in higher education have included opportunities to create professional development initiatives in multicultural competencies, understanding power and privilege, and becoming an inclusive organization. Diane has served as a guest lecturer in classrooms and presented at regional and national conferences. She has also facilitated discussions and study groups in church communities to help people gain insight about how being socialized in a “white racial frame” has created attitudes and beliefs that shape the church and society.

As part of her doctorate degree completion in June 2009, Diane’s dissertation research focused on the impact of systemic whiteness in higher education. She recently started a blog which explores what it means to be white and how attending to the individual and systemic impact of whiteness matters in the work for racial justice. http://whitematters.wordpress.com.

What motivates Diane’s work for social justice is a deep belief in the capacity for change in individuals and organizations. She believes in the importance of both reflection and action as a holistic approach to becoming effective change agents in our communities and the world.

Hillary Stephenson

Hillary Stephenson has been facilitating dialogue and transformative group process on issues of oppression and social justice for ten years. She has worked in the nonprofit field in the areas of violence against women and youth leadership development, including serving as Program Manager/Director of Training at Public Allies Los Angeles from 2005-2007.  Since 2004 Hillary has been a member of the leadership team of AWARE-L.A. (Alliance of White Anti-Racists Everywhere-Los Angeles), where she co-developed AWARE-L.A.’s workshop series on Radical White Community/Radical White Identity, and was one of the lead facilitators of its Summer Institute in 2009.  Attending Doing Our Work at Leaven in 2001 was Hillary’s first introduction to white anti-racist dialogue spaces, and this experience solidified her commitment to racial justice work.

Hillary’s commitment to social justice and spiritual practice were born at the same moment, when at 17 years old her father, brother, and maternal grandmother died together in a car accident.  This resulted in a profound shift in her relationship to life, and eventually led her to practice Buddhism at the Zen Center of Los Angeles where she is currently a member.  As an undergraduate at the University of Michigan, Hillary’s relationship to social justice work was transformed when she travelled with a group of students to South Africa with her professor, Nesha Haniff, to conduct HIV/AIDS health education rooted in the pedagogical approach of Paulo Freire.  This experience, combined with a recent return to the Women’s Studies classroom as adjunct faculty at California State University in Long Beach, sparked Hillary’s passion for creating pedagogy that transforms oppression, invites creativity, and affirms our inherent humanity.

Hillary received her B.A. in Women’s Studies and Masters of Social Work from the University of Michigan.  Currently a doctoral candidate in Transformative Inquiry at the California Institute of Integral Studies (CIIS), Hillary conducts research on engaged Buddhism and the relationship between Zen and transformative pedagogy.  She is currently a Frederick P. Lenz Fellow in Buddhist Studies and American Culture and Values at Naropa University in Boulder, Colorado.

Aaron Wilson-Ahlstrom

Aaron Wilson-Ahlstrom is a teacher who is passionate about the role of schools in working for social justice. As one of the founding teachers, he taught for four years at University Prep High School (UPHS) in Detroit. By providing an individualized, student-centered learning approach, UPHS has been highly successful at graduating students and ensuring that they are accepted to and enroll in college. 

Currently, Aaron works for the Henry Ford Learning Institute, a small non-profit that is developing a network of small, innovative charter schools based on the Henry Ford Academy in Dearborn, Michigan. Schools in the network leverage community partnerships and a rigorous and engaging curriculum to provide high quality educational options in urban school districts.

Aaron believes that racism is present everywhere and, while it does not oppress white people, it does damages them by making white people complicit in the oppression of people of color. He sees anti-racism work as critically important if white people are to regain their collective humanity.  In addition to being a training partner with Allies For Change, Aaron is a community training partner with the Michigan State University Extension multicultural awareness program.  He is also a deacon at Amistad Community Church, a multi-racial, Afro-centric, open and affirming church.

Aaron received his Bachelors Degree in Social Sciences from the University of Michigan in 1995, where he created an individualized concentration to study issues of social justice and the role of education in social change.  He returned to University of Michigan to get his Masters of Arts in Education and secondary teaching certification in 2000.  He lives in Ann Arbor, Michigan, with his life partner, Alicia, and their two sons, Malcolm and Langston.