The Black Feminist Grant Review Committee is the Black Feminist Fund’s participatory grantmaking decision-making body.
The Black Feminist Grant Review Committee makes decisions about who receives funding. The Black Feminist Grant Review Committee also supports the Black Feminist Fund to continue to improve our grantmaking and to strengthen the participatory nature of our grantmaking.
Members of the Committee serve up to 2 years and receive an annual stipend to cover the costs related to their participation.


Agness Chindimba
Grant Review Committee Member
Agness Chindimba is Deaf and has over 15 years of experience working with deaf children and young women with disabilities. Agness is actively involved in advocating for equitable rights, access, and opportunities for women and girls with disabilities. Among her many achievements, Agness was coordinating the team that translated the national constitution into Sign Language in 2018. Agness is a Mandela Washington Fellow (2016), on the Board of various nonprofits working on disability rights and access in Zimbabwe, and is a nominee of the AMH100 Great Zimbabweans in Civic Leadership. Agness holds a BA with Honors in English and a Graduate Diploma in Education from the University of Zimbabwe, and Masters in Educational Management, Leadership and Development from Africa University. She is currently studying for Doctorate in Social Policy at Atlantic International University. She is passionate about social justice.

Maria Clara Araújo dos Passos
Grant Review Committee Member
Maria Clara Araújo dos Passos (she/her) is a Brazilian Afrotransfeminist, educator and political articulator with activist and professional experiences in social education, articulation with social movements, advocacy and political institutionality. She has a degree in Pedagogy from the Pontifical Catholic University of São Paulo. Currently, she is a Master’s student in Education (Sociology of Education) at the University of São Paulo. She holds a Certificate in Afro-Latin American Studies from the Institute for Afro-Latin American Studies at the Hutchins Center at Harvard University. Her current research investigates anti-trans political-legislative attacks and their implications for Brazilian education. She has addressed issues such as the intersections between gender (identity) and race, decolonial curricula, progressive social movements in Latin America, trans+feminism, and more recently far-right transnational movements and their anti-gender educational agendas.

Raphaella Servius-Harmois
Grant Review Committee Member
Raphaella Servius-Harmois (Ella/Ela/She) is an Afro-Guianese woman, originally Arowaka from the geographical lands of Guiana in the Amazon. She is a translator, freelance researcher in language systems of the African diaspora, and language teacher at INTERRMUN’Ã Centro de Línguas e Tradições da Amazônia, which she founded in 2007. She conceptualized the “FANMNÈG FÓ” [Re-empowered Black Woman] workshop as a decolonial process of self-affirmation and self-esteem for Afro-descendant women of the Amazon. She participates in seminars, regional and international symposiums in which she contributes to the valorization of ancestral oral traditions. Committed to the recognition and respect of the realities and self-affirmed identities of women of African descent in her region, she is a member of CICA, the International Commission of Afro-descendant Colloquia.

Vanessa Thomas
Grant Review Committee Member
Vanessa serves as the Director for Global Programs at Decolonizing Wealth Project, a foundation disrupting the flow of wealth and capital through reparative giving. She leads the strategy and management of Decolonizing Wealth’s activities outside North America. Dedicated to power shifting philanthropy, equity, and everything Black. Vanessa has spent her career disrupting sector norms, from single story African narratives in communications, and pervasive anti-Black racism, to the way and who donors fund. She recently joined FORWARD, the African women’s led charity, as a Trustee, sits on the steering group for The Baobab Foundation, an organisation led by, down and for, African heritage and Global Majority people, and is the Co-Founder and Director of Diasporic Development, a community for Black professionals interested in or working in social justice.

Leila Yahaya
Grant Review Committee Member
Leila Yahaya (they/them/theirs) is a Black, Queer, Muslim, feminist, and a human rights activist who lives their life as a political statement and as a way to create more opportunities for LBQTI persons to claim their spaces, own and speak up against all sort of abuses and violations. Leila is an activist in the women’s, LGBTIQ+ rights field and administration whose work has positively impacted the field of gender, sexual & reproductive health, consent, LGBT+ rights, and environmental activism work through art and feminism. They are currently the co-founder and director of One Love Sisters Ghana and doubles up as the project lead as well as a consent facilitator for Ghana House. In kicking against gender-based violence, Leila adopted an intervention that focuses on promoting relationships based on respect and equality through education. They believe in identifying and removing gender inequalities which is denying LGBTQ+ persons fair access to their fundamental rights, employment opportunities, advancement and academic achievement.

Roya Hassan
Grant Review Committee Member
Roya Hassan (Sudan) is a Program coordinator, podcaster and feminist writer whose areas of expertise as a disability justice advocate & feminist knowledge producer is vast. Roya is interested in writing, documenting, and producing feminist knowledge, part of “the feminist school project” through coordinating and facilitating sessions discussing “colonialism, capitalism, and feminism in the south”. Roya believes in social and economic justice. Roya is also interested in participating in the repositioning of women’s oral history, with an interest in feminist organizing, renewing solidarity tools and building bridges. Roya also volunteers with a number of grassroots feminist organizations inside Sudan, and feminist platforms in the Middle East and North Africa.

Zanele Sibanda
Grant Review Committee Member
Zanele has spent her career working with marginalized communities to support social justice. Her strong belief in the power of movements and social change grew out of her family’s commitment to the struggle for independence in Zimbabwe. She gained greater insight into the theory of social change as a member of a research team at the Chapin Hall Center for Children at the University of Chicago. Zanele then spent six years working on racial justice with communities on the South Side of Chicago as a Director of Policy and Programs. On her return to Zimbabwe, she led the Rural Craft Cottage industries focused on building up the personal, social, economic, and political empowerment of women. She later joined Firelight Foundation, where she led a 10-member team to identify, partner and learn with grassroots organizations while managing grants of more than $15 million to over 200 grassroots organizations. She currently serves as the Director of Fenomenal Funds, a feminist funder collaborative working to strengthen the ecosystem of funds that resource feminist movements across the globe.

Johannah-Rae Reyes
Grant Review Committee Member
Johannah-Rae Reyes is a project coordinator, educator and social development specialist focused on sign language communication in the civil society sector. She has professional experience in Guyana and Trinidad and Tobago conducting research and organising community empowerment projects for socially excluded communities. Reyes holds a BSc. Geography from The University of the West Indies, St. Augustine and has published several critical essays on Caribbean social history in national, regional, and international outlets. Johannah is serving as Projects and Outreach Coordinator at CAISO: sex and gender justice. Her pride and joy is CAISO’s Sign Together project.

Bianca Santana
Grant Review Committee Member
Bianca Santana is a journalist. She has a Master’s degree in education and a Doctorate in information science from USP, with a thesis on memory and writing by Black women. Author of “Continuo preta: a vida de Sueli Carneiro” (Companhia das Letras, 2021) and “Quando me descobri negra” (SESI-SP, 2015). Member of SOF – Sempreviva Organização Feminista, she is a board member of organizations such as the Marielle Franco Institute. Through Casa Sueli Carneiro, she collaborates with the Black Coalition for Rights.

Wendyam Micheline Kabore
Grant Review Committee Member
Wendyam Micheline Kabore is a human rights activist, pan-Africanist and feminist. As a Manager/Computer scientist, she holds a certificate in gender and development studies obtained in 2019, but also a Masters in Computer Science and a license in management of NGOs and associations among others. Committed to an egalitarian world that respects the rights of girls and women, she carries the destiny of the Pananetugri Initiative for Women’s Welfare (IPBF), a Burundian NGO (IPBF), a Burkinabe NGO committed to the promotion of girls’ and women’s rights. Wendyam Micheline is convinced that the development and well-being of girls and women and women’s well being is through their empowerment and committed leadership. She is passionate about gender relations in sub-Saharan Africa and their impact on the lives of millions of girls and women.

Yanith Cristancho Segura
Grant Review Committee Member
Yanith Cristancho Segura aka Naki (They/Them) is a queer, Black descendant of the African diaspora in Colombia. Activist and artivist around the struggle for the rights of Black people with counter-hegemonic gender identities and sexual orientations; focusing on art as a transgressive cathartic medium and healing through spirituality whose infinite magic is the best weapon to survive and resist all oppressions and inherited pain, because we are the ancestors of the future and the patterns of pain must begin to break today. Yanith belongs to the Matamba Afrodiasporic Action Collective of Black women united around Afro-feminist activism to conspire, heal and work together for more dignified realities for Black women. Yanith also co-founded Posá Suto, an Afrocentric space directed especially to Black trans, queer, non-binary, two-spirit and gender dissident people in general, in order to offer them a safe space where they can be protagonists of real transformations through art and healing.