What's the role of healing in social transformation?

Featured Speakers

Deepa Iyer

Building Movement Project

Deepa Iyer is a South Asian American writer, strategist, and lawyer. Her work is rooted in Asian American, South Asian, Muslim, and Arab communities where she spent fifteen years in policy advocacy and coalition building in the wake of the September 11th attacks and ensuing backlash. Currently, Deepa leads projects on solidarity and social movements at the Building Movement Project, a national nonprofit organization that catalyzes social change through research, strategic partnerships, and resources for movements and nonprofits. She conducts workshops and trainings, uplifts narratives through the Solidarity Is This podcast, and facilitates solidarity strategy for cohorts and networks. Previously, Deepa served as executive director of South Asian Americans Leading Together (SAALT) for a decade, and also held positions at Race Forward, the US Department of Justice’s Civil Rights Division, the Asian Pacific American Legal Resource Center, and the Asian American Justice Center.  

Deepa’s first book, We Too Sing America: South Asian, Arab, Muslim, and Sikh Immigrants Shape Our Multiracial Future (The New Press, 2015), chronicles community-based histories in the wake of 9/11 and received a 2016 American Book Award. Deepa’s most recent book (2022), a guide based on the social change ecosystem map that she created, is called Social Change Now: A Guide for Reflection and Connection. 

Deepa serves on the advisory council of the Emergent Fund. She has been an adjunct professor at the University of Maryland in the Asian American Studies and Public Policy programs.  Deepa is an immigrant who moved to Kentucky from Kerala (India) when she was twelve years old. She graduated from the University of Notre Dame Law School and Vanderbilt University.  

Nanci Luna Jiménez

Luna Jiménez Institute for Social Transformation

Nanci Luna Jiménez has committed to her own healing for more than 30 years to be a transformative guide, heart-centered listener, and authentic companion for leaders and change-makers committed to racial healing and social justice. Since founding the Luna Jiménez Institute for Social Transformation in 1994, she has reached tens of thousands of people with her core message of human goodness and connection as a transformational approach to social change.

As a sought after TEDx speaker, coach, and master-level facilitator, Nanci’s approach honors the legacy and teachings of Dr. Erica “Ricky” Sherover-Marcuse, who coined the term “unlearning racism,” and Lillian Roybal Rose, M.Ed., an expert in cross-cultural communication.

Nanci was a Fellow with the Presidio Institute’s Cross Sector Leadership Program. She completed the Executive Leadership Program through the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University and the Center for Creative Leadership in Brussels, Belgium as a National Hispana Leadership Institute (NHLI) Fellow. In August 2001 she attended the United Nations World Conference against Racism Non-Governmental Forum in Durban, South Africa as a delegate with United to End Racism (UER) and served as an international observer for the Haitian presidential elections in 1995. She was a Ford Foundation Fellow and a Ph.D. candidate at the University of California, Santa Cruz, and received her BA cum laude from Yale University. She also attended the Universidad de Puerto Rico, Recinto de Río Piedras and completed El Programa Interdiciplinario de la Mujer at the Colegio de México in Mexico City.

Of Afro-Puerto Rican and Mexican heritage, Nanci was born in Detroit, MI, and raised in Detroit and Tucson, AZ. She currently lives in Portland, OR.