Meet The Panelists
Susannah Darrow, CFRE
Susannah Darrow is the Co-Founder of Purpose Possible, an Atlanta-based consulting firm that empowers mission driven organizations to overcome the roadblocks that prevent them from making their purpose possible. Purpose Possible works with over 120 nonprofit organizations nationally to support their capacity-based needs.
She currently serves as the Arts and Culture Advisor for Atlanta City Council District 2 for Council-member Amir Farokhi. Susannah was the founding Executive Director of BURNAWAY, a nonprofit arts organization dedicated to providing critical coverage and dialogue about the arts in the Southeast.
She has served on the Board of Directors of the UGA Lamar Dodd School of Art, Georgia Committee of the National Museum of Women in the Arts and #weloveatl, and the Advisory Board for Atlanta Celebrates Photography, ART PAPERS magazine, the Forward Arts Foundation Emerging Artist Award Committee, and Hudgens Award Advisory Committee.
Eileen Lee
Eileen is co-founder of The Lola, a members club and community for professional womxn located in Old Fourth Ward across from Ponce City Market. Eileen started her career as a management consultant at Accenture. In 2011, she started Venture for America (VFA), a national nonprofit and fellowship for recent grads to launch their careers as entrepreneurs, She spent 6 years as its COO, and VFA continues its success under new leadership - recruiting over 200 Fellows each year and supporting conscious entrepreneurs building meaningful companies.
Eileen is a startup, culture and community builder with a focus on building inclusive communities. Eileen serves as an advisor and mentor at Venture for America, serves on the Changemaker Board at Hands on Atlanta and is a board member at Spring Research Foundation and Sur Legal. She is a born and raised New Yorker and a graduate of Columbia University.
Nikki Porcher
Nikki Porcher, the founder of the nonprofit organization Buy From A Black Woman, has made it her mission to empower, educate, and inspire Black Women Business Owners; and to raise awareness for the need to support and #BuyFromABlackWoman because Black Women deserve advocacy that extends beyond words.
Buy From A Black Woman equips Black Women with the tools and resources they need to be successful in business, and is one of the largest communities of Black Women Business Owners in the US and across the globe. Her nonprofit provides educational programs, funding, and an online directory that makes Black Women-Owned Businesses easier to find.
Her list of accomplishments includes securing partnerships with H&M and Goldman Sachs and being one of the first platforms dedicated to Black Woman-Owned Businesses with her online directory. However, the accomplishments that matter most for Nikki are her efforts to keep going and to inspire others in the process.
Keisha Reaves LPC, MS, PMH-C, CPCS
Keisha Reaves is the owner and clinical director of Push Thru Therapy. She is a Georgia native that has witnessed the stigma of mental health and has made it her mission to normalize therapy.
Keisha is certified in perinatal mental health serving birthing parents who are trying to conceive, have fertility issues, have experienced infant loss, transitioning into parenthood as well as perinatal mood and anxiety disorders.
Keisha currently is a facilitator for the Mocha Moms Group at the Atlanta Birth Center and she facilitates her own Black Moms group through Push Thru Therapy. Black maternal mental health and reproductive education is a strong passion of hers as she was a founding coordinator and presenter for the Black Maternal Mental Health Summit for PSI-Georgia.
Providing access to resources and providing mental health services to women of color is a mission of Keisha's.
Brandi Shelton, “The Tea Lady”
Born in New Orleans, LA, Brandi Shelton {AKA 'the tea lady'}, grew up with a grandmother that had a concoction for every aliment. While traveling abroad, Brandi found visiting tea rooms as a way to learn the lay of the land and meet a new friend over a cup.
Back in the States, blending tea leaves with a little bit of fruit or herbs became her way of making the perfect cup. Brandi decided she would make fun and fanciful blends and share them with the world–and just add honey tea company was born.
Since 2006, she's blended what feels right and tastes delicious. Plain and simple with a lot of love. Brandi and just add honey have been featured in Essence, New York Times, Black Enterprise, MSNBC, Travel Noire, AJC, and dozens of other print and news television publications.
Lisa Flick Wilson
Lisa Flick Wilson is the co-creator and lead of design, strategy, and partnerships, and facilitation with the Radical Optimist Collective. Radical Optimist was co-created in 2018 by a circle of practitioners from a wide diversity of backgrounds and areas of expertise. The collective originally came together to support and guide individuals and groups doing intentional racial awareness and racial healing work as prompted by experiences in Montgomery, AL at the Equal Justice Initiative's (EJI) Legacy Museum and National Memorial for Peace and Justice–growing further in 2020, triggered by the COVID pandemic shut down and the heightened attention to racial justice that righteously rose up in the spring of 2020 as an outcry to the murders of George Floyd, Breanna Taylor and so many more.
Lisa's work is grounded by racial healing and trauma-informed frameworks that recognize the need for holding individuals in their personal journeys while supporting a group's shared experience. She honors and acknowledges that each individual comes with their own lived experience, ancestral history, trauma, and current context that requires an individualized approach within the bounds of any group session. Lisa does not shy away from putting race at the center of conversations, understands her place as a white woman in racial equity, and welcomes being in the struggle of dismantling racism.
Meet The Artist
Lisa A. Soltis
I've been in the field of art + design for a good 20+ years ... primarily in love with paint. My career has taken me from coast to coast, leading mixed media projects and installations for the experiential event and marketing industry, stepping foot in floral, jewelry, textile, graphic, and mural design, all the while continuing my endeavors in personal craft and fine art.
I am a mama of two boys, and currently reside in Atlanta, GA. I make it a priority to acquire found, natural objects in my personal botanical builds. Repurposing pieces of nature in combination with manufactured hardware and paint, provides a tension that requires layered mindfulness in composition, and ultimately the message it evokes to the viewer.
Color theory, and the role color plays in instigating discord or what promotes harmony, is of utmost interest to me. Evidence is found throughout my paintings and mixed media installations.