Latrina Kelly-James

Latrina brings a commitment to driving equity from spaces of liberation;  building and centering the power of voices of Black and Brown  communities; and driving liberation as a collective community and  organizational practice across differences. With equity at the center,  she has provided strategic leadership and capacity building to forge  collaborative community and institutional partnerships, utilize data and  community voice to drive policies to reduce harm, reallocate resources  to communities, and support community access to and sustainability of  funding.

She is currently the Director of Training and Technical Assistance for  the Community Based Public Safety Collective, a national collective that  builds neighborhood leadership to advance safety, and preserve the  integrity and tradition of Black and Brown community interventionist  work. She leads the Collective’s work to ensure equity in access to  public funding through rapidly building the infrastructure, capacity and  support needed to scale, and educating on the necessity of Black, Brown  and Indigenous-led safety.

She is also Principal of Oya Strategies, a liberation-centered equity  consulting and capacity building firm. She recently served as Chief of  Equity & Racial Justice at the Center for Popular Democracy,  building the organization’s internal equity culture, and shaping its  voice around racial justice. Latrina served as a Director of Training  and Capacity Building with Equal Justice USA, creating racial equity for  Black and Brown survivors of violence through building community  organizations’ capacity to access federal and other sources of funding  to advance their healing. She is former Director of the Charlotte  Mecklenburg Drug Free Coalition and formerly served as the Deputy  Director and interim Executive Director for Junta for Progressive Action  in New Haven, CT, where she led coalition-building and advocacy  strategies around ending oppressive federal immigration policies, and  pushed against racial profiling in local police departments .

She is on the board of CHEER Institute, whose mission is to eradicate  the impact of racial and ethnic discrimination and injustice through  community education and community building. Latrina is a past Fellow  with the Justice Policy Network, a Washington DC-based leadership  program. Latrina lives in Charlotte, NC with her husband and two  children. She does this work for her ancestors and her children.