CLEVELAND OWNS - Key Persons

Job Titles:

• Member of the Board
• Technologist
• Director of Neighborhood Partnerships & Equity at DigitalC

Adam Drue King is a technologist and creative whose work focuses on digital access, equity, inclusion and innovation as means for community and economic development in northeastern Ohio and beyond. Through his role as Director of Neighborhood Partnerships & Equity at DigitalC, Adam was able to help drive the mission of making Greater Cleveland's digital future more equitable and help shepherd in a primary initiative delivering wireless internet to un- and underconnected communities in Cleveland. Adam's ongoing projects and areas of interest include: pursuing the activation of public spaces in nontraditional ways, continuing to help lower the bar for entry into the digital age with innovation and technology, bridging the digital divide, and advocating for and powering-with residents and neighborhoods throughout the region to ensure access to tools and resources they desire. Adam also serves on the Board of the Dunham Tavern Museum and the Cleveland Heritage Baseball Museum. He brings passion, commitment, and creativity to all of his efforts as he strives toward his vision of a more equitable, activated, and connected Northeast Ohio.

Bogdan is learning to cooperate and organize, putting them both into practice as he works to energize a solidarity economy as a new team member with Cleveland Owns. He believes doing this work well involves striking many balances and staying aware of the trade-offs all must make when building a new world in the shell of the old. He enjoys the seasons, gardening, the water, and growing along with his friends and comrades.

Craig is a committed organizer passionate about advancing democracy on and off the shop floor. Originally from Portland, Oregon, Craig worked for a local SEIU affiliate, helping to build healthcare justice for Oregon's homecare workers. Now in Cleveland, Craig is excited to build collective ownership of our power! When not organizing, Craig enjoys riding his bike and spending time with his two cats (though not at the same time!).

Job Titles:

• Member of the Board
• Director of Design

Dawn N. Mayes is the Director of Design Entrepreneurship and Inclusion at Kent State University, where she creates viable pipelines for HBCU students to attend graduate school, provides technical assistance to startup diverse Architecture firms including Black, Hispanic, Native American, and the Asian population, and brings lectures to the university to bring awareness to Design Entrepreneurship and Diversity. As a serial entrepreneur, Dawn shares one of her natural born talents to promote healing communities. Her company, Designs by Danico is her online store that sells her original artwork on canvas. Her tagline, "Healing People and Places Through Art", allows her creative space to empower her audience. Her original works include intentional color selections, the use of symbolism, and Reiki to share messages of self-healing, self-care and empowerment. Dawn grew up in the suburbs of Cleveland, Ohio. She is an Army veteran, an artist, an entrepreneur, a proud Florida A & M University graduate, where she received her Bachelors of Architectural Studies, and an alumna of Kent State University, where she received her Masters in Architecture with a Certificate in Urban Design. In early 2022, she was also awarded an Artist Residency for Karamu House's Resident in the House program. She is a charter member of the Greater Cleveland Chapter of FAMU National Alumni Association and serves as the chapter President.

Job Titles:

• Founding Board Member

Deborah was born and raised in Hough, where her father was the first Black homeowner in the neighborhood. She is a founding board member of The BC Block Club, a group that is restoring Hough's legacy and reimagining its future, and President of St. Paul AME Zion Church Credit Union, a Black-owned financial institution founded in 1956.

Job Titles:

• Member of the Board
• Board Member / Indigo

Indigo Bishop is a lifelong Clevelander, facilitator, and strategist specializing in sustainable development. Guided by her passion for cross-cultural dialogue and creative community building, Indigo is dedicated to designing for and with the next generation, building wealth in black and brown communities, and leveraging existing assets to strengthen our neighborhoods. She works as a Program Officer at the St. Luke's Foundation. Bishop is a lifelong Clevelander, facilitator, and strategist specializing in sustainable development. Guided by her passion for cross-cultural dialogue and creative community building, Indigo is dedicated to designing for and with the next generation, building wealth in black and brown communities, and leveraging existing assets to strengthen our neighborhoods. She works as a Program Officer at the St. Luke's Foundation. Indigo is a certified social justice mediator and a double graduate of Case Western Reserve University where she studied sociology and anthropology and earned a Master of Social Work at the Mandel School of Applied Social Sciences. She serves on the Board of the Asset-Based Community Development Institute at DePaul University. She has worked for non-governmental organizations, in higher education, in grassroots philanthropy, and in affordable housing Indigo is well known locally for her ability to facilitate dialogue that generates trust and builds collective action. She has trained hundreds of practitioners across the country, equipping them with integral community-building techniques for lasting positive change. In her spare time, if she's not playing volleyball in one of several leagues, you can find her reading on her porch, dancing at festivals with friends, or hiking with her dogs, Gia and Ziggy.

Job Titles:

• Lead Organizer, Founding Board Member

Jonathan is a co-op developer and community organizer who fights for economic democracy as the Executive Director and a co-founding board member of Cleveland Owns. He first tasted the power of economic democracy in 2009 when a group of working class women in rural Dominican Republic invited him to join them in starting a cheese cooperative. The cheese was delicious, the solidarity even better, and he was all in. After a year building co-ops in Peru, a year on President Obama's 2012 re-election campaign, and public policy grad school, Jonathan moved to Cleveland to learn -- plot twist! -- how powerful capitalists grow their power as a corporate consultant. He left in 2018 to start Cleveland Owns with comrades Mordecai, Michael, Deborah, and others. It was a much-needed change. In building an economic democracy ecosystem with Cleveland Owns, his dream job, Jonathan finds energy and purpose similar to what he felt working on the cheese co-op the DR. He lives with his partner Molly in the Catholic Worker community in Cleveland's near west side. You can find him playing pickup volleyball with Indigo and friends at Edgewater Park.

Job Titles:

• Founding Board Member and Board Treasurer

Michael is a co-founder of Rust Belt Riders, a worker-owned cooperative dedicated to transforming regional food systems through the creation of value-added products derived from locally squandered resources to build a circular economy that improves food security and combats climate change. When he's not making compost with the RBR crew, Michael spends his time reading, fermenting foods, and taking early morning walks around the neighborhood.

Job Titles:

• Member of the Board

Michael S. Russell works as a lawyer for the Legal Aid Society of Cleveland (LASC) where he represents community groups, nonprofits, and cooperatives as part of Legal Aid's Community Engagement Practice Group. He strives to use community lawyering principles to support low-income people organizing to build collective power, wealth, and community in the solidarity economy. Mike has worked for legal aid organizations most of his career. He started at Alaska Legal Services in Anchorage before joining Texas Rio Grande Legal Aid in El Paso, Texas, where he worked for six years. He moved to Northeast Ohio with his partner and their two kids in 2015. Mike is a graduate of UC Hastings College of the Law and the Gallatin School at New York University. He likes records and misses the Chihuahuan desert.

Job Titles:

• Co - Founder
• Partner
• Founding Board Member and Board President

Mordecai Cargill is a co-founder and partner of the ThirdSpace Action Lab, a grassroots research, strategy & design cooperative, dedicated to prototyping creative place-based solutions to complex socioeconomic problems. Mordecai is a community + institutional organizer, committed to Activating Space + Activating People. His personal, professional + intellectual pursuits converge in an unwavering belief in the creative potential of everyday people.