Our Team

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Brit Blalock brings 15 years of experience in brand development, nonprofit marketing/communications, and electoral campaigning across the advocacy, healthcare, and tech sectors. They previously served in strategic leadership roles for Southern Research, Innovation Depot, and the UAB Heersink School of Medicine. Brit is a longtime grassroots organizer and is the founder of two LGBTQ community support orgs. In 2022, they were a candidate for Alabama’s state house in district 54. They received a B.A. in Literature from Samford University and an MFA in Creative Writing from New York University. Brit is based in Alabama with their wife and their menagerie of rescue pets.

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Melinda Gibson is Managing Director of The Capacity Shop, where she supports nonprofits and campaigns working toward equity and social change. With over 20 years of experience in organizing, advocacy, and political strategy, she’s contributed to a wide range of efforts—from local field work to national legislative wins.

Most recently, Melinda helped lead a ballot initiative in Los Angeles County to address housing and homelessness, coordinating teams and partners to collect nearly half a million signatures. She has also supported independent expenditure campaigns focused on protecting democracy and uplifting underrepresented communities.

Earlier in her career, Melinda served as Deputy Director at the Center for Secure and Modern Elections, working with state and local partners to expand voting rights and help election departments respond to the COVID-19 crisis.

Melinda’s work focuses on collaboration, thoughtful strategy, and building long-term power with communities across the country.

Christine has years of experience in leading strategic programming, advocacy efforts, and learning. She is a community-oriented and culture leader dedicated to systemic changes through emergent learning as a collective effort. Much of her work is informed by her years leading education initiatives and amplifying diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging efforts in education and community outreach organizations. Christine is excited to bring her inclusive approach to facilitating learning opportunities to TCS. Based in Philadelphia but proudly Cleveland-born, Christine spends her free time exploring her local community, running, traveling, and relaxing with her cat, Gimlet.

Bethel Tsegaye is a strategist, trainer, and facilitator with over fifteen years of experience designing and leading domestic and international human rights and social justice programs. She has worked across the United States and globally—including in Sub-Saharan Africa, the Middle East, and Europe—supporting civil society organizations, grassroots organizers, and human rights defenders.

Bethel’s expertise lies in leadership and organizational development, operations, and capacity building. She supports individuals and organizations in scaling programmatic and operational effectiveness while building sustainable, values-aligned practices.

She holds an MA from the University of London in Refugee Protection and Forced Migration, and a BA from George Mason University in Global Affairs.

Montserrat began her career in advocacy in 2010 when the infamous “show me your papers” bill SB1070 passed in Arizona. The unfortunate acts of discrimination towards her community lead her to social justice work. Since then she has lead substantial campaigns like Prop 206 which passed in 2016, giving 5 million families a living wage. Montserrat is formerly the Table Director at One Arizona, a coalition of twenty organizations focusing on voter registration and civic engagement. The One Arizona coalition registered has registered close to 500,000 voters since 2010.

Jen developed a passion for process, planning, and systems through her time working for political and grassroots campaigns including the Obama Campaign and Organizing for America. She honed her skills in the nonprofit world as the Director of Acceleration Services at Citizen Engagement Lab (CEL). There she oversaw a fiscal sponsorship program that provided organizational development and fundraising services to social change start-ups, including Vote.org, 18MillionRising, and MPowerChange. Jen has extensive experience building effective grassroots organizations, running organizational systems, and nonprofit infrastructure. Jen lives in Oakland, California with her husband and dog Stanley.

Shruti Garg has worked across the nonprofit sector as a grantmaker, capacity builder, and consultant. Throughout her practice, she is committed to fostering effective and dynamic pathways for organizational resiliency. Currently a program officer at the James Irvine Foundation, she was most recently a consultant to nonprofits around the country, both in her independent practice and while at the Nonprofit Finance Fund. Shruti also oversaw Asian Americans/Pacific Islanders in Philanthropy (AAPIP)’s membership efforts as well as managed the Open Society Foundations (OSF)’s grantmaking to immigrant rights, racial justice, and low-wage worker rights organizations. Shruti graduated from Smith College and received her Master of Public Policy from the University of Southern California.

Mera Granberg is a serial social entrepreneur with experience in the for-profit and non-profit sectors. She was the founding executive director of the San Francisco General Hospital Foundation, bringing philanthropic support to public health. She went on to lead a national sales program for Endymion Systems, Inc. Mera is currently a strategic advisor to The Sustainable Preservation Initiative and sits on the board of The Weekend to Be Named Later and Rag Tag. A San Francisco native, Mera lives in her hometown.

Maya is the principal and founder of Mandala Change Group, a consulting practice that provides change management and organizational development strategy services with a DREI lens. Maya brings more than 20 years in philanthropy and working with nonprofit and public entities to support organizations and leaders in their efforts to align their organization’s practices, policies, and cultures to values-based mission and visions. She was previously the Director of Racial Equity Initiatives at Borealis Philanthropy where she led the Racial Equity in Philanthropy fund (REP), the Racial Equity to Accelerate Change (REACH) fund, which supports nonprofit organizations in advancing racial equity practices, and the Racial Equity in Journalism (REJ) fund. She spent nine years at the Women’s Foundation of California where she supported organizations doing systems-level change work at the intersection of gender and racial justice.