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The 2025 Bush Fellowship Includes Some Familiar Faces!

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We were thrilled to see that Nexus board member Georgia Fort, BCLI alumni Carl Johnson and Elvis Rivera, and longtime Nexus partner Chanda Smith Baker are among this year’s Bush Fellows! They’re part of a group of 29 visionary leaders shaping communities in Minnesota, North Dakota, South Dakota and the 23 Native nations that share that geography. Read the excerpts below from their Bush Foundation bios!

  • “As founder of BLCK Press and the Center for Broadcast Journalism, Georgia Fort is creating pathways for Black and Brown journalists to not only enter the field, but to transform it. After being denied maternity leave as a news anchor, she left mainstream media and launched her own platform to cover underreported stories. Her team’s coverage of the George Floyd protests reached more than 18 million viewers and helped shift national narratives. Today, her newsroom is a trusted source in Minnesota, earning 12 regional Emmy nominations, three wins and national recognition for innovation and impact.”
  • “Carl D. Johnson is recognized as a visionary leader committed to ensuring marginalized communities have access to healthy, culturally relevant foods. He is transforming food access and economic opportunity on St. Paul’s East Side through faith-rooted community building, radical hospitality and visionary entrepreneurship. A former gang member and addict turned pastor and community leader, Carl is the founder of the East Side’s first Black-owned grocery store, Storehouse Grocers and Coffee, as well as the George Washington Carver Cultural Center, a thriving community hub. His leadership spans worker-owned cooperatives, youth mentorship, workforce development and civic engagement.”
  • “Elvis Rivera brings firsthand knowledge, professional expertise and heartfelt determination to his mission: closing the racial wealth gap for Black, Indigenous and people of color (BIPOC) communities. A first-generation Guatemalan immigrant who survived childhood homelessness and violence, Elvis arrived in Minnesota at age nine and quickly learned how poverty, racism and legal barriers shape lives. Today, as a financial advisor, nonprofit leader, and community connector, he shares the wealth-building tools often reserved for the privileged.”
  • “Chanda Smith Baker has spent her life supporting people, organizations, and communities in doing their best work. A daughter of North Minneapolis and a descendant of generations of educators, advocates and builders, Chanda has led with community at the center across nonprofits, boardrooms, philanthropy and the airwaves. She envisioned North Market, co-founded the Black Collective Foundation MN, and amplifies bold voices through her podcast Conversations with Chanda.“

The Bush Foundation’s Bush Fellowship is a self-designed leadership program that gives individuals the flexibility they need to develop their own capacity to lead effectively. Our Founder and CEO, Repa Mekha, is also an alum of the program!

Congratulations to all the 2025 fellows!

Image from the Bush Foundation

On Feb. 27, our friends at Ignite Business Women Investment Group hosted “The Power of Wealth-Building through Cooperatives,” an evening of networking and info sessions to celebrate Black History Month and the economic impact of cooperative investments. The event brought together cooperative experts and advisors—including Nexus’ Nonkululeko (Nkuli) Shongwe—to guide attendees through actionable strategies for forming community cooperatives and building wealth.

Nkuli reflects, “We shared some amazing stories about our work, and also the resources that are available from Northstar insured ownership center. And we were able to talk about the corporate ecosystem, especially with their cooperative in the room also presenting. It was really fun to be in community with the women from Ignite!”

Nexus Community Wealth Building Director Nkuli Shongwe (left) with members of Ignite Business Women Investment Group.
Nkuli giving a presentation to attendees.

Through programs like our North Star Black Cooperative Fellowship and the Open Road Fund, Nexus Community Partners is reimagining Black wealth.

Building Black wealth means healing from over five centuries of labor and livelihood stolen from us on this stolen land. It’s owning what we produce and building and inventing for our families and community. It is a creative and sovereign practice of restoration that reaffirms the excellence that has always been in us.

Meet Amoké Kubat

Artist, writer, and Yoruba Priestess Amoké Awele Kubat is a Minneapolis “Northsider for life” who has been empowering mothers and families since 1987.

Amoké first heard about Nexus in 2011 through a friend who was being mentored by Nexus CEO Repa Mekha. Through her friend, she learned about Nexus values, strategies, and vision—all rooted in community. Seven years later, Amoké took a deep dive with us, joining our second North Star cohort.

“I was thrilled to be in the company of people who looked like me, who shared the diversity of the Black Experience as descendants of Africans. We were more than survivors. We held the roots and seeds of our Ancestors’ dreams and hopes. We were visionaries, warriors, educators, artists and more, who aspired to own businesses and cooperatives.”

Amoké’s co-op, YO MAMA’S HOUSE, INC., is an art and healing space for mothers of all ages. They empower mothers by disrupting the devaluation of women’s invisible labor and increasing recognition of the ART of Mothering. North Star helped Amoké build community with other Black cooperators while also accessing the technical assistance and funding opportunities she needed to further grow YO MAMA’S HOUSE.

In 2023, Amoké joined our Black Community Trust Fund advisory committee. As a respected Elder, she shared her wisdom in renaming the trust fund as the Open Road Fund—which comes from the English translation of Ejio Ogbe, meaning, “an open road leads to the fulfillment of destiny.”

“I firmly believe that people of African descent are NOT destined to fail. It is one’s birthright to live a long life, in good health, and live abundantly.”

Amoké’s greatest takeaway from her work with Nexus is that communities matter. “The workload is not heavy when we stand with likeminded people,” she says. “People have more power than they think they do—especially in solidarity.”

Will You Join Us?

In a time of ongoing and relentless attacks on Black life and well-being, initiatives run by and for Black folks to achieve Black liberation are essential.

Any gift you make between now and the end of the year will be doubled thanks to our friends at Voqal Partners.

  • Monthly gifts of $20 are a way to honor our 20th anniversary throughout the year.
  • $100 helps support costs for expanding our online work in Greater Minnesota.
  • $500 covers a stipend that keeps our fellowships accessible to all.

Make a donation or share your Nexus story

Together, we are building Community Wealth for a just and liberated future.

Over the last 20 years, Nexus has worked to usher out the rigged rules, attitudes, and practices that concentrate wealth and power in fewer and whiter hands. For folks who have been intentionally shut out of mainstream economies, cooperatives present a tried-and-true alternative.

Cooperatives embody the idea that wealth is more than the success of any one individual—that wealth is owning what we produce. To us, wealth is building and inventing for our families and community, not only in crisis, but also in the pursuit of our dreams.

Meet Denise Butler

For more than a decade, Nexus Community Partners and African Career, Education, & Resource Inc. (ACER) have been partners in organizing, funding, and community wealth building. When Denise Butler, Associate Director at ACER, approached Nexus to work with an emerging collective of 24 Black immigrant women and business owners, we jumped at the opportunity.

With the help of Nexus and ACER, these women formed a cooperative: The Ignite Business Women’s Investment Group. Last year, Ignite purchased their first property: Shingle Creek Center in Brooklyn Center.

At the beginning, the Shared Ownership Center at Nexus (SOC@N) helped Ignite determine their cooperative structure, articles of incorporation, and bylaws. As the project developed, SOC@N worked closely with ACER, Ignite, their legal team, and project manager to provide flexible support wherever necessary, from weaving together knowledge, resources, and connections to successfully acquiring the 18-unit shopping center.

“Nexus was instrumental in supporting ACER’s work in building the first Black women’s cooperative in Minnesota. The infrastructural support provided by Nexus speaks to their expertise in the cooperative development landscape.” – Denise Butler, ACER

This milestone was years in the making. It has been an honor to walk alongside Ignite and ACER as they expand their work to meet the needs of their community. Join us in scaling up BIPOC-led cooperative development!

Make a donation

Whether you can contribute $20 or a story about what Nexus means to you, you will continue to make our work possible!

Share your story

Have you participated in one of our fellowships? Been a longtime partner? However you’ve crossed paths with Nexus, we want to hear from you!

People with deep lived experiences of inequities are actively leading and creating transformation in their own communities, in ways that respect and leverage their cultural ways of knowing and being. The pervasive view of leadership, as extraordinary and hierarchal individuals, reinforces dominant positions of power. Institutions that only rely on this systems-driven analysis often miss seeing and valuing these critical people, forms and patterns of leadership.

Nexus Community Partners supports strong, equitable and just communities in which all residents are engaged, are recognized as leaders and have pathways to wealth building opportunities. We hope to bring people working in different sectors and cultural communities together to lift up absent narratives about leadership. With our Community Storytelling Project partners, our learning community will explore ways we practice community leadership.

Join us to learn more about our virtual and in-person learning opportunities to:

  • Support and explore community-driven leadership that improve the overall health and well-being of a group as defined by those individuals, families, or community members.
  • Develop and share stories of dynamic and cultural practices that support intersectional and relational shared power.

LEARNING COMMUNITY INFO SESSION
Thursday, Feb. 13th
11:00 AM – noon EST / 10:00 – 11:00 AM CST
View the info session slide deck here

COMMUNITY LEADERSHIP LEARNING LAUNCH
Wednesday, Feb. 26th
10:30 AM – Noon EST/ 9:30 – 11:00 AM CST
View the recorded meeting here

Learn more about the CLLI and Learning Community here!