Activists and Agitators
About Activists and Agitators
Activists and Agitators is an annual YWCA Columbus event dedicated to uniting the Columbus community and inspiring attendees to pursue greater social change together than we can achieve alone.
This event fosters dialogue, provides practical resources, and educates the community to promote empowerment and inclusion. We created Activists and Agitators with the belief that anyone and everyone can be an agent for social change. If we all commit to intentional, anti-racist, direct action and harm reduction, our collective impact will be profound.
Featured Speaker
Tiffany Cross joined this year’s Activists and Agitators program to speak about the true history and current realities of American democracy, voter disenfranchisement, and resistance efforts to actualize fair representation.
Tiffany D. Cross is a journalist, TV host, podcast host, author, and speaker.
Tiffany previously hosted The Cross Connection on MSNBC where she averaged 4.6 million viewers a month. She is the current co-host of iHeart Podcast’s Native Land Pod, which debuted in 2024 on Apple as the number one downloaded podcast in America across all categories, where she breaks down news and culture of the week. NLP currently enjoys more than 600 thousand downloads a month and is growing quickly. Tiffany also hosts ACross Generations, with Will Packer Media and iHeart Podcasts, where she convenes multigenerational women to discuss a variety of subjects ranging from changing perspectives on love and sex to money and career.
A 2020 fellow of Harvard University Kennedy School’s Institute of Politics, Tiffany has spent more than 20 years navigating politics, media, labor, communities of color, and the private sector. She harnessed her decades of experience in the release of her first book, Say It Louder: Black Voters, White Narratives, and Saving Our Democracy. Tiffany attended Clark Atlanta University and splits her time between Washington, DC and New York City.
Panel Discussion
Tiffany joined esteemed panelists dedicated to advancing voting rights and civic engagement in Central Ohio and beyond! This impactful discussion focused on the local, here, and now—empowering each of us to take action and make a difference in our communities.
Panel Moderator: Elizabeth C. Brown
President & CEO, YWCA Columbus
Elizabeth C. Brown became president and CEO of YWCA Columbus in January 2023. Previously, she served seven years as President Pro Tempore on Columbus City Council, fighting for broad-based economic prosperity, gender equity, and racial justice. She also was the executive director of the Ohio Women’s Public Policy Network, a statewide collective impact project to improve women's economic security through public policy.
During her years on council, she spearheaded laws to protect reproductive healthcare, provide paid family leave, connect pregnant women with housing and medical care, defend residents against threats of deportation, support low-income families through COVID disruptions, erase medical debt, and increase access to early childhood education opportunities.
She also commissioned an overhaul of tax incentive policies which resulted in the city’s first affordable housing and living-wage requirements. She has additional prior professional experience in economic development, nonprofit service, and state government.
Originally born in the Berwick neighborhood of Columbus, Elizabeth was raised in Granville, Ohio, and is a proud public school graduate and a magna cum laude graduate of Columbia University. She and her husband Patrick Katzenmeyer live in Columbus, along with their three children Carolyn, Russell, and Maribell.
Panelist: Yvette McGee Brown
Partner, Jones Day
At Jones Day, Yvette McGee Brown advises clients in government investigations involving police or corporate misconduct, discrimination, internal investigations, disparate impact, Title VII, and Title IX. Yvette spent 11 years as a jurist, including service as a justice on the Ohio Supreme Court, after which she returned to private practice, assisting clients across a range of difficult legal issues.
As Jones Day's partner-in-charge of diversity, inclusion & advancement, Yvette works with the firm's leadership on diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) strategies and frequently assists clients in the development of DEI plans, which includes advising on legal guardrails for implementation.
Yvette is an arbitrator with the American Arbitration Association, serving on complex commercial panels. She has been a director for two public companies and currently serves on the board of directors for Encova Mutual Insurance Group, The Jeffrey Company, and KIPP Columbus.
Panelist: Rhiannon Carnes
Founder & Executive Director, Ohio Women’s Alliance
Rhiannon Carnes is the founder and executive director of Ohio Women’s Alliance (OWA) & Ohio Women’s Action Fund, a statewide reproductive justice organization building power across Ohio. Rhiannon built OWA to share her hopes for an Ohio that prioritizes the well-being, prosperity, and liberation of women of color, gender-expansive folks, and young people.
In practice, OWA was the only Black-led founding organization of Ohioans United for Reproductive Rights—the coalition that led the campaign to pass Ohio’s Reproductive Freedom Amendment in November 2023. Prior to building OWA & OWA Action Fund, Rhiannon became the founder and leader of Ohio’s Women’s March, helping lead over 15,000 women, gender-expansive folks, and allies on Jan. 21, 2017, and was a field organizer with Planned Parenthood Advocates of Ohio.
Rhiannon’s accomplishments have been celebrated in Elle, The Nation, Harper’s BAZAAR, and Cosmopolitan, and she was named a Reproductive Justice Hero and a 2022 Jane Bagley Lehman Award winner by the Tides’ Foundation.
Additional Guests & Performances
Meaca Moore
Poetry reading
Meaca is a writer, public speaker, musical artist, host and freelance instructor. Spoken word is Meaca’s first love, and beginning at age 12, she was inspired to create to release personal trauma from a tumultuous childhood. Meaca has traveled the country, sharing her poetry and various written works. Meaca also participates in various poetry slams, including the Rustbelt Regional Slam, where she recently won the individual category. The focus of her work is hope, mercy and self-reflection for a dark world that often lacks all three.
Kenia LaMarr
Interactive visual art piece
Being surrounded by family members who are artists in their own right, Kenia found her love for creating art at a young age. She sketched clothes and portraits of women as a child before training formally at a performing arts school in Dayton, Ohio, which influenced her work now – creating healing, process art through portraiture. She is often fascinated by the brush strokes of different colors and sizes that compose each portrait, emphasizing the goal to reflect individuality and not necessarily the groups they identify with.
Her portraits are vibrant and colorful – rarely using the traditional ideas of skin color – to explore the beliefs of identity and normative views to convey the concept of self while contradicting conventional notions of race. During her travels and on her own spiritual journey, she has learned how colors are associated with healing properties in psychology, art therapy, Reiki and chakra practices, and the religion of Yoruba, and hopes that her work reflects that fine art does not have to be perfect.
Ladies of the Lincoln
Musical performance
Ladies of the Lincoln includes Janeen Holmes, Christina Myles and La’Toya Jones.
In case you missed the Opening Reception, you can check out all our partners below and download the voter literacy test we shared here.
Additionally, a recording of the program can be viewed here, and you can still access the digital program here.
2024 Presenting Sponsor
Program Sponsor
Community Sponsor
Advocacy Sponsors
Media Sponsors
A/V Sponsors
Empowerment Sponsors
COTA
EMH&T
Ice Miller
OhioHealth
KeyBank
Event Host Sponsors
Ohio State Building & Construction Trades Council
Park National Bank
PNC
Donatos Pizza
Oswald
Ally Sponsors
Christie Angel
Colette Barricks
Gretchen Brandt
Lanay Brentley
Columbus Landmarks Foundation
Sophia Fifner
Sarah Pariser
Cary M. Hanosek
Mid-Ohio Regional Planning Commission
Organized Synergy LLC
Molly Peirano
Jennifer Peterson
Larke and Joe Recchie
New Reach Community Consulting
Thanks for Engaging with Activists and Agitators 2024!
Testimonials
"I enjoyed every minute (of the program) . . . Ibram X. Kendi was amazing, I loved the panel and hearing their different views, and the poet brought tears to my eyes and touched my heart. I loved that the event was closed with the Briggs choir!" - Activists and Agitators Attendee (2023)
"I was so impressed by [Activists & Agitators], which I attended for the first time, and by the caliber and diversity of the people that were featured. The YWCA's activism on housing equity issues in Central Ohio is so critical." - Activists and Agitators Attendee (2022)
"So much greatness, from the creative and artistic expression to the hard-hitting statistics and challenges within our housing system. It was a beautiful confluence of all that needed to be said, with an impressive guest list, too." - Activists and Agitators Attendee (2022)