staff

Imane is a social justice educator who loves creating spaces where young people are heard, seen and supported to thrive. Starting her career in academia, she took a winding path through the private and non-profit sectors to learn that she loves nothing more than spending time surrounded by passionate young people (admittedly more than spending time with adults). She reads, writes and sings for pleasure, and her most important love language is fruit.

Dhakshi is an accidental activist (her words), with a huge passion for social justice. After a couple of stints in the finance sector, she moved across to non-profits working predominantly in trusts and foundations. She now oversees philanthropy at The Advocacy Academy bringing a breadth of partnership management experience with her. Dhakshi enjoys all things social commentary which probably explains why she loves a bit of everything. Talk to her about books, music, TV, podcasts, art, food, fashion and she'll want to unpick the socio-political contexts behind them all.

Amarah has a Masters Degree in Environmental Psychology. Starting her career in qualitative research, she uses evidence and insight to create fairer spaces. She is passionate about creating social and physical spaces that dare to have chutzpah and be unapologetically beautiful. You will often find Amarah naming every plant and giving them a detailed back story.

Shiden is an activist who graduated from the program in 2018. He has worked on campaigns such as Legally Black and The Halo Code and has won MTV EMA awards and a Marie Claire award from both campaigns. He studied Politics and International Relations at Queen Mary, University of London and loves to talk about the current political climate. He has been actively involved with the Advocacy Academy Changemakers program since 2018 and is passionate about community organising. He plays a couple of musical instruments, smiles a whole load and knows a lot about Marvel stuff!

Vanessa graduated from TAA in 2016, since then she has completed a BA in politics and international relations where she suffered the Canadian winters and ate lots of poutine during her year abroad. She has trained to become a young changemaker for the upcoming TAA fellowships with the amazing Darcey and participated in many fun, radical campaign actions whilst empowering and supporting the young advocates. She is co-organiser of Latinxcluded, a collective birthed from TAA who fight for the representation of the Latinx community in the UK. She has also had a taste of HR in the social care sector this past year. She is a proud pug mama and is always down for bubble tea.

Mel was born and raised in South London and recently completed her BA Hons in Politics and IR. She has campaigned with the academy for 4 years and was the leading liberation officer at university, where she quickly learned that she hates everything about our education system. She is incredibly passionate about a whole lot of things and could chat your ear off about how pretty much everything links to politics. She constantly leads with awareness around mental health because she went undiagnosed for a big part of her life and knows how it is to feel invisible. You will absolutely know she can sing, and if someone has a time-machine please hit her up because partying in the 80s sounds much better than now to Mel.

Shoomi has extensive experience leading and creating transformative programmes in human rights, social justice and community spaces. She has a track record of disruption, agitation and getting things done, all whilst centring the lived experience of people and communities impacted by oppressive structures. At the heart of her work is the wellbeing of people, collective liberation and sharing joy. She has been challenging systems of power since school, where she was excluded three times, through to activism in her community and internal advocacy at work. She has always sought to be a part of the solution and as an educator, being radical and kind in taking people on journeys of learning and unlearning and shifting attitudes and mindsets is what gets her out of bed in the morning. Shoomi joins us after seven years working in human rights education at Amnesty International UK and later leading anti-oppression programmes in the arts and cultural sector.

After 25 years working as an architect, Anshu is now training and working as a psychoanalytical psychotherapist. He is an active member of the Race & Culture Committee at the Guild of Psychotherapists and also the Black and Asian Therapist's Network. He is still hoping that Stevie Wonder will call him up one day and ask him to be in the band.

Dola is a HR professional with more than 5 years experience in generalist HR. She has worked across various sectors, including education, charity, management consulting, health care and real estate- to name a few! She is passionate about HR, travelling and learning a new language!