Working Towards a World Where Everyone Belongs

Paul co-leads the organizational development, economic development, and Targeted Universalism (TU) practices at Seed. His current focus includes strategic planning and TU and Belonging training, development, and implementation. Additionally, he advises on nonprofit collaborations, mergers, partnerships, strategic alliances, and provides executive coaching. He has over 14 years of lived and professional experience assisting nonprofits, philanthropies, municipal, county, and state governments.

Paul has worked with communities of color throughout his life. Prior to Seed, he was most notably the former Chairman and CEO of Broadway Federal Bank, a certified Community Development Financial Institution, which serves the financial needs of low to moderate income communities of color in South Los Angeles.

He has served on numerous government, philanthropic, and nonprofit boards and commissions, including as the current Chair of the Ebony Repertory Theatre. Previous appointments include Chairman of the Los Angeles City Community Redevelopment Agency, President of the Los Angeles NAACP, and board member of the California Community Foundation, the Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority, and the Los Angeles City Housing Authority.

Paul earned his bachelor’s degree and J.D. degree from UC Berkeley.

john a. powell is an internationally recognized expert in civil rights, civil liberties, structural racism, housing, poverty, and democracy. He is currently the Director of the Othering & Belonging Institute (OBI) at the University of California, Berkeley, where he holds the Robert D. Haas Chancellor’s Chair in Equity and Inclusion and is a Professor of Law, African American Studies, and Ethnic Studies. Recently, john authored the books Belonging without Othering: How We Save Ourselves and the World co-authored with Stephen Menendian (Stanford University Press, 2024) and The Power of Bridging: How to Build a World Where We All Belong with Rachelle Galloway-Popotas (Sounds True, 2024).

Prior to his time at OBI, john was the Executive Director of the Kirwan Institute for the Study of Race and Ethnicity at The Ohio State University and, before that, the founder and director of the Institute for Race and Poverty at the University of Minnesota. john formerly served as the National Legal Director of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU). He is a co-founder of the Poverty & Race Research Action Council and serves on the boards of several national and international organizations. He has taught at numerous law schools including Harvard and Columbia University. john has also lived and worked in Africa, where he was a consultant to the governments of Mozambique and South Africa, and has worked in India and Brazil.

Over his many decades of leadership, john has published extensively on issues including structural racism, racial justice, concentrated poverty, opportunity-based housing, voting rights, affirmative action in the United States, South Africa, and Brazil, racial and ethnic identity, spirituality and social justice, and the needs of citizens in a democratic society. He regularly appears in major media offering insights on a host of issues and is a frequent keynote speaker at institutions ranging from global foundations to universities, boardrooms to democratic institutions. john led the development of an “opportunity-based” model that connects affordable housing to education, health, health care, and employment, and is well-known for his work developing the frameworks of “targeted universalism” and “othering and belonging” to effect equity-based interventions.

Select Publications

Belonging without Othering: How We Save Ourselves and the World co-authored with Stephen Menendian, Stanford University Press, 2024)

The Power of Bridging: How to Build a World Where We All Belong with Rachelle Galloway-Popotas (Sounds True, 2024)

Racing to Justice: Transforming Our Conceptions of Self and Other to Build an Inclusive Society, 2nd ed. (Indiana University Press, 2024)

Recent Media & Lectures

Authoritarian Playbook: John Powell on creating an inclusive society, KALW, 2025

Author john a. powell on ‘The Power of Bridging’, Minnesota Public Radio, 2025

John on KQED radio on Polarization and The Power of Bridging, Nov 2024

An excerpt from The Power of Bridging book by john powell and Rachelle Galloway-Popotas, 2024

Professor john a. powell on ‘Belonging Without Othering’ Berkeley Law, 2024

Tara brings more than 20 years of leadership experience across the nonprofit, government, and private sectors to address operational, structural, and cultural challenges facing institutions today. A strategist and skilled facilitator, Tara leads equity-centered strategic planning, organizational development, and sustainability management engagements for municipalities, community-based organizations, and nonprofits — helping clients align their values with measurable, sustainable, and impactful outcomes. She believes that transformative changes happen when clients and stakeholders actively participate in the co-creation process. 

Before co-founding Seed, Tara held senior executive roles that sharpened her expertise in operations, finance, and organizational growth. As the Vice President & Chief Operating Officer of Community Financial Resource Center (CFRC), an $8M Community Development Financial Institution (CDFI), she spearheaded new business lines, expanded the organization’s service market, and increased its operational capacity. During her tenure, Tara grew CFRC’s fund balance from $670K to $6.8M and expanded the operating capacity from four to forty-six staff members.  

Prior to this, Tara served as Senior Vice President of Large Group Consulting at Dickerson Employee Benefits, where she led strategic planning and directed a high-performing team that consistently achieved annual performance goal attainment and client retention. These cross-sector interdisciplinary experiences inform her ability to meet clients where they are — whether navigating early-stage planning or complex institutional transformation. 

Tara holds a Bachelor of Arts from Wellesley College and a Master of Arts in Urban Planning from UCLA. Over the years, she has served as a board member in a variety of nonprofits, public service committees, and planning councils. Currently, she is on the Arts Commission for the second supervisorial district of Los Angeles County, where she lives with her family. 

Michelle serves as the director of administration and finance, supporting the team with over 30 years of experience in consulting and management. She has a background in institutional administration, specializing in change management, assessment, metric evaluation, outcomes, and strategic planning. Michelle has long advocated for inclusive initiatives and was appointed to the state of Missouri’s Minority Business Advocacy Commission. She holds a Bachelor of Science in Information Science and a Master’s degree in Higher Education Administration.

Dr. Nina Moreno conducts research and develops strategies for structural and systemic change to improve people’s lives and foster belonging. As a Senior Consultant, Nina collaborates with mission-driven organizational leaders to plan, implement, and evaluate belonging practices. Additionally, she is an experienced facilitator and co-lead the Targeted Universalism Communities of Practice.

The child of a single-parent educator, Nina has dedicated her adult life to working with people to achieve fairness and justice in the world. She has designed, implemented, and evaluated community informed, innovative and culturally relevant strategies to strengthen communities and promote diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging (DEIB), or belonging without othering. She is deeply committed to advancing belonging without othering within public systems and engaging communities in this process. Additionally, Nina has spent much of her career designing and leading community based participatory research (CBPR) processes. Specifically, she spent 12 years designing and leading CBPR that advanced a whole-person approach, with a special focus on the education and health of Black, Indigenous, and People of Color (BIPOC), intergenerational families living in poverty/extreme poverty.

Nina, who is fluent in Spanish, holds a Ph.D. in social welfare from the School of Social Work at Hunter College, an M.S. from Columbia University School of Social Work, and a B.S. from Cornell University College of Human Ecology. She currently serves on Mathematica’s California Children and Youth Behavioral Health Initiative’s Evaluation Advisory Group. When not working, Nina may be found exploring the world with family. 

Select Publications

The Importance of Children’s Health Coverage: Research and Stories from Working Californians, Alcohol Research: Current Reviews

Differential Effects of Alcohol Policies Across Race/Ethnicity and Socioeconomic Status

First 5 Los Angeles’ Journey Towards Deepening a Commitment to Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion 

Chrysalis’ 2024-2028 Strategic Plan 

First 5 Santa Clara County’s Strategic Plan, 2024-2027

First 5 Sacramento County FY 2024-2027 Strategic Plan

Karen’s focus at Seed is on practice, implementation and innovation around Belonging, Bridging and Targeted Universalism, particularly how they are embedded in relationships, structures, institutions, and culture. She co-leads programs, partnerships and client work, leveraging Seed’s experience and expertise operationalizing belonging. 

Prior to working at Seed, Karen’s work has taken many shapes, all touching on the human condition, from progressive politics, justice, women’s issues, spirituality, the arts, and our wild, living planet. All of these areas have coalesced into her commitment to belonging work in the last decade. Most recently, she was a Senior Advisor at the Othering & Belonging Institute at UC Berkeley (OBI), where she co-directed the CEOs Advancing Racial Equity & Belonging program supporting the principals, john a. powell, and PolicyLink’s Dr. Michael McAfee and Angela Glover Blackwell, partnering with global companies. At OBI, she also explored strategic partnerships to scale the foundational concepts of the Institute with a range of partners, including the initial concept of the Targeted Universalism Community of Practice with Seed and The Power of Bridging book. Karen has also been a belonging and equity coach and consultant to cross-sector institutions, such as Google’s X, the moonshot factory, the Hewlett Foundation, and Co-Impact.

Her previous roles include being a Founding Executive Director of an organization at the intersection of the industrial food system, climate change, and health. Here she developed multi-pronged strategies to pivot toward climate-friendly food options, including supporting state and federal policy initiatives, identifying racial health disparities in school lunch programs, building awareness campaigns through global media, such as Christiane Amanpour, the U.N., and Oprah, and the creation of a digital library, conducting race and equity audits across all work, and overseeing partnerships with national nonprofits, including Sierra Club, Climate Nexus, and others. Additionally, she was also Founding Executive Director at the Merwin Conservancy, an arts & environmental sanctuary, where she helped shape a poet’s vision into a viable organization. Karen also completed a scientific palm cataloging and seed library of over 3000 palms, transfer of the property into land conservation, laying the groundwork for an educational program with Hawaii school system, launching of The Green Room, a sold-out literary and environment series, Executive Producing a PBS documentary on W.S. Merwin, and establishing an endowment to sustain the organization.

Karen’s work has a continuous thread of content and communications, ranging from  documentary work to magazine and book publishing to op ed and speech development. As an Editor in Chief at Spirituality & Health magazine, she stressed the intersection of spirituality, social justice, and the environment, elevating leaders such as Joy Harjo, Bishop Desmond Tutu, Robin Wall Kimmerer, and more. As a Publisher at Inner Ocean Publishing, she launched the 50 Ways…book series, starting with 50 Ways to Love Your Country, a New York Times bestseller by Moveon.org, 50 Ways to Improve Women’s Lives, 50 Ways to Support LGBTQ Equality, and 50 Ways to Save the Ocean. Back in the day, after stints with Harpercollins and PBS-affiliate, KQED, she also ran her own content development company working with tech start-ups on white papers, pitch decks, business plans, and consumer content, with clients such as iVillage, Peoplesoft, Healthshop, and Women.com.  

A graduate of UC Berkeley, Karen has served on several boards, including most recently Destiny Arts Center. She was a working group member for the Inclusive Language Guide with the Center for Equity, Gender & Leadership at the Haas Business School. She was a field builder with the New Pluralists, a longtime attendee of the Bioneers environmental conference, and is a recent graduate of the Strozzi Embodied Leadership program. Notably, she won a public speaking contest in the comedy category in college—ensuring that if you’ve read this far, you now know the humor goes way back. Currently, having launched two young adults into the world, she lives in Berkeley, California, with a man and a dog.

Río González a Program and Outreach Manager at Seed, where they support and manage the Targeted Universalism Community of Practice, along with other programs, clients, and business development.

Previously, Río was a Research Associate at the Othering and Belonging Institute at UC Berkeley, where they partnered with community-based organizations and civic engagement groups to develop research-informed interventions that promoted bridging across divides and expanded belonging through civic engagement and power building.

Prior to their role at OBI, Rio served as the Mental Health Policy Fellow for Young Invincibles, a national nonprofit focused on amplifying the voices of young adults in the political process and expanding economic opportunity. During their fellowship, Río drew on both their lived experience and academic background to advocate for culturally responsive and trauma-informed mental health systems in Texas. They worked closely with policymakers and partner organizations to advance equitable policies in healthcare and higher education. Their work is rooted in a commitment to transformative change.

Río grew up in a predominantly immigrant Latine community in rural California, where mental health is heavily stigmatized and ignored. Their early experiences motivated them to pursue a

Nimra brings four years of experience in academic and social policy research. Prior to joining SEED, Nimra worked with legal and academic institutions and tech companies, including the International Commission of Jurists and the University of Pittsburgh.

Passionate about social equity, Nimra uses her skills in mixed-methods and community-based and participatory research (CBPR) to advance the design of inclusive policies, health interventions, and technological design. Recently, her research has focused on the social determinants of LGBTQ+ health and responsible AI design for providing care to individuals with dementia. She holds an M.S in Information Studies from the University of Texas at Austin and a B.A in English Literature from Kinnaird College for Women, Lahore. In her free time, you may find her painting, gardening, critiquing films, or kayaking in Austin.

Dr. Nicole Arlette Hirsch is a Harvard trained sociologist, working as a diversity, equity & inclusion consultant, a research consultant and independent scholar focusing on equity, social change and organizations. A critical Seed associate and researcher, trainer and senior consultant, Nicole he uses her expertise in social justice, anti-racism, organizations and culture to evaluate organizational practices and collaboratively develop meaningful and actionable solutions. She has consulted for and collaborated with foundations, public works and utilities companies, nonprofits, and private companies in the United States and in France.

Her work has been published in the Du Bois Review, in the edited volume, Affirmative Action and Racial Equity: Considering the Fisher Case to Forge the Path Ahead, in Reviews and Critical Commentary (CritCom), and in USC’s Equity Research Institute’s (formerly the Center for the Study of Immigrant Integration) Immigration Blog. Nicole holds a PhD and AM in sociology from Harvard University, a BA in sociology from Columbia University, and is currently a visiting scholar at the University of California, Berkeley.  based in Oakland, CA.