Meet the Team

Our facilitators bring reverence, knowledge, and joy to this work, and seek to be a partner to organizations, institutions, and companies who want to walk shoulder to shoulder with us toward meaningful and lasting change.

The work should never feel heavier than we can carry together.

Cardozie Jones

Cardozie Jones, CEO & Founder

Cardozie Jones began his career as a teacher and school administrator in New York City. Accompanied by his passion for the work was an emerging awareness that he was a participant in a system that was producing and reproducing unjust and inequitable outcomes for students from historically marginalized communities. Over the next two decades, Cardozie honed his skills as an educator, systems-thinker, and leader in the equity space. During those years he found opportunities to develop these skills and his approach in several positions including Program Manager of Live Out Loud, an LGBTQ youth-develpment organization, and working as a consultant and trainer on behalf of the Center for Racial Justice in Education and the NYU Metropolitan Center for Research on Equity and the Transformation of Schools.

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These experiences along with a background in theater and a master’s degree in its justice-based application, prompted Cardozie to found True North EDI in 2018 as an embodiment for all he had learned and an incubator for all he continues to learn. While his roots are in education, the engagement and impact of True North EDI spans sectors. From the volunteer base of grassroots organizations to the board room of multinational corporations, our belief and experience in the power of joyful, buoyant, and empowered partnership remain steadfast.

Erin Dunlevy

Erin Dunlevy, VP & Consultant

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Erin Dunlevy is an equity consultant and DEI executive coach with over 20 years of professional experience in the U.S. and Latin America. She currently works on projects around the country training leaders and stakeholders from corporations, nonprofits and learning institutions interested in furthering their equity journey. Entirely committed to the possibilities that equity, diversity and interdependence create in our professional spaces, Erin believes that organizational change comes from within, and leverages a background in restorative justice to create expansive systems change and true community accountability. She has written and presented extensively about evaluative measures for restorative practices in institutions cited for racial disproportionality. Currently, Erin is Vice President at True North EDI, is an adjunct professor at Columbia University and a visiting professor at the United Nations Mandated University for Peace and works as an executive coach and equity consultant nation-wide.

Zulla Getahun

Zulla Getahun, Director of Partnerships and Development

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Zulla Getahun, Director of Partnerships, brings over 18 years of invaluable experience in her current role. She plays a pivotal position in defining, implementing, and optimizing engagement and retention strategies to enhance organizational performance and support partnerships, serving as a bridge between leadership, clients and facilitators. Her track record includes successfully establishing a thriving learning department for a leading New York City brokerage firm and one of the largest affiliate businesses. With a strong background in Learning & Development, employee engagement, and workplace culture, Zulla thrives in building collaborative, empowered teams and fostering inclusive workplace cultures through communication skills that promote sharing, learning, and curiosity.

Alexa Bishop

Alexa Bishop, Operations Manager

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Alexa (she/her) has had an interesting journey so far. From chemical engineering, to Broadway company management, and now operations management on EDI consulting work. Alexa can usually be found in Panama at the beach or hiking to a waterfall. Alexa is incredibly grateful to work on this team and under the leadership of Cardozie Jones.

Issa Guzman

Soma Okoye, Digital Media Manager

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Sọma (she/they) is an artist, creative strategist, and digital marketing specialist dedicated to expanding cultural dialogues and nurturing creative communities. With a focus on leveraging digital platforms for positive change, she has played key roles on HBOMax’s Multicultural Marketing team, at Broadway Advocacy Coalition, and is excited to be bringing her expertise to True North EDI. She is deeply invested in leveraging digital platforms for meaningful impact.

Cathleen Antoine

Cathleen M. Antoine-Abiala, Consultant

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Cathleen (she/her) is a Haitian-American woman and a global citizen. As an equity coach and multi-faceted creator she is deeply invested in the ways communities and organizations can create new and more liberated ways of being.

Jonny Altrogge

Jonny Altrogge, Consultant

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Jonny (he/him) is a Brooklyn based coach and consultant who is passionate about liberatory education and systems change through policy and practice reformation.  Jonny believes that organizational advancement and achievement begins first with understanding the self, and reflecting and focusing on ways in which we can grow as individuals to better impact the collective. He focuses on cultivating relationships and honoring our wholeness. He is a husband and father to a beautiful little boy.

Purvi Shah Headshot by Natasha Singh

Purvi Shah, Consultant

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Growing up an immigrant in the U.S. South, Purvi (she/her) experienced being the only brown child in a poor white school – and the impacts of racism, unfair distribution of educational resources, and tracking. As a non-profit consultant, she catalyzes this experience to further transformation towards gender, economic, and racial equity.

Issa Guzman

Íssa Victoria Guzmán, Consultant

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Íssa (she/her/ella) brings a heart-centered approach to her work supporting organizational health and transformation. In her consulting practice, she partners with individuals and organizations in their work to unlearn and actively dismantle the ways systems of oppression inform interpersonal and organizational practices. She believes authenticity, rigorous self-work and individual wellbeing are necessary conditions for achieving equity and collective liberation. She is committed to supporting the healing and wellness of individuals and groups most impacted by systems of oppression.

Ana Duque

Ana Catalina Duque, Consultant

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Ana (she/her/ella) is an educator, facilitator and coach. She works at holding space for change and transformation, leading participants through content while centering healing and community. Ana’s facilitation style is both emergent and strategic. She endeavors to support organizations and individuals in exploring the places which feel the most salient to the collective, while supporting them with content that grounds individuals in historical, personal and reflective understandings of systems and structures of oppression.

Jason Sirois

Jason Sirois, Consultant

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Jason (he/they) is a strategist, organizer, facilitator and storyteller committed to showing up as a learner while creating opportunities for people of all ages to connect authentically across differences. Jason focuses his work on helping others develop an individual and collective sense of efficacy in creating more equitable environments through self-reflection, on-going learning, and action.

Laura Shmishkiss

Laura Shmishkiss, Consultant

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Laura (she/her) supports individuals, institutions and communities to engage in practices that support the disruption of and healing from oppression at all levels.  As a white, Jewish woman, she has a vested interest in dismantling white supremacy as a foundation to dismantling all other interconnected forms of oppression that live within ourselves and the world. She approaches her work from an intersectional, anti-racist framework and integrates healing-centered approaches that acknowledge the traumatic impacts of systemic oppression. As an equity consultant and as an herbalist, Laura believes that collective liberation is contingent upon restoring a regenerative relationship to our communities, our economies and the land.