Community of Contributors | Liberated Development

Nita Baum
Founder
b*free

Focused on elevating people and the planet, and with 20+ years as a leadership coach, founder, teacher and consultant, Nita founded b*free in 2013. Through a holistic approach, mind-body-spirit@work focused on awakening the potential for every person to embody Healing Leadership, b*free transforms Workplaces to HealingSpaces so new cultures of work can take root and equitably add to-not detract from- the freedom, sustainability & wellbeing of all people and our planet. She’s Founding Board President of Solar Responders which puts solar + storage on first responder stations in Puerto Rico, she’s a native New Yorker from Queens, a yogi who plays the harmonium, and has a BA from Columbia University and MBA from George Washington University.

Rito Martinez
Founder & President
Love and Liberation Consulting

Rito is currently the Founder and President of Love and Liberation: A healing justice, equity justice, and trauma informed executive coaching and consulting firm.

Rito currently supports the following efforts:

Leading racial justice and racial healing circles methodology and practitioner training with Truth, Racial Healing, and Transformation Chicago.
Co-Director of Truth, Equity, and Healing Fellowship with TRHT Chicago.
Transformative coaching in partnership with Surge Institute, Moonshot EdVentures, Nexus Equity Fellowship, and Community Equity Partners.
Co-design and co-lead the Great Expectations Equity Fellowship with the Office of Equity Chicago Public Schools .

Rito is deeply committed to impacting African-American and Latino communities by supporting and developing the leaders who serve them.

Meredith Reitman
Researcher
Reitman Research and Strategy

Meredith Reitman is the President of Reitman Research and Strategy, LLC. She is a qualitative and quantitative researcher who specializes in exploring how race operates within workplaces. As an academic, she used critical race theory to study how racial belonging influences the experiences of men in the IT workplace. This framework has continued to guide her work for two decades by acknowledging racism as an everyday phenomenon, revealing meritocracy as a myth, exploring intersecting racialized oppressions, and centering storytelling by people of color.

Abigail Smith
Education Policy &
Racial Justice Coach

Abigail has spent her career focused on improving quality, equity, and access in public education. As an independent consultant, she supports mission-driven organizations through equity-focused leadership coaching, strategic planning, organizational development, and program design. Her clients span the non-profit, public, and philanthropic sectors. Abigail co-founded and co-leads the Seeding Disruption Fellowship, which brings together senior leaders in the District of Columbia, to build knowledge, skills, and community across racial difference and professional fields, with a focus on disrupting systems of racial inequity that impact children and youth. She is also the founding designer and facilitator of DC's Early Educator Fellowship. Abigail previously served as Deputy Mayor for Education in the District of Columbia, as the Chief of Transformation Management for the District of Columbia Public Schools, and in several roles with Teach For America, including Executive Director of the Washington, DC office and as Vice President of Research and Public Policy for the national organization. She began her career as a first grade teacher in Weldon, North Carolina. Abigail is a Pahara-Aspen Fellow and received a Bachelor of Arts degree from Yale University and a Master’s degree in Education from Harvard University.

Thelma Wong
Founder & Principal
Jeong Consulting

Thelma approaches early learning practice and policy from a social justice stance and works to affirm the experiences of children and families. She creates strategic plans with a focus on racial equity, professional learning and workforce development, and thrills in applying best practices in participatory engagement, meeting design, and facilitation. Before starting Jeong Consulting, Thelma served in roles where she oversaw strategy and practice portfolios, built policy and practice agendas, designed frameworks for district-wide continuous quality improvement approach, and launched a shared services platform for licensed child care providers. Thelma began her career in education as a policy advisor, and then spent four years as an early childhood educator and literacy coach in the Atlanta Metropolitan area. Prior to her work in early learning, she worked in international development and was based in Kigali, Rwanda. Thelma earned her M.A.T. in early childhood and elementary education from Georgia State University, and a B.A. in international relations and African studies from Mount Holyoke College, where she studied intergroup dialogue with Dr. Beverly Daniel Tatum.

Contributors & Co-Creators

One of the pillars of our theory of change is community.

Nita Baum
Founder
b*free

Rito Martinez
Founder & President
Love and Liberation Consulting

Meredith Reitman
Researcher
Reitman Research and Strategy

Abigail Smith
Education Policy &
Racial Justice Coach

Thelma Wong
Founder & Principal
Jeong Consulting