Our Team

Alexis Pauline Gumbs, Ph.D.

Alexis Pauline Gumbs is a queer black trouble maker, a black feminist love evangelist, a prayer poet priestess and has a PhD in English, African and African American Studies and Women and Gender Studies from Duke University.  Alexis is co-founder of the Mobile Homecoming Project, a national experiential archive amplifying generations of Black LGBTQ Brilliance, the founder of Brilliance Remastered, a service to help visionary underrepresented graduate students stay connected to purpose, passion and community,  and the community school Eternal Summer of the Black Feminist Mind.

Alexis was named one of UTNE Reader's 50 Visionaries Transforming the World in 2009,was awarded a Too Sexy for 501-C3 trophy in 2011 and is one of the Advocate's top 40 under 40 features in 2012.  She was also the first researcher to work with the June Jordan papers at Harvard, the Audre Lorde papers and Spelman and the Lucille Clifton papers at Emory University and is widely published in the areas of women’s studies, African American Literature and LGBTQ Studies.

Sangodare

Sangodare Akinwale (also known as Julia Roxanne Wallace. M.Div.) creates media and art intended to heal and transform. Sangodare is a multimedia artist, filmmaker, musician, composer and theologian and founder of Queer Renaissance, a multimedia movement based on the premise that we can create the world anew. Sangodare co-created, with Dr. Alexis Pauline Gumbs, Black Feminist Film School, based in Durham, NC with national participation, and Mobile Homecoming, a national intergenerational experiential archive project that amplifies generations of Black LGBTQ brilliance by using multimedia and building intergenerational family of choice across time and space. Wallace and Gumbs also host retreats for LGTBQI people of color that facilitate healing and spiritual growth by engaging the resources of Black Feminism, African spirituality, creativity in general and poetics and music in particular.