We invite you to join us for a webinar series that is informative and interactive offering opportunities to engage, learn, and network with each other.  The series reframes philanthropy through a more diverse, equitable, and inclusive lens to foster new ways of being catalysts for social change in our own communities and around the country.  Each session will be held virtually and will include expert speakers, knowledge sharing, and discussion. The series is open to donors, grantees, professional advisors, and staff and board members of organizations impacted by social justice philanthropy.  We hope you will find the series thought-provoking, challenging, and inspiring. 

Speaker, Aria Florant, CEO and co-founder,  Liberation Ventures. 

Join us for a discussion about reparations and the responsibility of philanthropy. Reparations are a process of repairing, healing and restoring a people injured because of their group identity as defined by international law.   Several large foundations have made efforts to get governments to pay reparations to descendants of enslaved Black Americans, including in Amherst, MA.  What is our responsibility as donors and funders? 

Aria is a conduit, constantly bridging worlds; Black and white, movement and mainstream, ethnic studies and finance. She holds multitudes of them all, and the essence of her work is creating for others that which she wants for herself: a world where all people’s whole selves belong. Aria believes that building trust and transformational partnership across differences is the key that can unlock that world, and that building a culture of repair is the path to true belonging for Black people, and all people, in America. Aria loves trekking at high altitude with just a backpack and no cell service, enjoying a Brooklyn (Lenape Land) speakeasy with the fullest-bodied glass of red wine they have, and long, lively dinners with her people.