Sherisse Butler

Education Nonprofit Leader

Sherisse Butler is bridging the gap between community and government.

Butler is the senior vice president and executive director of City Year Detroit, dedicated to building a stronger Detroit by supporting and developing AmeriCorps members as leaders in their schools and community. Butler has pursued better educational outcomes for urban students throughout her career—first as an afterschool teacher in New York, then overseeing middle school initiatives and youth program evaluation at Teen HYPE Youth Development in Detroit. More recently, she was the head of government relations for Detroit Public Schools Community District where she collaborated with senior leaders to formulate and advance the district’s legislative priorities.

Butler volunteers for local education initiatives and school board campaigns. She is also a precinct delegate, the youth pastor of St. Paul AME Church, continues to support Teen HYPE as vice-chair of the board of directors, and is a board member of the Detroit Promise which offers a tuition-free path to postsecondary education in Michigan.

Dr. Sirrita Darby

Youth & Education Advocate

Dr. Sirrita Darby brings a multi-pronged approach to systems change, from youth-led work to co-designing curriculum with students.

In her time as an English teacher at Detroit Collegiate High School, Dr. Darby created a space where love, academic rigor, and emotional healing flourished. Alongside ELA standards, Dr. Darby created “healing circles” for her students to unpack traumas while simultaneously strengthening their speaking, reading, and writing skills. Their collective journey resulted in a published book of student poems called Forbidden Tears.

Harnessing her insights from the classroom, Dr. Darby founded and serves as the executive director of Detroit Heals Detroit. She facilitates safe spaces for Detroit youth to authentically express themselves, heal from trauma, and work to dismantle systems of oppression. She built these practices into an educational curriculum and youth training that has been taken up by classroom teachers and afterschool providers across the country. Additionally, Dr. Darby worked alongside the young people she serves to co-found a “Healing Hub,” a community house where young Detroiters can receive free food, clothes, books, tutoring and more.

Jerjuan Howard

Afterschool Game Changer

Jerjuan Howard’s work in Detroit’s afterschool system has earned him widespread admiration for the ways he approaches program delivery, partnerships, and system expansion.

Howard launched the Umoja Debate League in 2021 at his alma mater, John R. King Middle School. Today, just three years later, the program reaches 210 students at 20 schools. Named after the Swahili word for “unity,” his program teaches youth conflict resolution skills, self-expression, and literacy. Howard also established Umoja Village, a community space with a garden, art, a free library, and a stage for debate events and community meetings.

Howard previously worked as the special projects and partnerships coordinator for Detroit City Council President Pro Tem James Tate, where one of his priority areas was reducing gun violence in the city. This issue continues to fuel Howard, who uses debate training to teach young people to resolve conflict in a healthy, nonviolent way.

Howard’s dedication to advancing racial equity and justice in education has been recognized through multiple awards from city officials, including the Spirit of Detroit Award in December 2023.

Jenell Mansfield

Teachers Union Organizer

Jenell Mansfield builds educators’ power to influence policy change.

Mansfield is a political and legislative coordinator at American Federation of Teachers–Michigan Union (AFT-Michigan) where she trains teachers, paraprofessionals, bus drivers, and school support staff to become legislative leaders. Her role also includes coordinating advocacy across higher education faculty and staff as well as school health care professionals. She is the first Black woman and former educator to serve in this critical role.

Mansfield’s achievements at AFT-Michigan have included restoring bargaining rights for Detroit teachers and working in coalition with the Detroit community to win a $94-million literacy lawsuit paid out to the Detroit Public Schools Community District.

Her career has included serving as a classroom teacher, a school social worker, the founding director of academic programs at SAY Detroit Play Center, and the former director of the Parent Academy at Detroit Public Schools.

Silver Moore

Curriculum Creator

Silver Moore equips teachers across Detroit—and educators across the nation—with tools to deliver a racially equitable education and to provide Black children with educational experiences rooted in the beliefs that #BlackChildGenius is alive and well and that Black children are inherently valuable.

Moore’s career spans from being a high-performing middle school English Language Arts teacher, to now serving as a humanities instructional coach at University Prep Academy Art & Design Middle/High School, as well as engaging in curriculum and teacher development as the founder of Classroom Clapback.

Through Classroom Clapback curricula, training, and facilitation, Moore seeks to address the specific challenges and systemic inequalities Black youth face and build educational spaces that affirm Black youth free from racism, classism, adultism, and all forms of oppression and instead overflow with tenacious joy, stubborn hope, and radical wonder.

Rev. Larry Simmons, Sr.

Neighborhood Leader

Reverend Larry Simmons, Sr. is a community leader who builds collaborative, all-hands-on-deck approaches to support Detroit youth.

Rev. Simmons is executive director of Brightmoor Alliance, a coalition of nearly 50 organizations dedicated to serving the northwest Detroit community. He has led and collaborated on dozens of collective action coalitions including Every School Day Counts Detroit, the Coalition for the Future of Detroit School Children, and Hope Starts Here. He is a former pastor of Baber Memorial A.M.E. Church. Earlier in his career, he served as political director for Detroit’s first Black mayor, Coleman A. Young.

Rev. Simmons builds partnerships between schools, community members, companies, labor unions, city government, philanthropy, nonprofits, and more, all while positioning young people as leaders to be heard and followed. Throughout his impactful career, Rev. Simmons has remained joyfully driven by a commitment to children and young people.

Dr. Nikolai Vitti

Detroit Schools Superintendent

Dr. Nikolai Vitti is the second longest serving superintendent in Detroit Public Schools Community District’s history—and arguably the district’s most transformational.

Having stepped into the superintendent role at a time when Detroit Public Schools was undergoing significant operational and financial restructuring, Dr. Vitti has been an anchor of stability. He put the district on a path toward greater achievement and improved education for tens of thousands of Detroit children. Under his leadership, the district has seen its first improvement in decades in the areas of enrollment and financial management; student achievement; student attendance; teacher recruitment, retention, and pay; parental engagement; and student programming, including re-introduction of arts, sports, and music to all schools. Dr. Vitti has also worked to expand early childhood access, Montessori programs, afterschool programs, and mental health services.

Dr. Vitti works at all levels to create equity across Detroit’s public education system, from partnering at the grassroots to advocating for equitable education policy at the state and federal levels.

Marisol Bien Teachworth Walton

School Innovator

Marisol Bien Teachworth Walton is a lifelong Detroit educator and community organizer who fosters and amplifies the power of Detroit youth as creative thinkers and leaders who advocate for and construct a just future.

Teachworth co-founded The James and Grace Lee Boggs School, a community-based public charter school on the eastside of Detroit. The Boggs School, now in its 11th year, employs a placed-based model of learning for K-8 students that mixes traditional instruction with immersion in and service to the community around it.

Today, Teachworth co-leads the Detroit Summer program, first founded by James and Grace Lee Boggs, which has inspired hundreds of youth through art and service projects that question their assumptions, support their community, and advocate for their rights. Additionally, she is the director of youth development at the Detroit Hispanic Development Corporation. Through all the hats she wears, Teachworth devotes her time to advancing educational equity and nurturing Detroit youth to be creative, critical thinkers who understand themselves and the power they possess.

Dawn Wilson-Clark

Parent Organizer

Dawn Wilson-Clark mobilizes parents across the city and state to advocate for a stronger, more equitable education system.

Wilson-Clark is a founding member of the Michigan Education Justice Coalition which organizes communities across the state to improve public education. She recently served as a parent organizer and researcher at 482Forward where she connected community leaders and organizations to legislators, hosting community conversations and leading trips to Lansing and Washington D.C. She has organized parents to increase student attendance, improve school conditions, end the state takeover of Detroit schools via the Education Achievement Authority, and support a successful literacy lawsuit against the State of Michigan brought by seven Detroit students.

Wilson-Clark is now establishing the Jonathon and Dawn Clark Health & Healing Center, renovating the site of the former Brightmoor Community Center where she and her late husband, Jonathon Clark, were married. The Center sits across the street from Gomper Elementary-Middle School and will offer holistic support for the neighborhood—especially its youth.

Juanita Zuniga

Youth Organizer

Juanita Zuniga embodies community-rooted, youth-led education advocacy.

In her role as lead organizer of 482Forward’s Youth Organizing Collective, Zuniga supports young Detroiters to advocate for the changes they want to see in the education system and lead their own policy advocacy campaigns. With her support, 482Forward’s Youth Organizing Collective has launched campaigns for equitable school funding and improving local school buildings and facilities. Last year, the collective created an interactive art exhibition “Your Brain on School” to highlight the critical need for mental health resources in schools.

Zuniga is also a contributing journalist for El Central Hispanic News, amplifying the voices and stories of southwest Detroit. She credits spending her high school years in the Girls Making Change program, begun by Senator Stephanie Chang, for her trajectory into social justice and policy work. Zuniga is a graduate of Detroit schools and native Detroiter.