OUR STAFF
Marjorie Joseph
Executive Director
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MARJORIE A. JOSEPH is an organizer with over a decade of executive management, leadership, operations, program growth and development, marketing, accounting, and creative curriculum development experience. A team and solutions-oriented leader she is adept at aligning mission and vision with opportunity and strategy, as well as demonstrated effectiveness at fostering understanding, empowerment, and belonging amongst diverse staffs, and collaboration between organizations, institutions, and community leaders. A native New Yorker, via Los Angeles to Houston, Marjorie is proud to currently serve as the Executive Director of Houston Coalition Against Hate.
Prior to her role with the Coalition, Marjorie served as Associate Director of Street Poets Inc., an LA non-profit poetry-based peace-making organization dedicated to the creative process as a force for individual and community transformation. There she spent nine years doing the work of gang intervention and violence prevention through the use of music, poetry, and the mentoring of LA’s youth/young adults.
A graduate of the Pennsylvania State University with BA in Political Science and minors in Dance and African/African American Studies, she is also an accomplished artist. As a writer and performer, her poems have been published in several anthologies, and she has appeared on stage (off-Broadway/ internationally) and in film. A creative at heart, she is currently writing/producing a documentary called Private Collection about one of the few remaining collections of Haitian Art since the 2010 earthquake owned by art collectors/curators Leon and Evelyne Chalom.
A leader, visionary, and advocate, she has always been a proponent of art in the space of acknowledgement and activism; and, is the originator of the #justiceoverequity framework in order to facilitate societal and cultural shifts and transformation. Marjorie is excited to be in Houston heralding the work of the Coalition, and feels privileged to be living in the most diverse city in the county.
Liz Peterson
Assistant Director
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She is on the board of directors for the Convict Leasing and Labor Project, or CLLP, which aims to expose the history of the convict leasing system and its connection to modern prison slavery while restoring the dignity of all victims of forced labor and their descendants. The CLLP is currently working to properly memorialize the 95 enslaved convicts whose bodies were found at a Sugar Land construction site in 2018.
In addition to founding and leading a new racial justice committee at Memorial Drive United Methodist Church, she has co-developed and presented an anti-racism curriculum for Project Curate and offers private consulting to schools, churches and organizations.
She is also a member of the leadership team for SURJ HTX, a group focused on organizing white people for racial justice. Liz is excited to join the HCAH team to further the cause of social and racial justice and advocacy.
OUR BOARD
Justine Fanarof, Esq.
Karen Walrond, Esq.
Michelle Tovar
Holocaust Museum Houston
STEWARDSHIP COMMITTEE
Bob Meyer
KaNeesha Allen
Chair Prevention Committee
AmeriCorps Programs Director The Alliance Texas
Sean Fitzpatrick
Tiffany Echevarria
Chair Organizational Committee
Senior Program Manager
United Way Houston
Zahra Jamal
Paola Guzman
Co-Chair Research & Response Committee
Services Manager
Houston Immigration Legal Services Collaborative
Cheryl Newcomb
Co-Chair Law Enforcement Committee
Director of Development
Contemporary Arts Museum Houston