Proposed 2026-27 ExComm Slate

With over one hundred Voting Board Members, the ExComm is the body of 9-15 representatives that Alternate ROOTS Voting Members elect to offer governance and oversight throughout the year. Each year, the current ExComm puts forth a proposed slate for the next year’s ExComm to be voted on at the Annual Business Meeting.

All Voting Members are encouraged to vote! You can do so as either an in-person or virtual participant of ROOTS’ Annual Business Meeting, held during ROOTS Week (August 4-9, 2026). The vote is on the entire slate rather than each individual ExComm member.

Your dues must be current in order to vote. If you need to renew, you can do that HERE. If you are unsure of the status of your dues, reach out using this form – select “Membership” in the dropdown menu. 

Thank you for being an active member of this beloved community.

Keryl McCord

(she/her) - Chairperson - Georgia
Keryl McCord is the President and CEO of Radical EQ, LLC, a consulting practice fostering human-centered, equitable, and transparent organizational cultures. With over forty years in the arts, Keryl's experience includes roles as a theater director, commercial theater producer, and managing director. As the Director of Theater Programs at the National Endowment for the Arts, she launched initiatives to address funding inequities, leading to increased support for historically marginalized theaters. Keryl served as Managing Director of Alternate ROOTS from 2009 to 2017. Post-retirement, she founded Equity Quotient, LLC, now Radical EQ, consulting for clients like Dance USA and Cleveland Public Theatre. She is also the immediate past chair of Working Films. Her work consistently emphasizes social justice, making significant strides in leveling the playing field in the arts sector.
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Omari Fox

(he/him) - President - Georgia
Community artist and organizer Omari Fox has a long résumé of civic engagement, classroom expertise, and cultural arts campaign experience from a 20 year long organizing career that is still growing. As a trained sociologist and graduate of South Carolina State University, Omari brings a unique creative consciousness to the lens of community relationship building combined with his special infusion of Hop-Art Education as a certified visual arts teacher. Honing his organizing skills through the Charleston, SC rhizome, Omari was a recipient of the first Alternate ROOTS Hip hop Scholarship in 2004 and has been rooting for community ever since.

Abigail Gómez

(she/her/ella) - Treasurer - Virginia
Abigail Gómez is a Latine visual artist, teaching artist, cultural organizer, and arts advocate in the Northern Shenandoah Valley of Virginia. Arte Libre VA, her nonprofit, empowers Youth of the Global Majority through equitable access to the arts. She is also a Professor of Art and Design at Shenandoah University, where she is the founder and Director for the BA in Art and Design program, which she built using an equity framework.

Victoria Rae Moore

(she/her) - Co-Secretary - South Carolina
Victoria Rae Moore develops ideas, encourages people, and spreads positive messages. She’s a creative entrepreneur, culture bearer, culture worker, and conNECKtedTOO program facilitator currently mastering the arts of business, public relations and social responsibility.

Justice Maxey

(any pronouns) - Co-Secretary - Georgia
Justice Maxey is an artist-activist from Nassau, Bahamas, who currently resides on Yamassee land in Savannah, Georgia. Justice has over 15 years of professional experience in performing arts management, creation, and education. An advocate for arts-integration, Justice is also a published researcher on live performance practices with and for youth; Emergentheatre (ET), Justice’s black feminist systems change theory, has been shared at Theatre Symposium, Alternate ROOTS, and the Allied Media Conference. Justice has been an instrumental voice in the launch of ROOTS’ YOOTS Advisory Circle.

Andrea Assaf

(she/her) - At-Large Member - Florida
Andrea Assaf is a writer, director, performer, and cultural organizer. She is the founding Artistic and Executive Director of Art2Action Inc., and Co-Director of the National Institute for Directing & Ensemble Creation in partnership with Pangea World Theater.

Carolyn Somers

(she/her) - At-Large Member - Louisiana
For over twenty years Carolyn was an administrator at the Joan Mitchell Foundation, where she developed and oversaw multiple programs designed to support a diverse group of visual artists. While with JMF she was able to facilitate a multiyear grant to Alternate ROOTS to explore ways to engage more deeply with members who were visual artists. Part of this strategic planning by ROOTS, included bringing a group of artists to ROOTS Week in 2014. Carolyn brought her experience running an artist endowed foundation to the work she’s doing now with one artist, Willie Birch, in New Orleans. This work is based on the concept that even established, successful older artists could benefit from one on one support to help photograph, document and organize archival information about their artwork and career.

Joe Tolbert Jr.

(he/they) - At-Large Member - Tennessee
Joe Tolbert Jr. is a cultural strategist, facilitator, writer, and advocate working at the intersection of art, culture, spirituality, and social justice. He currently serves as the Executive Director of The Waymakers Collective. His work centers on fostering innovation and empowering artists to drive cultural growth across Appalachia and the South.

King Shakur

(he/him) - At-Large Member - Texas
King Shakur is a fun-loving poet, DJ, activist, mentor, lover, fighter. Born in Dallas, TX, and raised in the South Dallas neighborhood, he is a husband and an Uncle/Daddy. He founded Volunteering While Black in 2017. VWB is an organization tasked with promoting volunteerism in the African American community while supporting several service organizations.

Lauren Fitzgerald

(she/they) - At-Large Member - Tennessee
Lauren Fitzgerald is the Managing Director of the Intercultural Leadership Institute (ILI) and the founder and Lead Executive Strategist for Strategize/619, a cultural strategy firm. She has served with several art institutions, theaters, and community development corporations.

Nikki MAB

(she/her) - At-Large Member - North Carolina
Nikki MAB is a cultural organizer and multimedia/multidisciplinary artist and jewelry designer, she often uses wire wrapping and semi precious crystals to make whimsical creations. She uses a special blend of cultural alchemy to facilitate spaces of community healing, learning, and collaboration. Her work allows people to see and hear how much we all have in common.

Nzzy Odessa

(she/her) - At-Large Member - Georgia
Nzzy Odessa is a Jamaican-American Southerner and interdisciplinary cultural worker whose art demonstrates the stifled desires and salvation of Black non-men in the American South. She is a poet, filmmaker, and organizer. Her work antagonizes Black femicide and regional disparities affecting Black non-men below the Mason-Dixon.

This Year's Slate: How We Got Here

Each year, the current ExComm puts forth a proposed slate for the next year’s ExComm to be voted on at the Annual Business Meeting. Nominations for ExComm opened this February. Once nominations closed in March, the Nomination Committee,* in collaboration with the ExComm, reviewed applications, met with nominees, and developed the proposed slate.

Throughout the process, we endeavored to build a proposed slate of visionary leaders who were deeply connected to the work of Alternate ROOTS and would help us build a balance of skills and perspectives on the overall committee. All ExComm members are asked to serve three year terms. 

Questions? Contact the ExComm Chairs using this form – select “ExComm Slate” in the dropdown menu.

*Big thanks to the Nomination Committee: Abigail Gómez (she/her/ella), ExComm Treasurer; Bob Leonard (he/him), Voting Member & Founding Member; Carolyn Somers (she/her), ExComm At-Large Member; Corey Staten (he/him), ExComm At-Large Member; Wendy Shenefelt (she/her), Alternate ROOTS Executive Director