Angel Pittman

Angel Pittman serves as Assistant Director at Touching Miami with Love (TML) alongside her husband of nearly 22 years, Jason Pittman, who serves as CEO. TML serves the urban poor in the inner-city community of Overtown adjacent to downtown Miami and the community of West Homestead at the southern end of Miami-Dade County. These two neighborhoods are two of the poorest communities in the state of Florida plagued with many consequences of poverty including high crime, drug trafficking and use, high pregnancy rate, substandard housing, struggling education, and lack of quality activities. In her role at TML, Angel oversees all marketing and communication, volunteers, fundraising, corporate partnership, donor development, and grant writing. She loves dreaming up new projects and opening new opportunities to youth. She is the co-creator of the award-winning program, Today’s Leaders Youth Development Program, and was awarded the Coral Gables Chamber of Commerce Outstanding Businesswoman of the Year in 2013.

Q: What inspires and motivates you to do the work that you do?

A: “It’s our students that inspire and motivate me.  In communities’ others define only by the poverty and violence they see, our students continually rise above.  They not only show amazing resiliency; they choose to give back.
They are showing up every afternoon to volunteer in our children’s program or join a group to volunteer at a suburban church raising money to fund their mission trip to us.  Youth, who don’t always have enough to eat themselves, fast for a full day to identify with global hunger.  Excited about new opportunities available they show gratefulness and form a fundraising committee to help pay their way.  After thirteen years at Touching Miami with Love, we are able to see the tangible results of investment in the lives of young people—many of them serve alongside us as staff now pouring into the next generation.”

Learn more about Angel’s work here. www.touchingmiamiwithlove.org

Nell Green

Nell Green serves as the Strategic Catalyst for Muslim Internationals (SCMI) and Internationals Ministry Network Coordinator (IMNC) for the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship. She and her husband, Butch, work in and around Houston, Texas as Field Personnel, ministering to the Muslim community and engaging congregations in outreach with their Muslim neighbors. In her roles, she trains and mentors others in serving refugee communities. She helps connect churches and individuals with refugee families, partners with Interfaith Ministries to meet the needs of newly-arrived refugees and helps coordinate an internationals ministry network which includes an emphasis on prayer and resourcing churches.

Nell is also on the frontlines of the battle against human trafficking in Houston, a city with one of the highest rates of both sex and labor trafficking in the US. Her work includes developing partnerships and providing training for those working to combat trafficking between Texas gateway cities and destination cities. She also acts as an advisor to the Coalition to Combat Human Trafficking in Texas Gateway/Destination Cities. http://cchttx.com/ In addition to her work with refugees and anti-trafficking initiatives, Nell and her daughter Christen own and operate a clothing business, Threads by Nomad. Threads by Nomad celebrates diversity by design; creates practical and versatile designs that inspire women to fall in love with the beauty of diversity through clothing. The social enterprise also prioritizes hiring refugees in the United States, ensuring they are paid a fair wage for their work. Their business model also provides micro-enterprise for artisans overseas.

Nell and her husband have served in Belgium, Senegal, Miami, FL, North and South Carolina, and Houston, TX. They have two adult children, one granddaughter, and a family dog named Francis (after the saint).

Learn more about Nell’s work.

https://www.classy.org/campaign/butch-and-nell-green/c94734

http://www.threadsbynomad.com/

Misty Granade

As an artist, Misty has always been drawn to collage because it speaks to the patchwork nature of our lives. She believes we pull memories, ideas, and dreams from our past and cobble them together with the people and places we encounter in the here and now. It’s a perpetual cycle of incorporating and reworking our own personal materials. It comes as no surprise that gluing things together has been an obsession of hers since she got her first bottle of Elmer’s glue. Her choice of materials may be broader and more sophisticated, but the impulse to illustrate what’s on the inside of her head remains the same.

Recently, Misty has been exploring the intersection of her art and her involvement in women’s social justice issues. Traveling the world and seeing first-hand what economic empowerment can mean for women, she hopes her art can bring to light issues that women face and cause people to pause and evaluate their roles and actions in systems rife with inequality.

Misty lives and works in Madison, AL with her husband and two children. She is currently serving as the President of the Board of Directors for Global Women. She is also on the 2017 Creative Team for Get Messy Art Journal (getmessyartjournal.com); a role that allows her to blog and provide creative inspiration to a community of about 300 artists.

Misty has an art show coming up at Lowe Mill (http://www.lowemill.net/) in Huntsville, AL where her work on sexism will be displayed from October-December 2017.

Learn more about Misty’s work.
http://misty.granades.com