Meet the new members of the National Council of Elders 2025!
Doris Crenshaw
As the Senior Grassroots Coordinator for Sphere and Founder/CEO of The Southern Youth Leadership Development Institute, Doris Dozier Crenshaw has over 60 years of community activist experience.
In 1955, at the age of 12, Doris served as Vice President of the NAACP Youth Council, when Mrs. Rosa Parks was advisor to the Youth Council. After completing her degree at Clark College, she continued her community outreach in Chicago with Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. on the Open Housing Campaign.
Doris began her professional career as the Southern Field Representative for the National Council of Negro Women, organizing chapters, designing rural economic programs (credit unions, quilting bees, grocery stores, and pig banks), and health and housing programs. MORE
Eileen Wilson-Oyelaran
Eileen served as the President of Kalamazoo College for 11 years until her retirement in 2016. She currently serves on the advisory board of the Smithsonian National Museum of African Art and the board of trustees of the United States International University-Africa (USIU-A). She is trustee emerita of Pomona College and the Bronson Healthcare Group, as well as past chair of the Association of Governing Boards (AGB) Council of Presidents and the Board of Directors of the National Association of Independent Colleges and Universities (NAICU).
Eileen worked closely with elders to create the Arcus Center for Social Justice Leadership. This center has brought together students with some of the most visionary political leaders of the last century. The annual conferences were global in perspective, challenging the dominant power structure. Eileen is based in North Carolina.
While much of her life has been in academia, she has been a strong voice for change, for justice, and for peace.
Katherine Acey
Katherine is a highly respected activist, best known for her expertise and commitment to LGBTQ and social justice feminist philanthropy. Her creative and inclusive vision of movements has been instrumental in setting a standard for a more progressive, diverse, and community-based definition of philanthropy.
In 1987, after serving on Astraea’s Board of Directors for four years, Katherine was hired as its first Executive Director. Under her stewardship, Astraea evolved from a volunteer organization with $30,000 budget giving out $20,000 in grants to a multi-million dollar public foundation with a staff of 18, a national board, and a global advisory committee.
Acey believes many things, including that each day we must fight in small and big ways for justice. Acey believes in hope. Acey believes that change is damn difficult and also very possible. Acey believes that we must strive to be kinder than necessary and that joy is an act of resistance in the hardest of times. And, if it weren’t for a wonderful multi-generational community of loving friends and blood family, she would not be able to get up in the morning. Strong coffee also helps a lot.
Among other “things,” Acey is a soon-to-be 75-year-old social justice feminist who identifies as a lesbian and a Lebanese, Arab-American with a touch of Irish.
Laura Olah
Laura Olah is the Executive Director of Citizens for Safe Water Around Badger (CSWAB). The organization is based in Merrimac, WI.
“I am part of a community, undefined by geography, that shares a deep concern for the human environment and the need to empower affected tribes and stakeholders in the decision-making process, ensuring powerful, long-term solutions to military and industrial toxins in our rural communities.”
More about CSWAB:
The mission of the group is to support, unify and strengthen citizens concerned for the safety of water resources in and around the Badger Army Ammunition Plant; to effect expedient cleanup of any contamination caused by negligent handling of toxic waste; and to exercise means as necessary to guarantee water resources are totally free of toxic contamination for us and the generations to follow. Our goal is to build a sustainable future which will preserve, and where possible, restore the integrity of natural systems – including soils, water, air, and biological diversity.
Mark Silverberg
Mark Silverberg is a visual and narrative documentary photographer who works with communities and non-profit organizations to support them to view themselves through a strength and asset-based lens. His purpose supports residents shift from an illness and scarcity-based community narrative to one based on healing and abundance. This generative storytelling assists the people and organizations he works with to create positive change together.
Mark has documented the Center for Mind-Body Medicine’s Global Trauma Relief Program in Haiti, The Yesod Jewish Community Center in St. Petersburg, Russia for the Jewish Federation of Cleveland, the El Sistema Cleveland Program, and Neighborhood Connections in Cleveland, OH, among other projects over many years. His work explores the intersection between visual and narrative documentary storytelling and asset-based community development.
Mark was born and raised in northern Ohio within a family that centered peace, social justice, anti-racism, internationalism, art, and beauty and with parents who fled oppression against Jewish people in Europe.
Mark met Frank Joyce when Frank was an organizer for the Detroit chapter of People Against Racism. The two have been close and working together since 1969, with Mark most recently working with KBS at Frank’s invitation since 2021.
He is based in Cleveland, Ohio.
Learn more about Mark’s work: https://www.markjsilverberg.com
Naomi Tutu
After years spent as a development consultant, educator and race and gender activist, Naomi Tutu accepted her call to ordained ministry. She is an Episcopal priest who most recently was Associate Rector at All Saints, Beverly Hills.
The challenges of growing up black and female in apartheid South Africa have been the foundation of Naomi’s life as an activist for human rights. Those experiences taught her that our whole human family loses when we accept situations of oppression and how the teaching and preaching of hate and division injure us all.
Rev. Tutu is the third child of Archbishop Desmond and Nomalizo Leah Tutu. She was born in South Africa and had the opportunity to live in many communities and countries. She was educated in Swaziland, the US, and England and has divided her adult life between South Africa and the US.
Growing up the ‘daughter of …’ has offered Naomi Tutu many opportunities and challenges in her life. Perhaps one of the greatest challenges she has struggled with is the call to ministry. This call refused to be silenced. Even as she carried her passion for justice into other fields, the call to preach and serve as an ordained clergyperson continued to tug at her. Finally, in her 50’s she responded to the call and went to seminary. MORE
Warren Cooper
Warren Cooper is a performance artist from Philadelphia, PA, who is a dedicated voice for Justice & Peace. He is a musician, composer, producer, and broadcaster who runs a production company (Music Media Ministry) that creates and produces Sacred Justice Media and Art. Through his work, he seeks to give voice to matters of Human Rights and the Sanctity of our Planet. His passion for Environmental Justice and Spiritual Health yields a uniquely flavored approach to putting a message in the music.
As the oldest son of Rev. Dr. J. Jerome Cooper, Warren grew up on the front lines and on the cutting edge of The Movement. His worldview was shaped by the dual reality of growing up as a Black male in the shadow of Philadelphia’s 1964 race riots and the influence of his father’s commitment, from a spiritual center, to reaching across cultures and sectors to build bridges of Beloved Community. Warren’s entire career as an artist has been based on the principle of using music and art to present faith-focused solutions to Issues of injustice, and to build those bridges of Beloved Community. MORE
