Latonya Maley

Director Fellow (THEY/she)

Latonya Maley (they) is an award-winning non-profit leader and conservationist with 20 years of professional experience in community organizing, research, and healthcare. Latonya’s liberation work is deeply collaborative and focuses on relationship-building, Afro-Indigenous knowledge, and evidence-based interventions to heal oppression and protect the environment. They are passionate about leadership and accessibility for people with disabilities, LGBTQIA+, older adults, systems involving youth, and people experiencing poverty. Latonya stewards incubation spaces for youth and BIPOC leaders to address social justice issues through art, mutual aid, direct services, and public advocacy. They have led multidisciplinary teams of professionals to expand programs and work with public officials while maintaining fidelity to their justice values and a trauma-informed culture of care. They have served on leadership committees of Ujimaa Medics, Dyke March Collective, Chicago Action Medical, and Defund CPD. These grassroots activist groups express Latonya’s approach of communal care locally while advocating for system level-change. Latonya is a Naturalist in both Ohio and Illinois, and has a BA in Anthropology from Agnes Scott College and a Master’s in Public Health from University of Illinois at Chicago. When they are not urban farming, volunteering with native reptiles, they can be found enjoying DIY home renovation projects, reading Sci-Fi novels, and parenting their 60 house plants and 4 rescue animals.