Nana Gyamfi 

Executive Director

Nana Gyamfi received her undergraduate degree from Cornell University, and her Juris Doctorate from UCLA School of Law. She brings with her over three decades of service to the Movement for Black liberation, and over twenty years experience directing Black social justice organizations and networks. Nana is a human rights and criminal defense attorney, a professor in the Pan African Studies Department at the California State University Los Angeles, and radio personality who hosts 2 popular shows in Los Angeles, CA. She is also the president of the National Conference of Black Lawyers (NCBL).

As a seasoned organizer and activist, Nana has been involved with and led various local, national, and international social justice organizations for over thirty years. She is a Co-Founder and managing member of two Black-led and Black-focused organizations – Justice Warriors 4 Black Lives and Human Rights Advocacy. She is a co-founder and Core Team Member of Black August Los Angeles. She has also served as Executive Director of Black Women’s Forum, an organization founded by Congresswoman Maxine Waters, who serves as its President.

Benjamin Graham

Fundraising and Development Manager

As the Fundraising and Development Manager Benjamin Graham will primarily write grant proposals, prospect research, develop fundraising plans and implement strategies to influence and inform all stages of program development, design, piloting, growth and expansion.

Benjamin has a diverse experience spanning from being a technical player in the energy and mining industry to his work in policy formulation and implementation, with a wealth of experience in developing technical and non-technical grants, cooperative agreements, and contracts.

He possesses a strong ability to build sustainable relationships with excellent interpersonal, communication and analytical skills. He has a keen interest in government and political affairs, corporate governance, conflict and dispute, settlement, environment and climate as well as international relations.

Benjamin is a United Nations Fellow and his guiding principles are based on respect for the principle of equal rights and self-determination of peoples. He has persistently engaged in LGBTQIA+ activism, advocating for the ending of compulsory heterosexuality, human rights abuses and issues affecting queer people of color including the struggle for financial independence, the legacy of homelessness and lack of health care. He is also committed to mentoring young professionals in addressing the array of social challenges and career development by providing role models that can support them academically and socially.

To learn about the legal systems, rules, ethics and structures, and to develop skills useful in legal research, he studied and obtained a certificate in paralegal studies and graduated top of his class. He also holds a master’s degree in Applied Geophysics and a bachelor’s degree Petroleum Geoscience. Aside from these, his career objective is to be a full-fledged attorney.

Nekessa Opoti

Communications Director

Nekessa Opoti is a former journalist, editor, producer, writer, communications strategist, and immigrant justice organizer. For over fifteen years, she worked as a journalist and print/web news editor, and publisher. Her work promotes a grassroots articulation of often unheard voices. Her work promotes a grassroots articulation of often ignored and marginalized voices. Her work challenges: racism, particularly anti-Black racism; class and workers rights;  migration and displacement; access to public education; state surveillance, gender, sexuality, identity, and belonging from a queer Black femme immigrant lens. 

For the past five years, her work as a communications strategist informs local, state, and federal policy while being anchored by community voices and experiences. She has worked on: education and healthcare access as well as immigration issues including driver’s licenses, detention & deportation defense, and advocacy for under and undocumented immigrants. She has consulted with local and national foundations, coalitions as well as government agencies agitating and pushing for an undoing of institutional harm and state violence. 

Nekessa is one of the co-founders of the Minnesota based Black Immigrant Collective and a member of the Black LGBTIA+ Migrant Project.

Nekessa grew up on the shores of Lake Victoria in Kenya where mangoes were in abundance. She now lives in Minneapolis, thousands of miles away from the equator.

Tsion Gurmu

Legal Director

Tsion Gurmu is a Houston-based immigration attorney.  Tsion is the Founder and Director of the Queer Black immigrant project (QBip), a Black radical lawyering initiative which provides comprehensive legal representation to LGBTQIA+ Black immigrants while creating a safe space for clients to regain control over their voices through a storytelling project. QBip’s mission is to create a systemic response to meet the legal and social needs of LGBTQIA+ Black immigrants while elevating narratives that illuminate the global injustices of state-sponsored homophobia and anti-Black racism. Tsion has received recognition for her work at the intersection of international law and immigration by Preet Bharara and CAFÉ 100, change-makers taking action to address some of the most pressing problems in America and around the world. She was also selected as a 2018 Forbes 30 Under 30 Law & Policy honoree and 2019 Okay Africa 100 Women honoree.

Tsion holds a B.A. in Political Science and History, with a minor in Human Rights from the University of Chicago. She also holds a J.D. from New York University School of Law. In law school, she focused on international human rights law and immigration law. She served as a legal advocate in the Advanced Immigrant Rights Clinic, a leading institution in both local and national struggles for immigrant rights that engages in direct legal representation of immigrants and community organizations. In this position she represented individuals in removal proceedings, detention litigation, and civil suits; she also represented community organizations in legislative campaigns to pass the New York DREAM Act. Tsion also managed a capacity-building project for a children’s rights organization in Sierra Leone, Defence for Children International-Sierra Leone, in coordination with New York University’s Center for Human Rights and Global Justice. During her time in Ethiopia, Tsion worked with the Ethiopian Women Lawyers Association (EWLA) in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia assisting women in the struggle to secure full protection of their rights through training and advocacy workshops as well as small-scale research projects aimed at bringing about positive and progressive legal changes for Ethiopian women. Before moving to New York City, Tsion worked as an educator in Miami, FL with Teach for America.

Erica Baganza

Policy Manager

Erica worked for the congressional Foreign Affairs Committee as a staff associate for the Subcommittee on Africa, Global Health, and Global Human Rights, chaired by Congresswoman Karen Bass. In this role, she supported the legislative agenda on U.S. foreign policy with Africa, global health, and human rights issues. Her contributions include the planning and execution of subcommittee hearings to educate  members of congress the important issues affecting the continent, meeting with several people in the government and private sectors, and staying in touch with advocacy and diaspora groups to better inform legislation.

In addition to working on foreign policy issues, Erica also has experience in the criminal justice and trauma sectors as a victim and witness advocate with the Suffolk County District Attorney’s Office in her hometown of Boston, MA. There she worked with law enforcement and court personnel, community partners, and survivors of domestic violence, child abuse, gang violence, and the families of homicide victims. As a first-generation child, Erica is thrilled to use her skills to contribute to the groundwork BAJI has set out to further ensure the rights and liberties of Black migrants are upheld in our society. One of Erica’s favorite things to do is travel, and she has been doing so since the age of four. Her personal life goal is to visit every country on the African continent. She has visited four thus far.

 Uchechukwu Onwa

National Civic Engagement Coordinator

Uche (he/him) is a Nigerian-born organizer, trainer, abolitionist and movement strategist who fled his home country due to the repression and persecution he faced as a gay man. He is a member of the Black LGBTQIA+ Migrant Project (BLMP) with over 10 years of experience working in community outreach, public health, and human rights. He is a high-impact voice for the LGBTQ+ community and a social justice advocate. 

Before joining the BAJI team, he worked as the Co-Director/Organizing Coordinator  for the Queer Detainee Empowerment Project (QDEP) where he focused on leading the organization in the achievement of its vision and mission and financial objectives. He oversaw the planning, management, finances and fundraising, human resources, advocacy, base building, organizing campaigns, communications and maintaining the public presence of the organization. He also led QDEP’s Leadership Development Program for Cisgender Queer and Trans Women, and Gender Non-Conforming immigrants.

Uche’s work has been featured in Windy City Times, Shondaland, Plus Magazine, Buzzfeed, Advocate Magazine, Vogue Magazine, PoliticsNY, AMNY, Pulitzer Center and more. When he is not organizing for queer and trans immigrants’ liberation you can find him spending time with his chosen family.

Santcha Etienne

Miami Organizer

Santcha Etienne is BAJI’s Miami Organizer.  Santcha is a Haitian immigrant who has lived in the U.S. for more than twenty 20 years. Before becoming a fierce activist for social justice issues Santcha worked as a Licensed Practical Nurse (LPN) in Nursing homes throughout Florida.  As an LPN Santcha started organizing nurses at Nursing Homes for higher wages and better working conditions. She started volunteering for SEIU and mobilized and won to unionize nurses. In 2014, recognizing her passion and her excellent organizing skills SEIU hired her full time as community organizer.  At SEIU she has organized community members around social justice issues including increasing the minimum wage, police brutality, health care and fighting for the extension of Medicaid. 

Maraky Alemseged

Los Angeles Organizer

Maraky Alemseged is BAJI’s Los Angeles Organizer. She is a first generation Ethiopian-American who was born and bred in Los Angeles to two political and social justice activists. As a result, Maraky has spent her lifetime challenging unjust systems of oppression with the knowledge that “the personal is political and the political is personal.” Her nascent professional career is built atop years of community organizing, with heavy involvement in local, national, and international Black immigrant and migrant communities. Informed by abolitionist, Pan-African, queer, sociologist, and womanist perspectives, Maraky believes in approaching social justice issues from an intersectional lens. 

Amina Elamin

National Youth Organizer

Amena (she/her) is Sudanese by way of Brooklyn. She has years of community engagement and organizing experience from her hometown of Wichita, Kansas. During her time in Wichita, her work centered around youth-led initiatives and programming. She served as the Youth Development Coordinator at the International Rescue Committee, building the first IRC youth program in Wichita, designed to empower refugee and immigrant students through their high school and college career. Most recently, Amena served as the Community Building Fellow at UNICEF USA in New York City. As a fellow, Amena was able to work with young people from across the nation and champion community building efforts nationally. Amena believes in the power of youth as the pulse for the livelihoods of our communities and movements. As a youth advocate, she is excited to work with BAJI youth towards justice and liberation by centering and amplifying Blackness in all its forms.