Over the past few weeks, we’ve had a number of exciting additions to AVODAH’s staff. Read on to learn about these new members of our team.

Kira Manso Brown is the Executive and Program Assistant in our New York

office. She has found her professional home in the non-profit and social justice fields and previously worked in museums, for the New York Preservation Archive Project, and even as assistant to a former ship’s doctor and anthropologist. While studying at Columbia University, Kira became interested in how the worlds of aesthetics, performance, religion, and social justice intersect. She is committed to the production of nonconventional performance that interrogates these intersections and has produced works performed at Columbia University, in Central Park, and at the Whitney Museum. A native New Yorker, she lives in Washington Heights and welcomes any opportunity to improve her Spanish and Yiddish.

Sara Feola is the  Development Associate in our D.C. office. A native Washingtonian, Sara is a graduate of Kenyon College in Gambier, Ohio where she received her B.A. in Anthropology. She has spent her entire life involved in social justice issues, working and volunteering for numerous non-profits both in D.C. and in Ohio. After graduating from Kenyon, she joined the AmeriCorps VISTA program and moved to rural Colorado. Through AmeriCorps, she worked for the non-profit A Kid’s Place, a child abuse/neglect advocacy group. She spent a large majority of her time doing development, outreach, and marketing—fundraising, recruiting donors, drafting newsletters, and event planning. Sara is an active member of the Washington, D.C. community, volunteering for the non-profit Clean Water Action and helping out at the community garden in her neighborhood.

Raven Stubbs is a Program and Development Associate in our Chicago office.

She is a native of Detroit, MI and a graduate of Illinois Wesleyan University where she received her B.A in Theatre Arts with Honors Research in Ethnodramatic Theatre Studies. Carrying on with her Theatre for Social Justice training, she partnered with neighborhood recreation centers as a teaching artist, using theatre to promote literacy and engagement in disenfranchised, low-income youth. Prior to joining AVODAH, Raven held a contract with the city of Bloomington, Illinois to create and launch a model non-profit program aimed at servicing high-risk youth ages 6-17. Most recently, she has been in partnership with the Global Campaign for Education’s Youth Advocacy program, located in Washington, D.C.