2016 National Conference

Meghan Barp is a strategist, community builder, speaker and advocate. She currently serves as senior vice president of community impact for Greater Twin Cities United Way.  Since beginning her career seven years ago with United Way, she has held various roles, beginning with program manager, and progressing quickly to her current role, which she has held since January 2015. Meghan is best known for engaging partners locally and nationally in ways that are central to United Way’s mission: building pathways out of poverty. Meghan has presented nationally and internationally on philanthropy, volunteerism, donor engagement and product design. In her current role, Meghan works with partners to improve and strengthen our community for and with those in need.  She often provides expert consultation to corporations, community leaders and to United Ways around the nation regularly. Prior to joining UW, Meghan served as the Director of Teaching and Learning for FEGS Health and Human Services in New York City. She also served as Senior Director for the YWCA of the City of New York, scaling programs city-wide that are still thriving today. Meghan graduated from the University of Nebraska and has a master’s degree from Oregon State University.

Tawanna is the Executive Director of the Northside Funders Group, a place-based, collective impact organization of 20 corporate, community and private foundations and public sector investors committed to aligning investments and strategies to catalyze comprehensive, sustainable change in North Minneapolis. In this role, she facilitates a four-lever approach to helping funders Learn, Leverage, Influence and Invest in new ways that advance equity and build social capital and extend the prosperity of the Twin Cities to one of its most impoverished neighborhoods. Before moving to Minnesota, Tawanna was the Director of Diversity for Cox Communications, where she served as an advisor to the senior management team, assisting in setting the highest standards for business growth, innovation and stakeholder return by ensuring that the company understood and acted upon the needs of diverse communities. Prior to joining Cox, she served as the first Executive Director for Destination Midtown, leading an unprecedented community economic development public-private partnership. Her visionary leadership lead to more than $500 million of re-investment in the historic heart of Omaha in just three years and also resulted in the development of a model that was later replicated in North and South Omaha.

Tawanna has a Bachelors Degree of Public Administration from Washburn University in Topeka, KS. She recently completed the Executive Certificate in Transformational Leadership from Georgetown University. In 2014, she was awarded a prestigious Bush Fellowship by the Bush Foundation to engage her transformational leadership toward creating systems that fully leverage and deploy black philanthropy and civic leadership as key differentiators in the battle for economic equity. Tawanna’s civic leadership has been recognized by many awards including the Midlands Business Journal’s (Omaha) 40 Under 40 and in 2004 as one of the Ten Outstanding Young Omahan’s. In 2005, the Midlands Business Journal honored her as one of Omaha’s 40 under 40, and this year she was selected as a part of the Twin-Cities cohort for the inaugural Harvard Business School Young American Leaders Program on U.S. Economic Competitiveness. She was recently selected as one of twenty-four 2016 Presidio Institute Fellows. Tawanna has lent her leadership to over 30 non-profit and philanthropic boards over the last decade. Today she serves as a Trustee at the Women’s Foundation of Minnesota, President of the Minneapolis- St. Paul Chapter of The Links, Incorporated, Immediate Past-Co-Chair & Board Member of the African American Leadership Forum and as a member of the Hennepin County Penn Avenue Community Works Steering Committee. Tawanna is married to Eric Black and has two children, Traviata (4) and Christian (3). 

Frank Forsberg is the Senior Vice president of Systems Change and Innovation at the Greater Twin Cities United Way. He oversees impact planning, public policy, government relations and external engagement. He came to the United Way in December 1999 from Catholic Charities, where he was administrator of the Advocacy and Outreach Division. He has a bachelor's degree in business from St. John's University and a master's degree in public administration from Hamline University.

As the President & CEO of the Northside Achievement Zone (NAZ), Sondra Samuels is leading a revolutionary culture shift in North Minneapolis, focused on ending multigenerational poverty through education. Working in a collaboration of more than 35 partner nonprofits and schools, NAZ is working toward a single goal—to prepare 2,500 low-income North Minneapolis children to graduate from high school ready for college. NAZ is scaling up to support 1,000 parents as they turn the social service model on its head and lead the creation of a college-bound culture in their homes and community. Ms. Samuels is a national leader and tireless education reformer who advocates for evidence-based cradle-tocareer solutions to the issues of concentrated poverty that plague low income communities and leave far too many children of color in the center of an egregious achievement gap. Under her leadership, NAZ was named a federal Promise Neighborhood and has become a nationally recognized model for comprehensive community development and systems change.

Tracey currently serves as a Senior Director of Corporate Social Responsibility and is responsible for leading vital community and company partnerships. Prior to her current role, she was Target’s Director of Diversity and led the company’s diversity strategic framework. She began her career with Target as a Senior Counsel, specializing in employment law and served as Human Resources Director for Stores, providing support to more than 1,700 stores in 49 states. Before joining Target, Tracey served as an Assistant Vice President at The St. Paul Companies where she defended the company in employment matters and represented the company as a Federal Lobbyist. In addition to her defense work, Tracey has also represented plaintiffs in litigation matters as an Assistant Attorney General for the Minnesota Attorney General’s Office. Tracey has been involved with a variety of boards including The Penumbra Theater Company, Minneapolis Legal Aid, Jack and Jill of America, Inc., Minnesota Women Lawyers, Minnesota Association of Black Lawyers, the Urban League Coalition and the Corporate Advisory Board for the National Society of Hispanic MBAs. A native of Iowa, Tracey is a graduate of the University of Iowa and holds a law degree from the University of Iowa. She resides in Minnesota with her husband and two children.