MICAH’s Speakers Bureau - We are your neighbors
MICAH's speakers bureau members bring solutions, insight, and wisdom as we lift our narrative stories of directly impacted lived experience of homelessness, housing instability, and discrimination. From expertise on tenant protections to hopes of homeownership; from new designs in transportation, health care, and consulting more broadly, we lift diversity in the long arc toward justice.
We testify. We share. We listen. Our power is in our voices. So can yours be.
We can design specifically for each venue, share in resource fairs, equip your local folks as speakers, empanel on site moderators when accepting invitations from your organization or faith communities in the Twin Cities metropolitan area. We ask hosts to provide small stipends, but we can assist with support if needed. We are grateful for funding by The Catholic Campaign for Human Development.
Contact Linda Soderstrom, Coordinator: llsod.lindalee@gmail.com
Bright and bubbly, Candy Bakion is a constant learner who believes life lessons come from natural experiences. A life-long Minneapolis and current Heritage Park Resident, Candy has many years of customer service experience at a variety of organizations including MICAH.
When she is not rolling with her entourage of five children, and a Grandson, she enjoys connecting with people through chatting and sharing knowledge.
Ms. Jewelean Jackson is a long time Elder and Community Servant with the philosophical action of life-long learning, from the cradle to the grave. She is the Lifetime National Ms. Kwanzaa speaking to Kwanzaa as a way of life in her travels.
Ms. Jackson believes that Affordable and Quality housing is a human right; that every American citizen deserves this God given right and one of her goals for serving on MICAH'S Speakers Bureau is to work toward changing stereotypes of homelessness.
Linda Soderstrom was first displaced from deeply affordable Crossroads at Penn in Richfield; then Bloomington, and now St Charles in Southeast MN. Gentrification has kept her on the move.
Sue Watlov Phillips had been thinking of forming a Lived Experience Speakers Bureau for some time and Linda happened to be free to volunteer as coordinator.
We look forward to bringing positive solutions and our power in our own voices as a close working cohort in 2024.
Natividad Seefeld has been a volunteer Board President of Park Plaza Cooperative since the day they started the journey of becoming a resident owned community (ROC) in 2010.
She served on a seat of the ROC, USA Board and helped to create the ROC Association. She is the Chair of the ROC Association Policy & Advocacy Committee and was the Vice President of All Parks Alliance for Change. She also serves on the MICAH Board. Growing up she and her family moved a lot, and even lived in a car for a short period of time. Mother of 3, grandmother of 4, and great grandmother of 4, Natividad believes that everyone should have a safe and affordable place to live.