About Kolibri

Leo Cosmo Farbman is an Ashkenazi Jewish parent, death doula and reparations organizer. They are committed to personal and collective healing through wealth redistribution, land return and ritual. He is currently the Sacred Logistician of the Reparations Summer Campaign, a blueprint for wealth redistribution and land return that is woven together by the Black Queer and Trans healers and wisdom keepers. Leo lives with his fam on Duwamish land in Seattle, WA.

Eileen Farbman brings over three decades of experience in philanthropy, with a focus on addressing the complex challenges facing women, particularly in the areas of domestic violence and human trafficking. As a trained social worker, Eileen’s early career involved working with survivors of domestic violence and incarcerated women, where she witnessed firsthand the overlapping and competing systems these women had to navigate.

In 2018, Eileen, her husband, Steve, and son, Leo, partnered with movement leaders to design the Kolibri Foundation.

She is committed to organizing families and high-net-worth individuals to reimagine traditional giving models and encourage them to adopt practices that redistribute wealth and power practices. She is an active member of the Women Donor Network, the Democracy Alliance, and the Solidaire Network, driving collaborative efforts to support movements for social change.

Eileen currently continues her work to advance racial and gender justice and end gender-based violence through her ongoing work with incarcerated women both inside and outside the prison walls and through her advocacy work. She collaborates with Shake the Table, and other feminist organizations to support their missions. Through these endeavors, Eileen continues her commitment to amplify the voices and leadership of those at the forefront of transformative change.

Thenjiwe McHarris is a Black Feminist organizer and internationalist who has devoted her political life to movement-building. She helped build the Movement for Black Lives (M4BL), a coalition founded in December 2014, that now serves as a home for over 100 Black organizations across the country as well as the Global Black Victory Lab, a global network of Black feminist movement practitioners. Thenjiwe also played a role in the building of the Green New Deal Network, a coalition committed to winning massive federal climate justice investments for communities across the country. Thenjiwe has more than two decades of experience in organizing, coalition building, global solidarity and international advocacy work.

Alicia Sanchez Gill (she/ella) is a queer, AfroBoricua, survivor, and new(ish) mama, for whom this work is not theoretical. Her organizing superpowers are experimenting with new tactics, facilitating hard conversations, making sure everyone has snacks, developing strategies, listening deeply, resource matchmaking, creating the google doc and building relationships. She is deeply connected to local and national movement spaces and has done everthing from crisis intervention with survivors of domestic violence and sexual assault, to sex worker-led and abolitionist organizing and HIV/DV housing advocacy. She knows we can organize ourselves into freedom and is thrilled to help ensure that those on the frontlines have the support they need to build power and transform our world and ourselves in the process. No matter which orbit she’s organizing in, she knows that other survivors and sex workers are always her best teachers.

Steve Farbman has spent most of his career in the media and publishing business, most recently as owner and CEO of City & State NY, which covered New York government, politics, and nonprofits. He sold his interest in the business in 2020 to be able to spend more time to work with his family to help create Kolibri Foundation. He is currently on the board of the Good Information Foundation, which seeks to combat disinformation by creating, incubating, funding and lifting up fact-based solutions, voices, programs and initiatives that can be quickly developed, tested and deployed at scale. He also consults for several progressive media organizations. He previously served on the board of My Sister’s Place, an agency providing services and support to survivors of domestic violence.

Cara Page is a Black Queer Feminist writer, cultural memory worker, and organizer. She is co-architect of the healing justice political framework as a core member of Kindred Collective. For 30+ years, she has organized with LGBTQI+, Black, Indigenous & People of Color liberation movements in the US & Global South at the intersections of racial, gender & economic justice, healing justice and transformative justice. She is founder of Changing Frequencies, an abolitionist organizing project that designs cultural memory work to disrupt harms and violence from the Medical Industrial Complex (MIC). She is also co-founder of the Healing Histories Project; which deepens and expands relationships between abolitionist healers/health practitioners, community organizers, researchers & cultural workers building solidarity to interrupt abusive systems of care. She is co-editor of, “Healing Justice Lineages: Dreaming at the Crossroads of Liberation, Collective Care & Safety” (North Atlantic Books, 2023) and co-director of the HJ Lineages Tour & Digital Archive. In 2024 she premiered, as writer and director, the VR film Psalm for the Mismemoried.

Dr. Ramatu Bangura is the co-CEO of the Purposeful, a global funder and girls’ movement hub headquartered in Sierra Leone. She is also the Founding Director of the Children’s Rights Innovation Fund (CRIF), a global participatory funder and donor learning organization that resources youth movements. Ramatu previously served as a Program Officer for the NoVo Foundation’s Advancing Adolescent Girls’ Rights initiative where she co-led strategy development and grant making to advance philanthropy’s largest portfolio working to advance the rights, leadership and well-being of adolescent girls in the United States and in the Global South. Ramatu has spent nearly 30 years engaged in organizing, advocacy and research on a host of issues impacting transnational girls, including early and forced marriage, sexual violence, trafficking, commercial sexual exploitation, and educational access for English Language Learners in New York City, Washington DC, and Central America. Ramatu earned both a Masters of Education (EdM) and Doctorate of Education (EdD) in International & Transcultural Studies at Teachers College, Columbia University.