About
Equitable Giving Circle
“Without community, there is no liberation… but community must not mean a shedding of our differences, nor the pathetic pretense that these differences do not exist.”
-Audre Lorde
Equitable Giving Circle (EGC) is a Black Women and Black Femme led organization aiming to make large economic deposits into Portland BIPOC economy while also encouraging community healing. We launched in Spring of 2020 with an idea and an ask of the community to trust in this iea and people not only believed us but funded us.
Mission
Our mission is to inspire and create economic empowerment through authentic engagement and action within our community. We will bring forth healing from late-stage capitalism and colonialism through reparative and radical giving.
We envision a future where systems are designed to ensure that everyone can thrive and live their best lives.
Vision
As an organization formed to address glaring inequities created by years of institutional bias, discriminatory policy and systematic divestment from Black and Indigenous communities, our values are strong.
Values
Dedication to ms. v Rená allen
This Equitable Giving Circle was an idea that came out of a desperate want for immediate solutions, community engagement, and change in a radical way. From the conception of this idea, Mrs. V. Rená Allen was my biggest cheerleader and continuously asked me how it was going, how she could help and told me countless times not only could I make this happen but that it would be amazing and because of her here we are making waves of hope. It’s an honor to dedicate this project to her memory and legacy.
Mrs. Rená was a leader, community advocate, activist, caretaker, and educator to thousands. Everywhere she went, she spread love and joy. She had a way of engaging and asking questions that encouraged and supported without judgement. She could take a moment and makes it feel like hours filled with love and hope. Her smile lit up the room, her laugh melted woes, and her loving hug could make anyone feel whole. She inspired everyone to be their best selves and loved us all for who we are without pause.
Mrs. Renà leaves behind her husband, children, grandchildren, and the Portland Community.
As we mourn this phenomenal woman, let us carry her passion and work for the community and continue to spread joy and love. This work is in honor of you, Ms. Rena. Thank you for inspiring so many to be our best selves.
With love always,
AJ McCreary
EGC Co-founder and
2003 Les Femmes Debutante
Our Team
Leadership Team & Staff
aj mccreary, co-founder & Executive Director
AJ McCreary, a lifelong Portlander, is a community activist who has been working locally for 15 years. She specializes in marketing strategies and fundraising through an Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion lens; AJ has brought her skills to such organizations such as Steps PDX, American Cancer Society, and Race Talks. Equitable Giving Circle was born out of a desire to create a model of resource distribution that is not rooted in white supremacy and transactional giving. AJ is deeply passionate about mutual aid and giving with no strings attached; she also knows that to be truly successful, an organization must be led by the people who are in community with the people being served. AJ’s bachelor in African American history and, equally as important, her lived experience coming from a working class, interracial family in North Portland has informed the full range of her work. When she isn’t leading revolutions, AJ is a full time Momma to her teenage son Sean-Hobbs; she finds relaxation in traveling, cannabis of all forms, and gardening.
Lillian green, co-founder & housing Director
Lillian M. Green is CEO and founder of North Star Forward Consulting LLC. She has worked as a teacher, school district leader, professor, and state agency director. Most recently, she led the integration of equity and inclusion into the early learning system for the state of Oregon as the Equity Director of the Early Learning Division.
Lillian M. Green is CEO and founder of North Star Forward Consulting LLC. She has worked as a teacher, school district leader, professor, and state agency director. Most recently, she led the integration of equity and inclusion into the early learning system for the state of Oregon as the Equity Director of the Early Learning Division.
Lillian has 10+ years of experience in the field of education and equitable policy development. Ms. Green is also a fourth-year Education Leadership EdD student, interested in exploring how critical consciousness is developed and cultivated in agencies as a tool to create equitable practices, policies and procedures.
Ms. Green views her life’s mission as one in the service of children and families. She believes that every child has the right to access high-quality education. To make this possible, she believes that we all have to critically analyze the systems that we operate in and interrupt institutional racism and oppression that causes and perpetuates disparate educational and health outcomes.
Lillian was born and raised in Portland, OR, on N. Williams Ave, in a historically Black community. She is a board member of the Oregon Black Pioneers, loves hiking, and is fascinated by both history and social systems.
Check out North Star Forward Consulting here: https://www.northstarforward.com/
Diona jackson, csa manager
Hello, my name is Diona Jackson. I was born and raised in Portland, OR. I am an event planner, DJ, and organizer. You can usually find me deeply involved in all things Vintage Clothes, Decor and Art. I am excited to be a part of a team taking care of the community that raised me.
Tamar green, csa director
Tamar Green has a Bachelor of Science in Human Development and Masters in Business Administration. She worked on company budgets, was the point of contact for clients, and managed administrative tasks as a human and business systems director. Currently working as a contracted CSA Administrator for the Equitable Giving Circle, she outreaches and builds relationships with current and future food purveyors to help build and maintain EGC’s in-kind donation family. Since she started working at EGC in November of 2022, Tamar has written and found grants, secured over 2,500bls of food from Bob’s Red mill, over $28,000 in seasoning from Penzey’s, helped to move over $16,000 in grant funds that went to feeding Washington county families and has found multiple companies and organizations to provide in-kind donations. If that wasn’t enough, Tamar is also a seasoned medical professional who has worked with all ages and in different facilities.
From assisted living, nursing homes, Alzheimer units, and acute hospitals in both California and Oregon for 14+ years. She is versed in human growth and development and firmly understands physical, behavioral, cognitive, and emotional growth and change. Add that to her strengths based on ethics, responsibility, communication, empathy, and positivity. It helps her stay people and community-centered while giving the families she works with the support they want and may need. While her love for helping others has always been near and dear to her heart, it grew when she took on the role of chairwoman for the board of outreach and mission at First Congregational United Church of Christ in Hillsboro, Oregon. She feels honored to focus everything she learned on the BIPOC community in Portland, Oregon. A community that she grew up in, a community that she loves. She feels her work allows her to interrupt racism and help create better opportunities for a community riddled with discriminatory policies, lack of resources, and bias.
Ivan Gutierrez, Delivery Driver
Ivan Gutierrez comes from a first generation, immigrant family from Mexico. Raised in Oregon since the age of 5 years old, with his mother and brothers, he has been working locally in Portland since 2020. When Ivan isn’t out delivering joy by way of organic produce boxes to our community, he enjoys playing basketball, hiking with his children, working with his hands at fixing things, and being creative and bringing his unique spark of joy to all spaces. In the past Ivan’s bilingual/bicultural, Spanish/English upbringing connected him to projects like helping first time homebuyers, providing financial education support, and navigating financial literacy. Proud immigrant roots give him a solid work ethic at EGC, and he loves being part of a team that gives with dignity to the Portland Community.
Leadership
Board
Rashae Burns brings a wealth of experience working with societally disenfranchised community members in a variety of arenas. She is passionate about bringing sustainable and nurturing food and gardening opportunities to Black, Indigenous, and communities of color in the Portland area. Rashae currently serves as the Home Gardens Program director for Growing Gardens, and has previously worked as their Home Gardens community organizer; in both positions she has been instrumental in creating sustainable, ground up solutions for Portland residents who have been unequitably affected by redlining, food deserts, and gentrification. Rashae has worked with the Multnomah County Health Department and Kaiser Permanente. When not hard at work opening doors for her community, she volunteers for multiple organizations, including Portland Public Schools and Northwest Athletics AAU Basketball program.
Rashae Burns, Board Member (Founding Member)
Kayin Talton Davis, Board Member (Founding Member)
Creator and innovator Kayin Talton Davis’s work centers around her passion for fusing art grounded in Black heritage and culture with graphic design, mechanical engineering, community building and education. Known for her vibrant color palettes and a unique aesthetic, Talton Davis founded Soapbox Theory™ in 2001, with the mission of “Cultivating Black Joy™.” Kayin is a current City of Portland Archives Artist in Residence, and co-artist of the Historic Black Williams Art Project and the Black Heritage Markers on NE Alberta. Her most recent permanent public installation, “We’ve Been Here” - highlighting Oregon Black women in the early 1900s, is located in the Portland Building.
Rashelle chase, Board Member (Founding Member)
Rashelle Chase is a mama, activist and anti-racist early childhood educator from Portland, Oregon. She has a BA in Political Studies and Black Studies from Pitzer College and a MS in Curriculum and Instruction with a specialization in Early Childhood Education from Portland State University. Rashelle comes from a strong lineage of activist educators and is passionate about changing the world by transforming systems – particularly those that impact children and families – in service of an equitable, just, and peaceful future. Rashelle’s efforts include the movement for Black lives, disability rights advocacy, and educational equity, in service of her amazing kids, ages 7 and 2, and amazing kids everywhere.
Bianca mack, Board Member
Bianca Mack is originally from New Orleans and has lived in the Portland area since 2016. A Black Creole Transgender woman who is also a celebrated Portland DJ when not engaged in her day job of tech work, Bianca draws on a wealth of interpersonal expertise gained through 17 years of work in the hospitality industry to actively address concerns of equity, reparations, and community support beyond borders and experiences across the diaspora.
Whether using granular sorting skills for distribution initiatives, reframing phone banking as kindness calls, or emceeing an EGC gathering, she is always a vibrant asset to the objective of community work. Her spirit as a community auntie is essential to her personhood.
Bianca is a founding member of The UwU Collective, a trans- and gender-non-conforming group of sound selectors and visual artists with a mission of throwing compassion-forward themed events and creating safe expression zones. She is also a community partner with Portland Playhouse, The Q Center, Mxm Bloc, RACE TALKS, Freedom To Thrive, Black & Beyond The Binary Collective, and many more.
Bianca has served on the board of directors of Equitable Giving Circle since July 2021.
Alice price, Board Member
Alice Price is a dynamic, multi-genre visual artist whose pieces connect the intersectionality of femininity and the Black experience. Inspired by music such as hip hop, old school, R&B, soul, jazz and classical, Price’s art ranges from paintings and sketches to forward-thinking fashion. Alice uses her environment and experiences to encourage viewers of her work to spend time re-evaluating their ideas on social norms. She’s known to work with numerous mediums including paintings, cross-texture clothing, graffiti, album and book cover art.
Continuing to evolve in her Art, Alice’s work has been the subject of group commercial gallery exhibitions throughout the city of Portland and nine pieces of her paintings were on display at Portland Art Museum in 2022. She has a growing audience for her live paintings and she participates in many community- centered events around North and Northeast Portland.
A native of Portland, Oregon, Alice was an enormously creative child and her parents found evidence of her whimsy, drawn in crayon on her bedroom walls and in her fashion choices. Her grandmother, Gloria Taylor, was also a gifted visual artist and a heavy influence on Price’s skill development.
Elan Hagens, Board Member
Elan Hagens was born in Portland Oregon and a lover of all things outdoors. Especially if it has to do with wild mushrooms and animals.
She is passionate in many areas but has spent the past 13+ years sharing her love of the outdoors, art and food justice through her business Temptress Truffles. By connecting with local farmers and community members through farmers markets and events, she has been able to deepen her work in public health education, outdoor accessibility and healthy foods.
Mental health advocacy and access to healing through plant based medicines is an area that closely ties into her previous work in mycology and public health education.
In 2020 she founded a plant medicine/psychedelic collective called Fruiting Bodies Collective. Fruiting Bodies Collective was created in response to the legalization of indigenous medicines with the lack of access to the groups who steward the medicine. Fruiting Bodies Collective participates in educating the community about plant based medicine in addition to participating in state and federal policy health equity initiatives.
In addition to her love of all things outdoors she is a lover of animals and a professional fiber artist. Hiking with her dog brings her joy. She is a hand spinner who loves to knit, weave and create textiles of all kinds. She is able to tie in her love for the outdoors through botanical dyeing and foraging for materials to be used in her art. Elan loves sharing her passion for fiber arts and dyeing by teaching at retreats and hosting workshops throughout the Pacific Northwest.
Morgan Jones, Board Member
Morgan Jones (she/her) is a podcaster, political analyst, on-air personality, and cultural event co-host with a passion for social justice. She is also an EDI consultant and facilitator, sneaker and music enthusiast, and proud graduate of Ya Daddy Like It University.
Born and raised in NE Portland, Morgan built her career in presenting live entertainment across the country, from large-scale concerts and festivals to museum exhibitions and Broadway plays. She now uses her platform to raise awareness about America's political landscape, the global generational effects of disinformation and brainwashing of white supremacy, and the systemic injustices that must be dismantled. She is also committed to helping people learn and grow, and she regularly leads workshops on topics such as social justice, anti-racism, and media literacy.