The Equity Solutions team is a cross-class collaborative of teachers, trainers, social workers, community organizers, consultants, business owners, and directors of organizations. We bring expertise from our work to address inequality, as well as from our lived experiences as people who are or have been living in poverty. Our expertise also comes from our membership in communities with a wide range of incomes and challenges.

Over and over in this work and in our lives we’ve seen that stigma, conscious and unconscious bias, and structural barriers keep people from benefiting from opportunities and resources that should be available to them. In response, we have developed strategies and techniques to overcome these obstacles. Together we bring decades of experience in community organizing, organizational development, training facilitation, and advocating for ourselves and others to survive and thrive.

Davey Shlasko

Deb grew up in generational poverty, and has been working with families with limited resources for more than 25 years. In working with families at Harvard University, as well as homeless families through the Horizon Initiative, Deb has seen how class divides us, and how important it is to create shared understanding that crosses the class divide. She is passionate about creating systems that empower people living in poverty to be leaders in finding real solutions. In raising a daughter on her own, she gained intimate knowledge of being poor and trying to access services.

Angela Berkfield

Angela is a co-founder of Equity Solutions. Because of being born with white skin, growing up middle class, and marrying into owning-class privilege, she has been very intentional about learning from, and taking the lead from people who are harmed by the inequitable political and economic structures. As a result of this learning she co-founded and is on the Collective of The Root Social Justice Center, which organizes for racial justice. Her curriculum, “Foundations in Social Justice,” is being used by Oak Meadow homeschooling groups. Her co-authored book, “Parenting 4 Social Justice” will come out with Green Writers’ Press in 2020. She has a MA in Social Justice in Intercultural Relations from SIT Graduate Institute and a BA in social work and Spanish from Bethel University. Angela is committed to healing from the trauma of white supremacy, so she can be free, and so she can work with others for the freedom of everyone.

Kendra Colburn

Kendra was born and raised in Vermont in a family rich with the history of both New England’s working poor and its WASP elite. She has worked in the building, metal and farming trades and as a project manager, freelance writer and a classism workshop facilitator, and has organized around environmental, food justice, and socioeconomic class issues since 1997. Kendra has a BA in American Studies from Smith College, where she was an Ada Comstock Scholar and co-chaired a student group advocating for low income peers.

Shela Linton

Shela has worked for nearly 2 decades as a grassroots advocate for socially just education, public health, family services (DCF), and housing. She has facilitated dozens of forums on topics including bullying, harm reduction, race relations, police relations, and universal health care. For 4 years she organized for the Vermont Workers Center – advocating for a democratic society where all people's fundamental needs are met. Her current initiatives are the “I am Vermont Too, photo story project” which challenges racial micro-aggressions; “Soul Food Sundays” a People of Color-only safe space; and the first statewide People of Color Caucus. Shela has a BA in psychology and an associate’s in chemical dependency. She is a 2011 graduate of the Snelling Center for Government Vermont Leadership Institute.