Consultant Team
The City of West Palm Beach has engaged the services of Justice & Sustainability Associates, LLC (JSA) to assist with the Racial and Ethnic Equality Task Force dialogue, deliberation and civic engagement and education process. Founded in Washington, DC in 1999, JSA uses alternative dispute resolution and conflict management techniques in public policy, civic engagement, and organizational development processes. The firm has helped implement numerous community visioning, community redevelopment, and racial reconciliation projects across the U.S. To achieve both justice and sustainability, JSA puts people first. The foundation of its consensus-based practices ensures all stakeholders have both an empowered voice and an informed seat at the decision-making table.
JSA has built a sterling track record of successfully designing and implementing policy-setting, constituency development, and capacity building processes. Its processes are designed and managed to be fair, transparent, and culturally competent. JSA utilizes dispute resolution techniques and community engagement practices that actively promote transparency, openness and inclusive participation by everyone engaged in transformation of their neighborhoods and communities.
The vision of JSA is of highly participatory process where stakeholders weave an agenda-setting and decision-making fabric that creates culturally competent, environmentally secure, economically just, technologically smart, humane and livable communities around the world. JSA’s core driver is to increase justice and sustainability in material and measurable ways, and to help create more “Beloved Communities” wherever it works.
Below are the bios of the JSA team working with the Task Force.
Donzell Robinson
Project Lead
Chief Operating Officer and Principal, Justice & Sustainability Associates, LLC
Donzell has served as President of the Association for Conflict Resolution, the leading organization for professionals in the dispute resolution field. With this experience, Donzell brings an encyclopedic knowledge of international best practices in mediation, facilitation, and community engagement.
In addition to his role as Chief Operating Officer, in which Donzell provides day-to-day leadership and management of JSA’s daily operations, he also designs and facilitates many of JSA’s most complex projects. As a principal of JSA, Donzell focuses in several areas, including engagement and governance, sustainable development, and transportation and infrastructure.
Governance projects of international significance that Donzell has led include providing targeted, strategic support and capacity building to city agencies in Johannesburg and Cape Town in South Africa for guiding complex, multi-stakeholder investment decisions and building trust within the communities that they serve.
Donzell also manages various transportation and infrastructure projects, including the civic engagement programs of the DC Department of Transportation’s $960 million replacement of the Frederick Douglass Bridge, the I-295 Interchange at Malcolm X Avenue project, the H Street Bridge project, and the Washington, DC Union Station Expansion Project.
Education
B.S. Political Science, Bowie State University
Corinna Moebius, PhD
Subject Matter Expert
Director of Research & Education, Justice & Sustainability Associates, LLC
Corinna began working with JSA in 2000, when she developed tools that became foundational to JSA’s methodology and critical to the civic engagement process for updating Washington, DC’s Comprehensive Plan. Corinna spearheaded DC’s first convening aimed at increasing Latino engagement in land use decision-making. After-school programs nationwide adopted her racial equity-oriented neighborhood planning curriculum, “Youth Visions for Stronger Neighborhoods.” Corinna is one of the featured planning professionals interviewed for the book, Becoming an Urban Planner: Careers in Planning and Urban Design
As the director of a South Florida civic engagement initiative (Imagine Miami) for the nonprofit Catalyst Miami, Corinna designed participatory processes for expanding cross-sector, multiracial collective action. She formed partnerships with PolicyLink and Project for Public Spaces, among other national and local entities. She also designed South Florida’s first summit on arts, culture and civic engagement. She has facilitated numerous convenings aimed at reaching, engaging and connecting diverse stakeholders.
For more than a decade, Corinna has led educational walking tours of Little Havana, where she resides, and in 2015 co-authored A History of Little Havana with Cuban-American sociologist Guillermo Grenier. She is currently working on her second book, which focuses on the racial politics behind the historic development of the Calle Ocho district in Little Havana. Corinna is a former graduate fellow with the University of Miami’s Cuban Heritage Collection and the Smithsonian’s Latino Museum Studies Program. She is also certified in Permaculture Design. In addition to her work with JSA, she teaches classes on race, ethnicity and gender in the Global & Sociocultural Studies Department of Florida International University.
Education
Ph.D. Global & Sociocultural Studies, Florida International University (Graduate Certificates in African & African Diaspora Studies & Afro-Latin American Studies). Focus areas: Cultural Anthropology, Cultural Geography, Critical Race/Diaspora Studies, Public History
M.A. Speech Communication, California State University, Northridge
B.D.I.C. (Bachelor’s Degree with Individual Concentration) Communications & Anthropology, University of Massachusetts, Amherst
Kayla Elson
Project Manager
Associate, Justice & Sustainability Associates, LLC
Kayla Elson has worked with Justice & Sustainability Associates since 2018. Beginning in October 2018, Kayla began working with American University in Washington, DC to develop a multi-stakeholder Neighborhood Partnership to inform campus development. Kayla supports the strategic and operational development of the community partnership.
She has also worked with the Georgetown Community Partnership (GCP). She has documented discussions and coordinated stakeholder meetings to support consensus-based decision-making and a high quality of life in three of Georgetown’s historic neighborhoods and within the University’s long-term planning. For another JSA project, the JGB Smith Training on Equitable Development, she supported the creation of an employee training designed to guide discussion and help determine best practices for equitable development. As a project manager for the Lower Georgia Ave Equitable Development Project in DC, she supports civic engagement planning and multi-stakeholder, consensus-building processes. Her work includes documenting discussions, research and reporting, and meeting coordination.
Prior to joining JSA, Kayla Elson served as an AmeriCorps member for Community Mediation Maryland. She partnered with Baltimore City schools providing mediation services and teaching conflict management skills to students. She continues to promote collaborative problem-solving in DC as a founding board member and active mediator with Community Mediation DC.
Education
M.A. Conflict Resolution, Georgetown University
B.S. Political Science and Philosophy, Towson University
Emma Lipsky
Project Coordinator
Project Coordinator, Justice & Sustainability Associates, LLC
Emma joined the JSA team September 2020 and is working in various practices, including Transportation and Infrastructure and Historic Conciliation. She is currently enrolled in a master’s program at Montclair State University studying Sustainability Science and Leadership.
Prior to attending Montclair State, Emma graduated from the University of Maryland College Park and pursued environmental science and policy with a concentration in politics and minored in sustainability. During her time as an undergraduate student, she loved working as a project assistant for the Environmental Finance Center under the Sustainable Maryland program and as a Multicultural Advocate which she is proud to have helped pilot.
Her work as a Multicultural Advocate and project assistant combined with her education in environmental policy inspired her to pursue environmental justice because she believes everyone deserves fair representation and involvement when it comes to environmental issues (and more), which is what lead her to JSA.
Education
M.S. Sustainability Science & Leadership, Montclair State University, expected May 2022
B.S. Environmental Science and Policy, University of Maryland College Park
Milena Almetica
Project Assistant
Project Assistant, Justice & Sustainability Associates, LLC
Milena joined the JSA team in April 2021 and supports the West Palm Beach Racial and Ethnic Equality Project. She has a Bachelor of Arts in International Relations from William and Mary.
Prior to joining JSA, Milena worked with the International Development Law Organization as a Strategic Partnerships Intern where she researched funding opportunities to further the work of the organization. She also works as a business development consultant for an estate planning law firm, Eric Apple Law, where she employs a variety of strategies to improve client outreach and helped build and launch a company website. While attending William and Mary, she interned with the U.S. Department of State Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights and Labor in Washington D.C. and the anti-human trafficking office of Village Focus International in Vientiane, Laos.
Additionally, Milena has volunteered with Soul Food Paris helping to provide unaccompanied migrant youth with cultural experiences to ease their transition into French society. During her time at William and Mary, she served as Education Chair in a peer education and advocacy organization, Someone You Know, where she focused on addressing sexual assault and other forms of interpersonal violence on her college campus.
Education
B.A. International Relations, William and Mary