Leah Wiley
Coach
Leah’s experience in community organizing, storytelling, training, and fundraising spans nearly two decades. Dedicated to liberating under-resourced communities through community-building, education, truth-telling, and outreach, she routinely partners with institutions, congregations, nonprofit organizations, corporations, and community members to further the work of equity and care.
Leah grew up in a small, rural town in Georgia, the daughter and granddaughter of people whose lives exemplified caring for others. Understanding herself as called to tell the stories of Black people in order to dismantle systems of injustice and achieve lasting, transformative change, she underwent an extensive educational journey that involved documentary filmmaking, TV news, journalism, and theater. After completing her Master’s degree in Mass Communications at the University of Florida, Leah found the culmination of her calling in community organizing.
Being in and among the community day after day as a community organizer and community care facilitator gave her a chance to not only hear people’s stories; it also gave her the opportunity to connect unexpected dots between overlapping systems of oppression and harm. Bringing together the stories of people from very different lived experiences, parts of town, and levels of privilege to find common ground was illuminating. Under her leadership, community members devised strong, political, community-driven campaigns that made everyone’s lives safer, healthier, and more enriched.
As a former community organizer with CAJM and DART, Leah’s accomplishments are many and include everything from securing public funding for affordable housing to transforming Tallahassee policing policies to interrupt unnecessary youth criminalization.