Activists and Agitators
About Activists and Agitators
Activists and Agitators is an annual YWCA Columbus event dedicated to uniting the Columbus community and inspiring attendees to pursue greater social change together than we can achieve alone.
This event fosters dialogue, provides practical resources, and educates the community to promote empowerment and inclusion. We created Activists and Agitators with the belief that anyone and everyone can be an agent for social change. If we all commit to intentional, anti-racist, direct action and harm reduction, our collective impact will be profound.
Activists and Agitators 2025
Wednesday, Oct. 8, 2025
Registration begins at 4:30 p.m.
Program will begin at 5:30 p.m.
Where: Columbus College of Art & Design, Joseph V. Canzani Center
About Activists and Agitators 2025
This year, we turn our focus to one of the most urgent challenges facing our region: the $25 million funding gap threatening Central Ohio’s shelter system. As we spotlight this crisis, we will also honor 20 years of strength, resilience, and courage from families who have passed through the doors of the YWCA Family Center — and the bravery of those who led the charge to make it a reality. Join us for an evening of powerful storytelling, bold ideas, and collective commitment to housing justice.
Catch a quick conversation with Nia Noelle of Magic Columbus and YWCA Columbus President & CEO Liz Brown about what makes this year’s Activists & Agitators unmissable. ↓
Featured Speaker
Ijeoma Oluo will join this year’s Activists and Agitators program to share her experiences growing up in low-income housing with a single mother, offering powerful insight into the realities of housing instability. Her work on race, gender, and systemic inequality will help illuminate the broader forces that shape who has access to safe, stable housing.
Ijeoma Oluo (ee-joh-mah oh-loo-oh) is a Seattle-based Writer, Speaker and Internet Yeller.
Her work on social issues such as race and gender has been published in The Guardian, Esquire, Washington Post, ELLE Magazine, New York Times, NBC News and more. She has been featured on The Daily Show, All Things Considered, BBC News, and more. Her #1 NYT bestselling first book, So You Want To Talk About Race, was released January 2018 with Seal Press. Her second book, MEDIOCRE: The Dangerous Legacy of White Male America, was published December 2020 with Seal Press and her newest book, Be A Revolution: How Everyday People Are Fighting Oppression and Changing the World - and How You Can Too, was released January 2024 with Harper One.
Ijeoma was named one of the Most Influential People in Seattle by Seattle Magazine, one of the 50 Most Influential Women in Seattle by Seattle Met, one of The Root's 100 Most Influential African Americans in 2017 & 2018, and is the recipient of the Feminist Humanist Award 2018 by the American Humanist Association, the Harvard Humanist of the year 2020, the Media Justice Award by the Gender Justice League, and the 2018 Aubrey Davis Visionary Leadership Award by the Equal Opportunity Institute.
Fireside Chat
Ijeoma will join a small panel of leaders committed to addressing housing instability and the systems that drive it—locally and nationally. This important conversation will center the real stories and challenges facing our communities today as well as the real action needed to confront the issue head-on.
Liz Clarke Brown
President & CEO (YWCA Columbus)
Elizabeth Brown became president and CEO of YWCA Columbus in January 2023. Previously, she served seven years as President Pro Tempore on Columbus City Council, fighting for broad-based economic prosperity, gender equity, and racial justice. She also was the executive director of the Ohio Women’s Public Policy Network, a statewide collective impact project to improve women's economic security through public policy.
During her years on council, she spearheaded laws to protect reproductive healthcare, provide paid family leave, connect pregnant women with housing and medical care, defend residents against threats of deportation, support low-income families through COVID disruptions, erase medical debt, and increase access to early childhood education opportunities.
She also commissioned an overhaul of tax incentive policies which resulted in the city’s first affordable housing and living-wage requirements.
She has additional prior professional experience in economic development, nonprofit service, and state government.
Originally born in the Berwick neighborhood of Columbus, Elizabeth was raised in Granville, Ohio, and is a proud public school graduate and a magna cum laude graduate of Columbia University. She and her husband Patrick Katzenmeyer live in Columbus, along with their three children Carolyn, Russell, and Maribell.
Shannon TL Isom
President & CEO (Community Shelter Board)
Shannon TL Isom, named President and CEO of Community Shelter Board in 2023, has a twenty-year track record leading strategic teams and is deeply connected to continuums of care for communities of color, especially focused on social determinants, intersectionality, gender, and race. She has expertise in science, public health, non-profit management, medicine, and business. During her nine-year tenure as President and CEO of YWCA Dayton, Shannon increased the operational budget by 196%. She secured the first $1M biennial appropriation for the Ohio Council of YWCA.
Shannon holds a master's degree in health administration from Northeastern University and a bachelor’s degree in pre-medicine/biology from Spelman College. She was a MD candidate at Wright State University School of Medicine and also studied medicine at the Ohio State University.
Shannon serves as a board member for the Affordable Housing Alliance of Central Ohio and YWCA USA. She is a member of the Economic Mobility Coalition; Equity Now Coalition, a collective action initiative focused on social justice in Central Ohio; Regional Housing Coalition, a group of municipalities, non-profits, and private sector partners working to address the key housing challenges facing our region; and the Workforce Advisory Committee. She served as an advisory member for First Financial Bank Advisory Board, and as a board member for Dayton Downtown Partnership, Co-Op Dayton, Community Appeals Board for the City of Dayton, and Miami Valley Regional Planning Committee. She served on the executive advisory committee for the Human Rights Center at the University of Dayton and as co-chair of the Racism is a Public Health Crisis task force. Shannon served as a TEDx coach for TEDx Dayton.
Shannon received a Humanitarian Award from the National Conference for Community and Justice of Greater Dayton in 2022. She received a National Philanthropy Award from the Association of Fundraising Professionals in 2021.
With a budget of $55 million, Shannon facilitates and leads work with our community to make sure everyone in Columbus and Franklin County, Ohio has a place to call home. She brings together diverse organizations to work together as an efficient system, rather than as a fragmented set of resources.
Additional Performances/Artists
Meaca Moore | Poetry
More programming details coming soon—stay tuned!
Ready to spread the word? Check out the Built on Bravery toolkit!
Thank you to our 2025 Sponsors
Community Sponsor
Empowerment Sponsors
Media Sponsor
Event Host Sponsors
Ally Sponsors
YMCA Central Ohio
Pint Size Protesters
New Reach Community Consulting
Lynn Greer
Greer Communities
Thanks for Engaging with Activists and Agitators 2024!
Testimonials
“The speakers were outstanding and brought unique perspectives to the conversation… I learned lots about organizations that I had not interacted with previously and (felt) encouraged by the knowledge and enthusiasm with those individuals with whom I spoke.” - Activists and Agitators Attendee (2024)
"I enjoyed every minute (of the program) . . . Ibram X. Kendi was amazing, I loved the panel and hearing their different views, and the poet brought tears to my eyes and touched my heart. I loved that the event was closed with the Briggs choir!" - Activists and Agitators Attendee (2023)
"I was so impressed by [Activists & Agitators], which I attended for the first time, and by the caliber and diversity of the people that were featured. The YWCA's activism on housing equity issues in Central Ohio is so critical." - Activists and Agitators Attendee (2022)