COFOUNDER and EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR
Vonetta Storbakken is cofounder and executive director of Radical Living. She has lived in Bedford-Stuyvesant since she was 10 years old. As a child growing up in Bed-Stuy in the 1980s and ‘90s, she was a witness to urban decay and the eventual renewal. Vonetta earned a BA in Business from SUNY Stony Brook and an MS in Urban Environmental Systems Management from the Pratt Institute. She has gained these skills and experiences to engage, educate and equip the young people in her community.
COFOUNDER and BOARD MEMBER
Jason Storbakken is a Mennonite minister, originally from Wisconsin. He holds an MDiv from Union Theological Seminary in the City of New York and is currently a Doctor of Ministry student at Boston University School of Theology. He is pastor at Manhattan Mennonite Fellowship and serves as Curriculum Specialist at the Bowery Mission. Jason is author of Radical Spirituality: Repentance, Resistance, Revolution (Orbis) and the forthcoming Bowery Mission: Grit and Grace on Manhattan’s Oldest Street (Plough).
BOARD MEMBERS
Ann Rader and Edgar Hayes are the founders of the Freedom Farm Community, a Christian-based farm that shares organic produce with neighbors in need and does youth and young adult ministry through farm work and intentional community.
Sandra Perez is a retiree and former bishop in the Atlantic Coast Conference of the Mennonite Church USA. She helped to establish the Mennonite Central Committee NYC immigration program and served as its moderator for more than ten years.
Rev. Gwendolyn H. Dingle is senior pastor at Pentecostal House of Prayer, and a community stakeholder in Bedford-Stuyvesant.
Denise Haggins continues more than thirty years of service to citizens of New York City through past and current employment with the Human Resources Administration and the Administration for Children’s Services, respectively. She is a member of Calvary Fellowship AME Church where she serves as the Director of Christian Education.