Our Team
Board of Directors
Melissa Redwin
INTERIM BOARD PRESIDENT | TREASURER
Melissa is a theater artist, director and educator originally from North Carolina. Her acting credits include: Fool For Love, The Laramie Project, The Exonerated, Brecht Unplugged at Roxbury Repertory Theater, and Zorro! at Paintbox Theater. In recent years she has directed Our Town and Dead Man’s Cell Phone at Ashfield Community Theater, Woman with the Red Kerchief at Boston Playwright’s Theatre, and the original play Legal Tender: Women & The Secret Life of Money.
Melissa has been especially focused on her work with survivors of sexual violence and theater as a mode of community transformation; she founded and directs the Survivor Theatre Project at the Women’s Educational Center. Melissa completed her Master of Arts in Theatre Education at Emerson College in Boston, where she concentrated on directing and theater for social change.
Melissa joined Enchanted Circle Theater as a performing and teaching artist in the summer of 2009. She is active in all teaching programs from school residencies and professional development to Family Literacy and Community Engagement programming. Melissa performs in the productions in multiple roles in BETWEEN THE CANALS: The Evolution of a Mill Town, as Katharine Skinner Kilborne in THE SKINNER SERVANTS’ TOUR: A Living History of Wistariahurst, and Harriet Beecher Stowe, Olive Gilbert, Frances Titus and Lucy Colman in SOJOURNER’S TRUTH:
”I will shake every place I go to.”
Iohann Rashi Vega
INTERIM VICE PRSIDENT | CLERK
Born and raised in Mexico City, Iohann Vega studied music and media sciences. He moved to Puerto Rico in 1999, and started as a volunteer at WRTU, the University of Puerto Rico’s public radio station. Mr. Vega was the Promotion Coordinator, host and producer of several shows (World Music, Classical, Electronic and emerging genres) and producer of all the station’s imagery. He worked as a news anchor, journalist, host for different music shows, producer and voice over talent, as well as mentored several students from the University’s School of Communication into radio production.
Iohann moved to Holyoke in 2011, where he joined the Gandara Center, as Coordinator of the Youth Development Center, providing computer and media literacy, youth mentoring for job readiness and leadership, and education on media production, podcasting and music, for children, and young adults in the community. Also, is the executive producer of Radioplasma, an independent media outlet for the community in the city of Holyoke.
Currently, Iohann is the Director of Media Engagement with Holyoke Media, producing engaging content, teaching youth and community members how to do so, and developing partnerships around the creation of media content to build a diverse, inclusive dialogue that contributes to the local media environment. http://www.holyokemedia.org/
Arlene Voski Avakian
BOARD MEMBER
Professor Emeritus Arlene Voski Avakian is a founder and former Chair of the department of Women, Gender, Sexuality Studies at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. Her areas of interest include: social constructions of identities through an intersectional lens which she has explored through autobiography and memory studies as well as whiteness, and food studies. Her books include: Lion Woman’s Legacy: An Armenian American Memoir (1992); Through the Kitchen Window: Women Explore the Intimate Meaning of Food and Cooking (1997, 2005); From Betty Crocker to Feminist Food Studies: Critical Perspectives on Women and Food (co-editor), African American Women and the Vote 1837-1965 (1997) (co-editor). She also published many articles both in U.S. and international publications.
Deeply inspired by the Civil Rights Movement, she has also been a political activist working for social justice since the 1960s. Currently on the Western Mass Team of the Movement Voter Project, a national organization that raises funds for grassroots groups in communities of color and with youth, she also participates in a number of the national groups of the organization. She was the founder of ABODES, Amherst Based Organization for the Development of Equitable Housing that built a coop of 25 units of mixed income, limited equity housing in Amherst. She is the founding member of the Armenian Feminist Organization, and is on the boards or participates in a number of community-based organizations. She joined the board of The Enchanted Circle Theater in 2018 and resigned in 2020.
She is also one of the founding members of The Leah Ryan Fund whose mission is to sustain and support writers facing individual challenges and systemic oppression so they can keep writing, connecting, creating, and thriving. Established in 2008 to honor the memory of Leah Ryan, a woman of letters who wrote plays, poetry, essays, lyrics, adaptations, and collaborated with performance artists, the Fund currently offers an annual playwriting prize (The Leah), an annual award for writers facing a serious illness (The Vladimir), and a newly created commission (The Boost.)
Ogor Winnie Okoye
BOARD MEMBER
FOUNDER OF BOS LEGAL, LLC
Since her earliest days, Attorney Ogor Winnie Okoye has been passionate about pursuing justice. As a first-generation immigrant from Nigeria, she is empathetic to the immigrant experience. She has seen the amazing things the American justice system can do, but is not blind to how it can fail if misused. One of her goals as an attorney is to make sure her clients achieve a fair and positive outcome with their legal issues. Her knowledge, dedication, and experience go towards making sure her clients achieve the justice they deserve.
EDUCATION & BACKGROUND
Attorney Okoye’s legal career started in Nigeria. Coming from a family with a long history of practicing law, she decided to continue that legacy and obtained her law degree from the University of Nigeria, where she graduated at the top of her class.
She then proceeded to obtain her Juris Doctor from Suffolk University Law School in 2003, all while raising her three young children. At Suffolk, she was the recipient of the prestigious Jurisprudence Award for excellent academic achievement in the study of Tort Law. Ogor Winnie Okoye has been a member of numerous professional organizations:
● American Bar Association
● Massachusetts Bar Association
● Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights, Board Member (Police Misconduct Sub Committee 2008-2009)
● Massachusetts Black Lawyers Association, Board Member (2008-2009)
● Suffolk Lawyers for Justice, Panel Member (2010-2012)
● Middlesex Defense Attorneys, Panel Member (2006-2012)
● American Association of Notaries (Notary Public)
● The National Black Lawyers Top 100