Roni Bennett
Co-founder and Executive Director of South Florida People of Color (SFPoC) Miami Shores, FL Award Year: 2021Roni Bennett is Co-Founder and Executive Director of South Florida People of Color (SFPoC), a nonprofit committed to racial healing and dismantling racism in all forms – individual, institutional and systemic – through advocacy and education. The organization has been instrumental in electing a Black woman as mayor of Miami Shores in 2019 as well as three Black women on the city council. SFPoC is building on that success by drawing leaders from all racial and economic backgrounds, including those with corporate backgrounds and those who have experienced the criminal justice system, in order to bridge the gap between grassroots and grass-tops in the social justice ecosystem. Roni also co-leads Miami-Dade T.E.A.R (Truth, Education, and Reconciliation), a partnership with the Equal Justice Initiative, that tries to address and heal from the community’s history of racial terror.
Roni is using her award to host SFPoC’s 2021 Awkward Dinners, which consists of intimate conversations, helping to break down the politics, propaganda, and misconceptions that can segregate the Black Solidarity movement across the African diaspora.
She has also used her award to support her work on numerous webinars, including; From Election to Insurrection: Let’s Talk and Systemic Racism, Health Disparities, and Access to the COVID Vaccine.
Roni wrote an article, One Year Anniversary of George Floyd Murder, What’s Changed? and was featured in the Miami Herald, Racial-equity Advocates In Greater Miami Lead The Way — And Win National Applause.