Thomas Minor

Alignment Initiatives Manager

Thomas A. Minor II is the new Alignment Initiatives Manager at The Chisholm Legacy Project. He received his undergraduate degree from Morehouse College in Atlanta, Georgia, and his Master of Policy Management as a National Urban Fellow (NUF) from Georgetown University. As part of NUF/Georgetown process, Mr. Minor was selected by the Roy and Patricia Disney Family Foundation as a Philanthropy Fellow providing him an opportunity to learn the dynamics of community problem-solving, grantmaking/philanthropy, and research. He would support the team through focus areas of environmental justice, criminal justice reform, and affordable housing preservation with tools such as in-depth landscape analyses.

Mr. Minor recently served as a consultant for the Cleveland Innovation Project tasked with aiding the northeast Ohio business community with tools to increase diversity, better understand equity, foster an inclusive business culture change, and create leadership opportunities for an increasingly diverse staff. In 2015, Mr. Minor was hired by GRID Alternatives as the Workforce Development and Reentry Services Supervisor to build and manage various job training programs for minorities and returning citizens while increasing volunteerism for solar. For Mr. Minor, this was breakthrough work allowing him to address mass incarceration and criminal justice reform from a workforce development and environmental justice lens. Following graduation from Morehouse College in 2012, Mr. Minor received an internship with the Prevention Institute in Oakland, California to support the Youth Violence Prevention Team. As an African American male from Cleveland, Ohio, the internship allowed him to reflect on the connection between community violence and access to resources. It further connected him to his “truth” as an African American male striving to better the conditions of his “tribe” and the conditions of many friends and associates whose paths were darkened from the realities of life in America and caught up in the criminal justice system.

Mr. Minor’s reflections on African-American business/entrepreneurship, the emerging green economy and renewable energy, and the multidimensional impact of racism, oppression, and mass incarceration have all shaped and fostered his sense of duty, responsibility, and commitment to the continued struggle for equity and social justice. With eyes open, eager to reflect, adjust, and recast, Mr. Minor stays ready and prepared for the new journeys and opportunities placed before him.