2023 Awardees

Bikbaye’s Bio:

BIKBAYE INEJNEMA is a teacher of Kemetic (ancient Egyptian) knowledge, cultural activist, healer, spoken word artist, writer, producer, director and recording artist from Chicago. In 1998, Bikbaye’s destiny led him to cross paths with a Dogon /Kemetic high priest from Burkina Faso, West Africa who was sent to America by his elders to share the sacred mystery school knowledge of the Nile & Niger Valley Civilizations. Bikbaye became his first apprentice and eldest student in the U.S. Upon completing 6 of 10 years of initiation and receiving the ancient teachings, Bikbaye was sent to establish traditional schools in several U.S. states to continue the initiatic education of Ancient Tamerri/Kemet (Africa). Bikbaye has taught & lectured nationally and abroad.

Bikbaye earned a B.A. of Sociology from Rust College, in Holly Springs, MS, and worked as a Case Manager & Residential Counselor at several youth facilities and group homes in the Southern, Midwestern and Western United States. Bikbaye taught 5th grade at William Penn Elementary School, in Chicago’s North Lawndale community where he also attended as a youth, before changing career paths and going into publishing as a writer & editor for several Chicago based publications, notably The Chicago Firefly, The Rising Firefly and the Sunnyside magazines respectively.

In 2013, Bikbaye and Dr. Leslie Clarke founded Conscious Youth Global Network (CYGN), a youth based initiative, with the goal of providing an environment that could accommodate & promote positive youth artistic expression, leadership development and individual cultural awareness. They were motivated to create a platform for youth to contribute to the “Conscious Arts” by providing them the tools to create the next wave of conscious content that is necessary to bring some balance back to the many media modalities of artistic expression.

In 2016, CYGN added a new component and expanded its programming by partnering with another L.A.-based community organization, Avalon-Carver Community Center, and implemented a Ten Step “Rites of Passage” After School Program for 4th & 5thgraders at several LAUSD campus locations in South Los Angeles.

Additionally, Bikbaye has over 30 years of community engagement, program consulting, management and counseling experience. He is a Cultural Humility Instructor, curriculum developer & Facilitator. Bikbaye strives to inspire positive individual transformation, which he believes ultimately impacts our social norms & behaviors.

As a Spoken Word performance artist since 1996, Bikbaye has performed at dozens of venues across the U.S. and abroad, including the famed Apollo Theater in Harlem, NY and Hammersmith Studios in London, UK. Bikbaye has recorded hundreds of songs, the majority of which have not been released as of yet. Bikbaye sticks to his format of only recording thought provoking and family friendly content. In 2004, Bikbaye recorded a full-length Pan-African Jazz album, produced by Jazz great, and Miles Davis collaborator, Robert Irving III and the African Arts Ensemble of Chicago. The album “Hezu Rey Em Kemet”, was the first album in modern history that was recorded in the Medu Neter language, which is more commonly known as the hieroglyphic writings. Bikbaye has film & TV soundtrack performance credits, as well.

Bikbaye produced & programmed stages at many community festivals & cultural events in L.A. with conscious/positive content that was performed by a majority of local youth artists working with CYGN. In 2014, CYGN sponsored the 1st Annual Los Angeles Youth Readers Theater Festival in the famed Leimert Park community, which took place at four venues simultaneously for one week. In 2018, Bikbaye and colleagues developed other branches of the CYGN tree, Conscious Youth Global Movement (CYGM) and Conscious Elementz (mixed media production house) respectively. Besides creating a flowing stream of “conscious content”, CYGN & CYGM youth will have access to learning how to produce, direct, shoot, edit, film and record music for their own productions. Bikbaye currently has several groundbreaking artistic projects that are due to be release in 2022. Stay tuned!

Vanessa’s Bio:

Born and raised in East Los Angeles, Vanessa Rios was a child of the 1990s. Firsthand experience during that childhood would later ignite her passion for public service. Exposed to the destructive effects of poverty and powerlessness in her community, she faced the wicked problems of child abuse, domestic violence, and homelessness. She considers her lived experience the driving force behind her determination to advocate for the vulnerable through activism—developing programs and organizing for economic, social, and environmental justice.

At age twenty-one, Rios began working with AB 2034 (funded services to reduce homelessness among the mentally ill) homeless persons on Skid Row in Los Angeles. She carried that experience forward to work in supportive housing, providing services for formerly homeless individuals with a history of substance use, severe mental illness, and/or physical disability. It was here that she gained a more profound understanding of homelessness—why they were there, what they needed to survive, and their greatest obstacles. After nearly a decade of working in that capacity, she found the demand for services exceeded the county’s ability to meet it—internal and external politics often being untenable. Regardless, she strongly believes that collective human rights do not pertain exclusively to one group more than another—that together, people can be powerful as agents of change.

Rios completed her M.A. in Urban Sustainability at Antioch University Los Angeles. In 2017, she created the policy campaign video, “Frontline Workers Homeless Services Sector,” and published the policy brief, “Urban Solutions for Developing a Sustainable Workforce in the Homeless Services Sector of Los Angeles County.” As Program Manager for Corporation for Supportive Housing [CSH], she secured a grant through which she created visibility and momentum in the retention and upskilling of peer workers, an area which historically has been neglected and underfunded.

As Senior Advisor, Workforce Development for the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority [LAHSA], Rios is performing a landscape analysis of the homeless service workforce to assist with strengthening and creating a better alignment of programs that envision the end of homelessness in Los Angeles. Finally, to better prepare the workers critically essential to creating change in the field, Rios has partnered with Santa Monica College to create a credit-bearing certificate program that will launch in fall of 2024.

Vanessa Rios has and continues to dedicate her life to ending the vexing problem of homelessness. Looking back, she believes her greatest asset is the ability to understand issues from multiple perspectives, connecting them to her lived experience through years of community activism.

As the first member of her family to earn a college degree, she is excited to fulfill the promise her family and community envision for her. She believes that although voices struggle to be heard, given the opportunity, she hopes to make her voice speak strongly for many.