104 W. North Avenue Baltimore, MD 21201
Copyright © 2026 – The Valerie J. Maynard Foundation – All Rights Reserved.
Archival Associate
MacKenzie River Foy is a multidisciplinary artist, writer, and culture worker based in Baltimore, MD. MacKenzie has worked alongside the VJMF team to inventory the collection of artworks, documents and ephemera at Maynard’s home and studio since 2023. A student and a steward of Black women’s history, MacKenzie approaches their work (and life) as a daily experiment in what it looks like to live out the principles of Black feminist movements for liberation. Guided by her work with community organizations, she has spent the last decade producing films, biographies, plays, publications, radio shows, and short-form content that activate and, at times interrogate, the archive, using storytelling as a mode of collective action and preservation. Working on these projects shaped her understanding of memory work as a devotional practice and form of care. Her arts criticism, photojournalism and reporting are published by Bmore Art, Baltimore Beat, BMA Stories as well as national and international publications. As a cultural organizer and artist, their work remains largely community-based – in the evenings you can find MacKenzie developing free public programs like Oleander School for Negro Publishers, Perfect Memory Radio, and writing workshops at Red Emma’s Free School.
Executive Director/ Board President
Oreoluwa Ifamodupe Akinyode is a griot telling stories and conjuring tender prayers of urgency that ask one to recall one’s history and utilize this history to move. Inherited from the artisans who came before them Oreoluwa utilizes analog and digital photographic and film processes to demystify and exalt indigenous African spiritual traditions and tell stories drenched in destiny, history, emotion, and passion. Oreoluwa is an initiated priest of Ifa, Sango, and Osun. As an interdisciplinary artist, culture worker, archivist, and Isese devotee, the spiritual practice from Yorubaland Nigeria, Oreoluwa is committed to presenting and preserving their culture and tradition with care and dignity.
Oreoluwa holds a BFA in Photography from the Maryland Institute College of Art. Oreoluwa’s work has been exhibited across the states and across the waters in Brazil, England, Germany and the Netherlands. They are recent 2025-2026 Flickr Foundation Research Fellow and a 2025 Resisting Narratives of Erasure Film Fellow. From 2023-2025 Oreoluwa was apart of the inaugural cohort of Valerie J. Maynard Legacy Interns, a Baltimore Museum of Art Intern, and the 2024 Luminal Theatre Baltimore Fresh Black Films Audience Award Filmmaker.
Digital Archivist
Zakiya Collier is a multidisciplinary archivist, memory worker, and educator whose work explores the role of cooperative archival practices in sustaining cultural memory. She leads The Black Memory Workers, a community of over 300 members committed to practicing care and intention in the long-term preservation of Black life. Zakiya is currently an Adjunct Professor at Queens College (CUNY), Program Director for Archiving the Black Web, and was recently a 2025 Artist-in-Residence with The Laundromat Project. She is also a co-producer on the forthcoming documentary, Somebody’s Gone, and co-editor of a special double issue of The Black Scholar on Black Archival Practice.
Communications Consultant
Amandla Baraka is a filmmaker, photographer, and visual architect whose path to film was forged through years of photojournalism and fashion photography, disciplines that sharpened her eye for authentic moments, human stories, and the power of a single frame. That foundation now informs every project she directs, from commercial campaigns for brands like Target, Ulta Beauty, and McDonald’s to cultural storytelling that resonates far beyond the screen.
Executive Director/ Board President
A Baltimore/Atlanta/Johannesburg based multi-disciplinary artist whose storytelling often fuses poetry, music, and embodied movement. An Applied Theatre Practitioner who manages to maintain a thriving career as a professional artist in tandem with his activist and scholarly pursuits.
He is currently the Executive Director of the Valerie J. Maynard Foundation, his stewardship has guided the fledgling organisation from startup through operationalization. He’s established the Valerie J. Maynard Legacy Internship in partnership with the Baltimore Museum of Art (BMA) and received a 2024 – 2026 Center for Art, Research and Alliances (CARA) Fellowship, which provided funding and technical.
He is also the Director of the The EnActors at Georgetown University, where he’s also lectured in the Department of Performing Arts. He has been an Art and Social Justice Fellow at Emory University. A Fulbright Awardee, an Oregon Shakespeare Festival Producing Fellow, and a Scholar in Residence at the University of Michigan (Ann Arbor). He is the creator of “We Are Here”, a social activism campaign birthed in South Africa that utilizes discoursive play to engage men and boys in themes of identity, Masculinity, relationships, gender-based violence, and HIV/AIDS. We Are Here has implemented programs and toured in South Africa, Namibia, and the USA. Writings about We Are Here, appear in Performance and Politics in Africa; University of Michigan Press.
Some of his Film/television credits include: Monster: The Jeffrey Dahmer Story, Star Trek: Picard, Seal Team, Bosch, The Book of Negroes, Hotel Rwanda and American History X.
He’s released numerous poetry-infused music projects which include: Human Jewels (album), We Dance We Pray (album and remix EP) and My Africa (album and remix EP).
