Yordanose (Yordi) Solomone

Yordanose (Yordi) is a Minneapolis transplant from Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. She is a dedicated environmental justice organizer and a digital storyteller in the Twin Cities, formerly serving as the Director of Equitable Engagement at Metro Blooms. She is one of five organizers to have been selected for the 2021-2022 Black Seed Fellowship hosted by Headwater Foundation, a resource to support a system for black organizers who want to step into stronger and more visionary leadership while guiding the work to strengthen the black ecosystem in Minnesota. You will find Yordanose continually working with community groups in co-designing, supporting  and evaluating their vision. She has been facilitating anti-racist centered community organization since she was 16 years old. She is currently serving on the Heart of the Beast’s MayDay Council in Minneapolis and is also a freelance artist that equitably serves Black Indigenous People of Color (BIPOC) businesses and artists in the metro area. She is really passionate about how to meaningfully understand the multiple benefits and opportunities that environmental and art initiatives provide when equity, empowerment, and/or social justice lens is used to meaningfully involve vulnerable and underserved populations in our city. Yordi grew up in a multinational low-income immigrant household and uses she/they pronouns.