Meet the Team
We work in a networked way, bringing in the experience of industry experts to our clients.
Simone Hill Okafor (she/her)
Founder & CEO, Melanated Futures Group
Simone Okafor is an equity and belonging strategist and foresight practitioner with experience spanning across private, nonprofit, and academic sectors.
Prior to founding MFG, Simone led the execution of DEIB initiatives at Omidyar Network and managed the organization’s new and growing Belonging portfolio. She is experienced in conducting holistic People Ops equity assessments, forming and advising employee resource groups and DEIB councils, and managing large scale change management processes (e.g. refresh of company values and behaviors). Simone is passionate about helping organizations create scalable practices that foster open, reflective, and inclusive cultures.
She previously led the recruitment and development of diverse talent at Upstart, an online lending company, and created and implemented the DEI strategy for the Stanford Graduate School of Business MBA Admissions team. She also served as the Director of Programs at Beyond 12, a San Francisco-based college persistence organization, managing the personalized and peer college coaching programs.
Simone earned her MBA and MA in Education from Stanford University and a BS in Finance from the University of Connecticut.
Ahmmad Brown (he/him)
Expert Partner, Melanated Futures Group
President and Co-Founder, EBDI Consulting
As the only child of disabled parents, including a mother who grew up in the Pre-Civil Rights American South, Ahmmad Brown (he/him) has always been sensitive to issues of equity. As a young child, Ahmmad’s family moved from Oakland to a suburb in California’s Central Valley, and later to Sacramento for access to stronger-performing public schools. This gave him firsthand experience seeing how race and class intersect to influence access to opportunity.
Ahmmad has worked with client-partners across sectors and industries. His approach to DEIJ integrates theoretical and methodological best practices from the academic literature, as well as narrative development and storytelling techniques. Prior to EBDI, Ahmmad served as the project manager for the development of a pre-orientation program providing sociocultural learning and community building for Black students at a private college. At The Bridgespan Group, he was the primary author of an internal document to integrate racial equity into its strategy work and case team processes. He also served as the Diversity Recruitment Director at Williams College, where he defined institutional priorities with the College’s senior administration, and led efforts for the recruitment of first-generation, low-income and student of color populations, accounting for roughly 45% of each enrolling class.
In addition to running EBDI and serving as a senior advisor to nationally-recognized DEIJ consultancy Working IDEAL, Ahmmad is an Assistant Professor of Instruction at the Northwestern School of Education and Social Policy where he leads the Leading Equity and Inclusion in Organizations (LEIO) certificate program in the Masters of Science in Learning and Organizational Change (MSLOC) program. Ahmmad also serves on Merit America’s board of directors.
Ahmmad received a Ph.D. in Organizational Behavior from Harvard University, where his work empirically examined the experiences of Black students in predominantly-White institutions. He also holds an M.B.A. and M.A in Education from Stanford University, and a B.A. in Sociology & Anthropology and Japanese from Swarthmore College.
Olufemi Ogundele (he/him)
Expert Partner, Melanated Futures Group
Associate Vice Chancellor of Admissions & Enrollment, UC Berkeley
Olufemi “Femi” Ogundele is an experienced professional with more than a decade’s worth of experience building diversity recruitment and marketing strategies. Throughout his career, Femi has been successful in developing strategies and initiatives to recruit and yield underrepresented populations at Stanford University, Cornell University & University of California, Berkeley. He brings a breadth of experience in recruitment, diversity and equity training, and building equity pipelines, through his work across the higher education spectrum.
In his capacity as Associate Vice Chancellor of Admissions & Enrollment, Femi provides vision, strategy and leadership in the recruitment and evaluation of California’s public flagship. His vision and leadership in undergraduate admissions outreach initiatives targeting the state’s LGBTQ+, undocumented, underserved and first-generation students have resulted in two of the most ethnically and geographically diverse classes of students to Berkeley in 3 decades. In addition to his domestic work with diversity, Femi revamped and increased outreach initiatives to students and educators throughout sub-saharan Africa.
Femi received his MS in Strategic Communication from Ithaca College and a BS in Journalism & Public Relations from Mansfield University of Pennsylvania. Femi remains committed to the scholarship of equity in education as he is also currently pursuing a doctoral degree at UC Berkeley’s Graduate School of Education.
Quian Callender (he/him)
Consultant, Melanated Futures Group
Quian is an emerging thought leader, adviser and educator regarding justice, diversity, equity, inclusion, and access. With experience largely within the health sector, he is passionate about data and helping people and organizations enhance their practices through the lens of equity.
Quian has dedicated his time to embedding equity across Hartford HealthCare, a 36,000-colleague health system in Connecticut, as a founding member of its Health Equity department. In his capacity as Strategy and Analytics Manager, Quian supports strategy development and deployment across multiple functional areas to drive better health outcomes and eliminate inequities in communities across the state of Connecticut. Quian also serves as Hartford HealthCare’s Director of Early Talent Programs. His vision and leadership for recruitment, pipeline development and engagement among early careerists with identities underrepresented in healthcare administration, led to Hartford HealthCare’s Administrative Fellowship Program receiving Program of Distinction from the National Center for Healthcare Leadership (NCHL).
Quian has been recognized as a 2022 Top Emerging Leader in Health Equity and Inclusion from the National Diversity Council. He is actively involved in the National Association of Health Services Executives (NAHSE) at the chapter and national levels. Quian obtained his Master of Health Services Administration (MHSA) and graduate certificate in Health Informatics from the University of Michigan and B.S. in Healthcare Management from the University of Connecticut.
