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Headshot of Sloan Leo, a Black a non-binary queer person wearing a black shirt and glasses, black hair
Guest Speaker

Sloan Leo

Founder & CEO at FLOX Studio Inc.
(They/Them)

Sloan Leo (they/them) has over 15 years of experience leading and managing social impact staff & volunteer teams. Leo’s early career was as a relationship management strategist working within the non-profit sector where they raised $20M for a wide range of organizations. Including the world’s only international LGBTQ+ human rights foundation, direct service organizations focused on housing for formerly incarcerated individuals and runaway and homeless youth, and Dream Corps, a social justice impact accelerator founded by Van Jones. They then went on to specialize in non-profit board engagement and operations, as the Director of Board Relations for the Environmental Defense Fund, where they managed the boards of EDF, EDFAction, EDF Europe and EDF China. Subsequently joining the Trust for Public Land as the Chief of Staff, where they facilitated the development of the 2020-2025 strategic plan, “The Power of Land For People”.

In their consulting practice, Sloan has worked with, The Wikimedia Foundation, The Ms. Foundation , The New York Women’s Foundation and The Vaid Group to advance equitable, durable and inclusive approaches to strategy and systems design with boards of directors, executive teams and grantee/fellow cohorts. As a facilitator and strategist, their practice is rooted in community facilitation methodologies informed by their experiences with groups ranging from The Audre Lorde Project to Resource Generation.

In January 2020 they were appointed as inaugural Designer-in-Residence at the School of Visual Arts Design for Social Innovation Master’s program. Currently they are on faculty at NYU Wagner’s Graduate School of Public Service, The School of Visual Arts (SVA) Design for Social Innovation Master’s Program, and SVA’s Products of Design Program. Their writing has been featured in The Journal of Governmental Finance and Public Policy, The Stanford Social Innovation Review and The European Business Review.

As a mixed media artist they were awarded a September 2020 Queer.Archive.Work residency, where they produced QUEERBOOK, a small batch RISO printed, crowd sourced anthology creatively archiving stories of queer community building in era of COVID19 and America’s great reckoning and they have a new mixed-media installation exhibition, “A Watermelon For Leo” on view at Pen & Brush Gallery (NY, NY).

Formerly the Board of Directors, Governance Chair for The Ms. Foundation For Women, Sloan serves on the board of the Institute for Afrofuturist Ecology. And is a weekly Forbes contributor.