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Alex Orfinger is Publisher of the Washington Business Journal. He is excited, at this important moment, to help the Business Journal be at the center of conversations around economic recovery and income disparity and why these issues must matter to the business community.
When Alex arrived in Washington in 1996, most people thought the Washington Business Journal was an oxymoron. The business of Washington was government. That perception was wrong and would dramatically change. Driving that change became Alex's mission. He built a team to report on the diversity of the business community – the robust commercial real estate but also the nascent tech and venture communities, the retail and restaurant industries, the service sector, and the burgeoning hospitality industry.
Beyond reporting, the Washington Business Journal brought leaders and businesspeople together. No other organization in greater Washington could gather as many senior executives from across the region and across industry sectors as the Washington Business Journal did. The events weren't just cocktail receptions; they were places where deals were consummated, connections were made, and regional problems were solved. As live events return, the idea of bringing people and organizations together to advance business and tackle issues remain a fundamental Business Journal value.
Alex is committed to working at the intersection of business and community. He believes the road to economic renewal runs through deeper relationships, connectivity, and leadership and that innovation and entrepreneurship will be front and center as the engine for growth. He shines a light on complex and important social issues business leaders should know and understand. He believes what is good for business is also good for the greater community.
Alex is active in the local philanthropic community and has served on a number of boards including the Greater Washington Board of Trade, Greater DC Cares, DC Chamber of Commerce, United Way of the National Capital Area, and Washington Area Women’s Foundation. He currently serves as the board chair for Jubilee Housing and remains an engaged member of the Leadership Greater Washington community.
Keynote Speaker and Fireside Chat Moderator
Tonia Wellons is the President & CEO of the Greater Washington Community Foundation, the largest public foundation in the Greater Washington region. Leading an organization with a staff of 35, $500 million in assets under management, and $70 million in annual grants, Tonia works with the Board of Trustees and staff to determine the strategic priorities of The Community Foundation. She has successfully launched and led programmatic and development efforts for several key initiatives at The Community Foundation, including the COVID-19 Emergency Response Fund, VoicesDMV, the Resilience Fund, and the Partnership to End Homelessness. She also has purview over all grantmaking, community engagement, and strategic partnerships.
Prior to joining The Community Foundation in July 2016, she served as a political appointee for the Obama Administration as head of global partnerships at the Peace Corps. Tonia previously served as fund manager of a multi-donor initiative focused on financial access and inclusion at the World Bank Group. She also spent a significant part of her career working on USAID-funded capacity development initiatives during the immediate post-apartheid era in South Africa and the broader sub-Sahara region.
Tonia is a 23-year resident of Prince George's County and a member of Delta Sigma Theta Sorority, Inc. Tonia serves on the board of Leadership Greater Washington, National Alliance to End Homelessness, and Washington Regional Association of Grantmakers. In 2020, she was named a Hero of the Crisis by Washingtonian Magazine, Nonprofit Leader of the Year by the Washington Business Journal, and Philanthropist of the Year by the AFP DC chapter.
Panelist
Dr. Rashawn Ray is a Senior Fellow at The Brookings Institution. He is also a Professor of Sociology and Executive Director of the Lab for Applied Social Science Research (LASSR) at the University of Maryland, College Park. He is one of the co-editors of Contexts Magazine: Sociology for the Public. Formerly, Ray was a Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (RWJF) Health Policy Research Scholar at the University of California, Berkeley and he currently serves on the National Advisory Committee for the RWJF Health Policy Research Scholars Program.
Ray regularly testifies at the federal and state levels on racial equity, policing and criminal justice reform, health policy, wealth, and family policy. Ray has published over 50 books, articles, and book chapters, and roughly 50 op-eds. He has written for Washington Post, New York Times, Business Insider, Newsweek, NBC News, The Guardian, The Hill, Huffington Post, The Conversation, and Public Radio International. Ray has appeared on CNN, MSNBC, Fox, BBC, CBS, C-Span, PBS, NPR, HLN, and Al Jazeera. His research is cited in Washington Post, Associated Press, Bloomberg, Financial Times, The Root, and The Chronicle. Previously, Ray served on the 50th Anniversary of the March on Washington Planning Committee and the Commission on Racial Justice with Alpha Phi Alpha Fraternity, Inc.
Ray’s research addresses the mechanisms that manufacture and maintain racial and social inequality with a particular focus on police-civilian relations and men’s treatment of women. His work also speaks to ways that inequality may be attenuated through racial uplift activism and social policy. His academic articles have appeared in the American Journal of Sociology, Science Advances, Social Science Research, Ethnic and Racial Studies, Du Bois Review, and the Annual Review of Public Health. Ray’s books include How Families Matter: Simply Complicated Intersections of Race, Gender, and Work (with Pamela Braboy Jackson) and Race and Ethnic Relations in the 21st Century: History, Theory, Institutions, and Policy, which has been adopted over 40 times in college courses. He is on Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook at @SociologistRay.
Panelist
Professor Thomas Shapiro is the David R. Pokross Professor of Law and Social Policy at The Heller School for Social Policy and Management, Brandeis University.
Professor Shapiro's primary interest is in wealth, racial inequality, and public policy. He is a leader in the asset development field with a particular focus on closing the racial wealth gap. With Dr. Melvin Oliver, he wrote the award-winning Black Wealth/ White Wealth, which received the 1997 Distinguished Scholarly Publication Award from the American Sociological Association. This book also won the 1995 C. Wright Mills Award from the Society for the Study of Social Problems. A Tenth Anniversary Edition of Black Wealth/White Wealth was launched in 2006
His other books include The Hidden Cost of Being African American: How Wealth Perpetuates Inequality, published by Oxford University Press, 2004; and Toxic Inequality, published in 2017 by Basic Books.
His media appearances include Tony Brown's Journal, The Rachel Maddow Show, The Tavis Smiley Show, Talk of the Nation, CNN, and On Point. His work has been reviewed or discussed in The Washington Post, The New York Times, The Boston Globe, The American Prospect, The Chicago Sun-Times, The St. Louis Post-Dispatch, CommonWealth Magazine, Newsweek, The Village Voice, and others.