What does it take to sustain leadership across decades of struggle?
Dr. Benjamin F. Chavis, Jr. has been a political prisoner, a denominational executive, the CEO of the NAACP, a Nation of Islam minister, co-founder of the Hip-Hop Summit Action Network, president and CEO of the Black Press of America, and host of The Chavis Chronicles on PBS. He coined the term environmental racism — from a jail cell — at a time when neither the civil rights movement nor the environmental movement had language for what they were both circling.
This conversation is not about the highlight reel. It is about what it costs to hold moral clarity across six decades of struggle, reinvention, and contradiction — and what this moment is still asking of him.
Dr. Chavis reflects on what has remained constant through every organization, ideology, and storm he has weathered: a commitment to freedom, justice, and equality for all people. He shares how faith carried him through a 34-year prison sentence as one of the Wilmington Ten, how he learned to transform contradiction into fuel rather than paralysis, and why the current moment demands intergenerational organizing rather than overwhelm.
They cover why preparation — not just skills or capacity — is what carries leaders through a polycrisis. How a jail cell became the birthplace of a paradigm-shifting concept. What the African liberation movements of the 1970s reveal about the same extractive forces driving environmental and economic injustice today. And why truth cannot simply coexist next to falsehood — it has to remove it from the dialogue.
At a moment when the historical record is being actively narrowed, Dr. Chavis is a reminder of what it looks like to stay in the work — not despite the noise, but through it.
Reverend Dr. Benjamin F. Chavis, Jr.
Reverend Dr. Benjamin F. Chavis, Jr. is a civil rights leader, theologian, educator, and President and CEO of the National Newspaper Publishers Association (NNPA), representing more than 200 Black-owned media companies across the United States. He also serves as Professor of Divinity and Interdisciplinary Studies at Duke University.
Chavis began his career in the civil rights movement in 1963 as a youth coordinator for the Southern Christian Leadership Conference under the leadership of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. A native of Oxford, North Carolina, he earned a BA in Chemistry from the University of North Carolina and later completed a Master of Divinity at Duke University while serving a wrongful prison sentence as one of the Wilmington Ten, who were declared political prisoners by Amnesty International and later pardoned.
A former Executive Director and CEO of the NAACP and national organizer of the Million Man March, Dr. Chavis has spent decades working at the intersection of civil rights, media, faith, and environmental justice.
J. Renay Loper
Renay is a Clinical Faculty in Organizational Leadership for the Bard MBA in Sustainability, where she focuses on justice-centered transformation in the workplace. Previously, she was the Vice President of Program Innovation at PYXERA Global where she served on the Executive Leadership Team, led five country offices, drove the development of new business and programs, co-led the organization's work on inclusive circular cities, and advised corporate clients on their social impact strategies. Renay also led the organization’s ARC (Antiracist Collective) initiatives, which included internal and external efforts toward dismantling unjust systems. To this end, Renay created Rhetoric to Action, a series of conversations to bridge sectors toward collective action around social and racial justice.
Prior to PYXERA Global, Renay led the grassroots exchange and education grant portfolio at the Japan Foundation Center for Global Partnership, and has served in a variety of leadership roles in higher education, nonprofit, and business prior to that. Renay is an avid speaker and facilitator, has authored and edited numerous publications, including a resource journal, Student Affairs Professionals Cultivating Campus Climates Inclusive of International Students (Jossey Bass). Renay serves on the board of directors of nonprofits including Community Change, Harpswell Foundation, and Girl Rising.