our story
“Mosaic was a life changing, transformational experience, both personally and professionally.”
MOSAIC FELLOW
Our Mission
Mosaic Changemakers weaves a better South by uplifting, growing and connecting leaders of color.
Mosaic is about people — the changemakers of color in the background and on the front lines of the fight for social, economic and racial justice. And we are also about place — the South, where we live, lead, learn and play.
Our flagship project, the Mosaic Fellowship, brings together changemakers of color for a year-long intellectually rigorous and restorative program to strengthen our individual and collective power to lead boldly and confidently in a multiracial, multicultural society. Together, we propel one another to pursue our highest potential for social impact, and to lead from within and across communities and across sectors.
Why the urgency?
In 2026, the U.S. will celebrate its 250th anniversary. We will arrive at that important milestone as a more diverse mosaic of peoples and places. But also as a more unequal and fractured country.
Mosaic Changemakers exists because we believe the way forward must center Black, Brown and Gold leaders as the founding mothers and fathers of a new —and renewed— nation, weaving together the mosaic of our social fabric.
Whether in a classroom, a boardroom, a theater stage or the halls of Congress, Mosaic Changemakers will drive the American democracy project forward and create a more just future for all.
“Mosaic is a supportive and challenging space to examine critically what it means to advocate for communities of color, and to live and thrive in this work.”
MOSAIC FELLOW
The Urgency
Our Goal
By 2026, for our nation’s 250th anniversary, Mosaic will support, grow and connect 450 changemakers of color in the American South, starting in our home state of Tennessee.
Our region is home to a new cadre of Black, Brown and Gold leaders who are imagining and creating new futures and possibilities for all our people.
That’s who we are here for.
Through the Mosaic Fellowship, our flagship leadership program, changemakers of color will strengthen the individual and collective power to lead transformative change and will build our muscles as collaborative thinkers and intersectional doers. Together, we will propel one another to pursue our highest potential for social impact, and to lead from within and across communities and across sectors.
Changemakers
of Color
A catalytic force for change
By 2045, Black, Latine, Asian, multi-racial and other Americans of color will make up more than half of the total US population. In some communities, such as public schools, that diverse future has already arrived.
However, it is not only our racial diversity that is growing. Historical racial disparities and racial tensions are also on the rise. Black and Brown communities persistently and disproportionately bear the brunt of social, economic, educational and political injustices.
Changemakers of color, possessing unique lived experiences and expertise, encompass a catalytic force for change to create the South —and country— our children and communities deserve.
We are:
Weavers of our social fabric across lines of difference
Intersectional thinkers and collaborators
Social innovators closest to the root causes and potential solutions to the most entrenched societal challenges
Drivers of civic renewal and participatory democracy
Catalysts for change in the unfulfilled promise of a land with ‘justice for all’
“A Single Aim.”
Listen to the story about what inspired Mosaic:
Mosaic Changemakers founder Renata Soto (middle), with John Simpkins, founding board member and Mosaic Fellowship moderator, and Phyllis Hildreth, Mosaic Fellowship moderator | Mosaic Fellowship inaugural retreat, East Tennessee, December 2017
The Mosaic Fellowship launched in 2017 as a program of Conexión Américas, a Nashville-based nonprofit organization serving Latine and other immigrant families in Tennessee. The program spun off from Conexión Américas in 2020 to become Mosaic Changemakers and reach a wider number of Black, Brown and Gold leaders in Tennessee and across the U.S. South.
“Mosaic Changemakers has a single aim: to weave a better South —and therefore, a better nation. How?
By wholeheartedly trusting, encouraging and supporting leaders of color in the background and on the front lines of the pursuit of justice. By offering a space where our wholeness is honored, our hard work celebrated, and our wellbeing prioritized. By interlocking our individual stories and creating a community of mutuality that uplifts one another. By engaging more critically with the world we have inherited and the new one we are striving to build.
We are inspired by the philosophy and legacy of Ella Baker, the behind-the-scenes civil rights leader and strategist who mentored, trained and developed other grassroots leaders for the movement.
Like the South itself, this work is complicated, and beautiful — and also necessary, for our own sake, and for the sake of our country’s future.”
Renata Soto
Founder
