“As 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
Staff Team
We are all about people —changemakers of color— and place —the South. We are curious learners eager to grow alongside the leaders we serve. We love to create things —from engaging curricula and program experiences to playlists. We like to cook, dance, run, skate, act and write. And we love collard greens, candied yams and dulce de leche.
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Founder & President
From the land of pura vida, Costa Rica, and a family of poets, activists, educators and entrepreneurs, Renata adopted the U.S. South as her home almost three decades ago. She began her nonprofit career right out of college in Atlanta, GA, and has honed her social entrepreneurial spirit in Nashville, TN, for the last 25 years.
Before Mosaic, Renata led Conexión Américas, the nonprofit organization she co-founded in 2002 to serve Tennessee's Latinx and other immigrant communities — and where Mosaic was seeded.
After 17 years at the helm of Conexión Américas, Renata spent two years, 2020 and 2021, as a fellow at Harvard University’s Advanced Leadership Initiative, where she focused on developing Mosaic Changemakers as an independent social impact organization.
Nationally, Renata served for 10 years on the board of directors, and as chair from 2015-2018, of UnidosUS, the largest Latino civil rights organization in the United States. Currently she serves as board chair of its sister organization, UnidosUS Action Fund, which works to expand the influence and political power of the Latino community.
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Vice President
A child of the Great Migration raised in Central New York and seasoned in the South, Tasneem is a humanities scholar and performance artist who facilitates engagements that explore the soul connection of our collective humanity.
Before Mosaic, Tasneem served at the Nashville Public Library as an associate director of programming in the Civil Rights Center. For nearly 20 years she worked as a newspaper journalist and has worked with several non-profits — in Syracuse, NY; Nashville, TN and Belize, Central America — as a community engagement manager, content creator and editor.
As a student and teacher of the global struggles for liberation, she continues to use conversation and stories as a pathway to developing, and sustaining, community. Her writing and performances have been featured in local productions of “How to Catch A Flying Woman,” with Actors Bridge Ensemble. She is an inaugural cast member and featured writer in the stage production and anthology “Listen to Your Mother.”
Tasneem makes a mean pot of curry collard greens and loves crochet, karaoke and running at sunrise.
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King Future Changemaker Resident
A born and raised South Carolinian, Kristian Hardy is a multi-hyphenate artist whose work spans directing, performance, writing, and multimedia creation. She recently graduated with honors from Harvard University with a joint concentration in Theater, Dance, & Media and African-American Studies and a secondary in Women, Gender, & Sexuality Studies.
Kristian is passionate about illuminating the multiplicities of Black womanhood/girlhood, themes of which were central to her original one-woman show A Sweet Tea Communion and her dedicated community organizing work during college. The depth of her collegiate artistic work and scholarship garnered her the Louise Donovan Award and the Maurice Sedwell Ltd. Prize.
As Mosaic Changemakers’ inaugural King Future Changemaker Resident, she is excited to wield the power of storytelling to uplift social justice leaders throughout the Southern United States.
Across disciplines, Hardy has always enthusiastically advocated for joy-filled, equitable and safe creative environments where all people, but especially those who live in the margins, can be unapologetically themselves.
"Mosaic was a life changing, transformational experience, both personally and professionally.”
MOSAIC CHANGEMAKER
