Brittany Morgan
Senior Director of Economic Resilience, Miami Foundation

Brittany Morgan, Senior Director of Economic Resilience, was born and raised in Miami and joined the foundation in 2022 to design and launch the Open for Business fund, a $20 million investment in asset building for Miami-Dade’s minority entrepreneurs. Through this program, she pioneered a commercial down payment fund that helps business owners and nonprofit leaders acquire shared equity property in Miami’s most underinvested communities. As an extension of this work, she is building a place-based impact investing fund that will drive capital towards community development projects in housing, small business, climate, and more. 

A seasoned community economic development professional, she brings nearly 15 years of experience working in diverse program and project management roles spanning the small business, public health, education, and workforce sectors. Brittany is ardently passionate about economic parity, social equality, and racial justice. Brittany holds a bachelor’s from the University of Chicago in international studies with a minor in human rights, and a master’s degree from the University of Chicago Harris School of Public Policy.

Ahmed Mori | he/him
Co-Director, Community Ownership of Housing & Neighborhood Assets Project, University of Miami
Principal, Commonhold Strategies

Ahmed Mori is committed to building grassroots, civil society spaces of resistance and neighborhood economics that preserve the collective labor of long-time residents. A throughline in his work is identifying and advising on how we can topple the institutional arrangements and ideological tenets that impede our communities from staying in place. 

Ahmed’s current work at the University of Miami, his research, and through his own consultancy, Commonhold, is centered on the exploration of tenant and worker political consciousness, and social movements that present alternatives, both through on-the-ground civil society experiments and through changes to the policy, legal, and capital environments. His research investigates how economic and extra-economic institutions, organizations, norms, and conventions both enable and limit alternatives like worker cooperatives and residential and commercial forms of community-owned properties.

As the former Vice President of Community Economic Development at Catalyst Miami, Ahmed oversaw worker and investment cooperative development, small business assistance and community building, and other programs centered on community wealth and economic democracy. As a consultant, Ahmed remains committed to worker cooperative development and economic development advocacy at Catalyst through the organization’s worker-owned business program, working with partners on establishing flexible financing opportunities for small businesses and cooperatives,  and its Florida Thrives program, which convenes economic development organizations to together, build capacity for, and pursue ambitious policy and programmatic interventions to improve conditions for small businesses in Miami-Dade County.

Prior to Catalyst, Ahmed worked with and legally represented worker cooperatives, community groups involved in anti-gentrification and anti-displacement struggles, tenants battling eviction in both courts and through advocacy, and affordable housing and community development nonprofits in Miami and South Texas at Texas RioGrande Legal Aid, and worked on legal and policy advocacy for immigrants and disenfranched workers New York City through the Center for Popular Democracy and the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU). He is a doctoral candidate in sociology at Johns Hopkins University, and has earned a JD from Columbia Law School, an MA in Political Economy from Columbia University, and a BA in Philosophy from Florida International University. Ahmed serves on the board of The Allapattah Collaborative CDC and the Miami Institute for the Social Sciences. Ahmed has been the recipient of several fellowships, including the Center for Community Investment’s Fulcrum Fellowship in 2023-25, the BLANK in 2021, and the Law 4 Black Lives Divest/Invest fellowship in 2019-2020.

Santander Arguelles
Chief Community Asset & Preservation Officer, The Allapattah Collaborative, CDC

Santander Arguelles brings extensive experience in banking and has successfully secured over $5 million in loans and grants for small businesses within the Allapattah commercial corridor. In 2024, Santander completed the prestigious NALCAB Pete Garcia Community Economic Development Fellowship and is currently spearheading our commercial real estate acquisition and development initiatives. With deep cultural and generational competency, Santander is dedicated to empowering local business owners to transition into storefront ownership, helping prevent displacement and fostering generational wealth within the community. In addition to his expertise in banking and economic development, Santander is a licensed real estate professional and a chemical engineer, offering a unique blend of technical and financial acumen to drive impactful community preservation and growth.

Adrian Alberto Madriz | He/Him/El
Co-Executive Director of Development and Infrastructure, SMASH

Born in New Orleans to Nicaraguan and Venezuelan immigrants, and raised in South Florida, Adrian is a community organizer by trade, with transformative organizing and development experience. His past causes include both of Barack Obama's Presidential campaigns in Florida, student organizing at the Episcopal Chapel at the University of New Orleans and Housing Organizing in Liberty City through the Miami Workers Center.

In addition to organizing, Adrian has an accomplished administrative and development background, having won large federal grants for his organizations, like the $768,000 Affordable Care Act Patient Navigator Grant for the Epilepsy Foundation in 2013. Through his housing organizing, he has become a local leader on the issues of gentrification, slumlords, climate change, queer advocacy, racial equity and on the technical aspects of affordable housing development for extremely low-income residents in Miami.

Adrian's life changed when he learned of the terrible conditions that Miamians face every day in buildings run by slumlords. He is inspired by the stories of brave tenants fighting for housing justice like Porgie Town, Sharice Taylor, Jemeena Grimes, Gaynisha Williams and other black women who accomplish the daily feat of survival. After being taught about the Community Land Trust concept by veteran community leader Trenise Bryant, he became a vocal advocate of the model. He serves as Executive Director of SMASH at the pleasure of the majority-black and grassroots Board of Directors.

Adrian has a BA in Political Science and in Screen Arts from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. He lives with his husband, Armando Carranza Ventura in Overtown, Miami, FL.