NGPAF Leadership TEAM

Board of Directors

Danisha McClary

Board Chair

Danisha McClary, Board Member

Danisha L. McClary is a retired U.S. Army Judge Advocate General’s (JAG) Corps officer and attorney. She is currently licensed to practice law in Georgia where she serves as Assistant Federal Defender for the Middle District of Georgia. She also owns and operates McClary Law and Mediation, P.C., which provides civil mediation services throughout the state of Georgia. Additionally, she is a member of the Board of 4 Horsemen Rehabilitation Services, Inc., in Atlanta, GA.

Prior to her current position in Georgia, Danisha served as the Equal Employment Opportunity and Diversity Equity and Inclusion Program Manager for the Ralph H. Johnson Veterans Administration Health Care System in Charleston, SC. She also served as the First Lady of Andrews, SC, where she founded a local non-profit to provide community and economic development. Additionally, during her time in South Carolina, Danisha also served as the Director of Housing and Long-term Recovery at the Black River United Way in Georgetown, SC and a contract attorney at Motley Rice law firm in Mount Pleasant, SC. She also served on the board of the Waccamaw Economic Opportunity Council, as chair Georgetown County Capital Sales Tax Commission, and as a member of the Georgetown County Accommodations Tax Committee.

Danisha has a Bachelor of Science degree in business administration from Florida A&M University, a Masters of Science degree in management from Troy State University, and a J.D. from the University of Georgia Law School. She also earned a Masters of the Laws in contract and fiscal law from the Judge Advocate General’s (JAG) Legal Center and School.

Fonta High

Secretary

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Fonta High, Board Member

Fonta High is a Licensed Professional Counselor of thirteen years, a Master Addiction Counselor, a National Certified Counselor, and a Certified Professional Counselor Supervisor specializing in treating trauma through her private practice in Decatur, GA. She also serves in a charter school system providing mental health care to students in secondary education. Her work is centered on healing individuals across generations who have experienced trauma and/or are struggling with substance use. She focuses on building power with women who have lost self-confidence and suffer with low self-esteem, while equipping scholars with the tools needed to improve their mental health to perform at their highest capacity.

Fonta is also a community organizer and activist in Decatur who moved to the city in 2016. Shortly thereafter, she joined the board of Create Community for Decatur: Black Lives Matter, where she served until its dissolution. She currently serves on the board for Beacon Hill Black Alliance for Human Rights, where she helped to lead the charge to take down the Lost Cause Confederate monument in Decatur, which previously stood since 1908, in her role as co-chair for the Confederate monument removal committee, now the Decolonize Decatur Committee. Her work continues with this organization today in a broader approach to providing community education on symbols of white supremacy and the impact of colonization on people of African descent using a public art initiative, Art for the People.

Rev. Dr. Francys Johnson

Treasurer

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Francys Johnson, Treasurer

Francys Johnson is Treasurer of the Board of New Georgia Project Action Fund and Chairman of the Board of its affiliated organization, New Georgia Project. Francys is a noted trial attorney, pastor, and educator, and a progressive thought-leader on race, equity, and understandings of power in public policy. He is currently a partner of Davis Bozeman Johnson Law in Statesboro, GA.

As a zealous trial lawyer, Francys practices criminal and civil law in the state and federal courts. He has secured justice on behalf of the wrongfully accused and seriously injured. He is a Member-at-Large of the Board of Governors of the State Bar of Georgia and the Chief Justice’s Commission on Professionalism. Francys has also served in ordained ministry for more than 20 years. He is currently Senior Minister at the Mount Moriah Baptist Church in Pembroke and the Magnolia Baptist Church in Statesboro.

Francys holds Bachelor of Science degrees in Political Science and Africana Studies from Georgia Southern University and a J.D. from the University of Georgia School of Law. He has taught courses on Criminal Law, Constitutional Law, Race and the Law, and the Civil Rights Movement. He is partnered with Dr. Meca Williams-Johnson, an educational psychologist and professor. They have three sons, Thurgood Marshall Joshua, Langston Hughes Elijah, and the late Frederick Douglass Caleb. Francys lives by the command of Micah 6:8 to love mercy, do justice, and walk humbly.

Rev. Dr. Melva Sampson

Board Member

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Dr. Melva L. Sampson

Rev. Dr. Melva L. Sampson is Assistant Professor of Preaching and Practical Theology at Wake Forest University School of Divinity. She is an ordained minister of the Progressive National Baptist Convention and an ordained ruling elder in the Presbyterian Church, USA. Her research interests live at the intersections of gender, digital interactive media, performance and preaching. She is the creator and curator of Pink Robe Chronicles ™ a digital hush harbor that centers faith and spirituality utilizing the womanist tenets of redemptive self-love, critical engagement, radical subjectivity and traditional communalism to elucidate the role of sacred memory and ritual in the collective healing of marginalized communities.

A seasoned program administrator and small group facilitator, her published scholarship, sermons and reflections include Going Live: The Making of Digital Griots and Cyber Assemblies www.practicalmattersjournal.org, After Katrina and Rita: What Must I do to be Saved? which appears in The Sky is Crying: Race, Class and Natural Disaster; Hell No! which appears in the final volume of Those Preaching Women: A Multicultural Collection co-edited by the late Reverend Dr. Ella Pearson Mitchell; and No Redemptive Quality: Black Women’s Bodies, The Black Church and the Business of Shame which appears on www.thefeministwire.com.

She earned a Ph.D. in Religion from Emory University; a Master of Divinity from Candler School of Theology at Emory University; a Master of Arts in Human Communication Studies from Howard University in Washington, DC and Bachelor of Arts degree in History and Political Science from Virginia Union University in Richmond, VA.