OUR PEOPLE
We are growing a team that believes safe, sustainable, and comfortable housing should be accessible to everyone. Join Us!
Sarina Shane (she/they)
Creative Lead & Board Officer
Inez White (she/her)
Co-Founder,
outgoing Board Officer
Jeffrey Hitchens (he/him)
Co-Founder & Design Lead,
outgoing Board Officer
Cosette L. Ayele (she/they)
Founder & Board President
Cosette L. Ayele (she/they)
FOUNDER & BOARD PRESIDENT
Cosette is a community investment strategist, urban planner, and grassroots organizer whose values center care and transformation over punitive responses to systemic racism. She has been a member of BYP100’s Chicago chapter since 2014, and has collaboratively led campaigns to dismantle gender-based violence and police violence, and to redirect public funds to community services. Cosette was born and raised on the South side of Chicago in the Roseland community and continues to live on the South side with her husband and daughter. Cosette’s lived experience with housing instability led her to launch this initiative, which professionally started with her work to expand low-income housing opportunities at the Chicago Housing Authority. She is currently the Director of Advocacy at an Illinois-based human services organization, and is excited to continue building support towards the Quilombo Community Center’s opening.
Sarina Shane (she/they)
CREATIVE LEAD & BOARD OFFICER
Sarina Shane is a Chicago-based cultural organizer, writer, teaching artist, and designer. Since 2021, she has been an active member of BYP100. Her work, driven by a curiosity about space and context, focuses on community and innovative ways to disseminate information. She aims to create resourceful content and value-driven programming for everyday people, including train commuters and first-generation students who enjoy alternative learning.
Her interests lie in new media, local art history, womxn's issues, and interiors as extensions of installation art. Through her art, she uses visual mediums as tools for social justice, aiming to connect with and inspire viewers to explore their power and express themselves. Her long-term interests include cooperative housing, visual communication, and process-based art.
Jeffrey Hitchens (he/him)
CO-FOUNDER & DESIGN-LEAD
Jeffrey Hitchens (He/Him) is from Long Beach, CA and moved to Chicago in 2011. He has been a member of BYP100 since 2016 after seeing members advocate for Rekia Boyd at a public meeting of the police board. He has taken part in several campaigns, direct actions, and rapid response actions including Community Benefits Agreement, Expanded Sanctuary, Honor Her Labor, and more. As the owner and founder of J. Hitchens Design he provides graphic design, branding, photography, and video services to help his clients with branding assets and promotional materials for marketing campaigns, performance, and community events across the Chicagoland area and the nation . He's also a Chicago Chapter Board Member for the American Institute for Graphic Arts and a member of the Chicago Graphic Design Club.
Inez White (she/her)
CO-FOUNDER
Inez White has been involved in BYP100 since 2017 as a member and has held conconcurrent positions as Healing & Safety Co-Chair and Membership Chair. She spent most of her childhood on the South side of Chicago and in the south suburb, Lansing, IL. Inez currently resides in Morgan Park, Chicago, IL and obtained her first property in 2018. She obtained her bachelor’s degree in sociology from Illinois Wesleyan University in Bloomington, IL and her bachelor’s of science in nursing degree in Chicago at Resurrection University. Inez is currently a clinical consultant specializing in embedding health equity and patient engagement in the foundation of hospital system infrastructures. Inez brings her knowledge of a system’s approach to inequalities and a community - engagement lens to achieving liberation, safety, and land acquisition for Black and queer people.
CONNECT WITH US