About Us

Tasha Durrett is a senior communications manager at SELC, leading communications for the Virginia Office as well as the regional Land and Community Program and Environmental Justice Initiative. She has written for and been featured in various local, regional, and national publications, including Essence Magazine. Her love for people, history, and truth led her to develop the Plantations to Pollution storytelling project at SELC.

As SELC’s digital content and strategy manager, Cornelius amplifies SELC’s issues, people, and partners across the Southeast and has spent a decade working directly with roots musicians across the Deep South. He has produced over 60 videos, garnering over 2.5 million views, including a PBS Documentary and an NPR Tiny Desk Concert.

Cornell Watson is a photographer based in Durham, North Carolina. He frequently contributes to national publications such as The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, and Bloomberg. His photography centers Black stories and has been exhibited in museums such as the Mint Museum, Nasher Museum of Art, and the National Civil Rights Museum.

Nehemiah Bester is the communications strategist for the ACLU of Maryland and producer on the Emmy-nominated PBS documentary, The Riot Report. His work has been featured in various publications, including The Afro-American Newspaper, RVA Magazine, Baltimore Sun, Sphinx Magazine, and Maryland Matters. Nehemiah directed the Life After a Second Chance docuseries, which highlights formerly incarcerated individuals returning home to help pass the Maryland Second Look Act legislation.

Jordy Yager is a career journalist and the director of digital humanities at the Jefferson School African American Heritage Center in Charlottesville, Virginia. There, he helps run the Center for Local Knowledge, which focuses on community-based reparative history. Recently, Yager was the executive producer of the Plot of Land podcast and co-wrote and directed Raised/Razed, an Emmy and Telly award-winning film about Charlottesville’s Vinegar Hill neighborhood.

John Laww is a North Carolina-based cinematographer seeking to help make the community a better place, one film at a time. He has a passion for telling artists’ stories as well as filming projects that tackle issues such as environmental injustice, criminal justice reform, student debt relief, and public transit. Of the latter, these include Injustice: Hidden Crisis in Virginia’s Prisons and Resolution: Hoke County Speaks Out.