Meet the Team

Conversations of Love collective is a group of individuals of diverse racial and professional backgrounds committed to a collaborative effort to address systemic racism in our country. 

  • Nancy collaborated with Peter, Reuben and Roslyn to launch Conversations of Love in 2019 in response to America's structural racism which was laid bare by the George Floyd tragedy that shocked the world! Nancy retired from AT&T in 2007 and started teaching in her second career. As a tireless advocate for social justice, Nancy advocated for educational equity in Shaker Heights for 27 years striving to close the black white achievement gap.

    Nancy strongly believes that racism doesn’t only hurt people of color, it hurts all Americans including the people it’s supposed to give advantages to who are white.

  • Peter is a world-renowned patient safety champion, innovator, critical care physician, a prolific researcher (publishing over 800 peer review publications), entrepreneur (founding a health care start-up that was acquired), and a global thought leader, informing US and global health policy. Currently serving as the Chief Quality & Clinical Transformation Officer at University Hospitals in Cleveland, OH, Peter believes that love is the secret sauce to transformation.

  • Harry Pepper, Ph.D. is a senior consultant and coach at the telos institute, a leading global organizational development firm. Harry is a psychologist with more than 30 years of experience working with diverse client populations in private practice and college counseling center environments He has decades of experience developing, facilitating, and participating in racial equity and diversity programs in government, corporate, public services and college campus-based settings and is an original member of the Conversations of Love Collective. Harry has been involved in both the co-creation and the co-facilitation of the Conversations of Love program offerings.

  • Greg Groves is a resident of Cleveland, attorney and community organizer working on race relation issues for 40 years . The COL experience provides Greg active hope in healing our racialized history.

  • Reuben Harris, Jr., CPA, and since 1990, a State Farm insurance agency owner. Over the past three decades he has been a community and educational equity activist. Reuben has experience in strategic and tactical planning and implementation.

    In 1995 he co-founded Caring Communities Organized for Education (CCOE), an organization developed to address educational equity in the city of Shaker Heights School District the efforts has had impact beyond the state of Ohio. Among several initiatives CCOE created in cooperation with the district, was an academic enrichment program for ten summers, co-administered, which matriculated approximately 150 students.

    Due to his community work, Reuben has been interviewed by several media organizations including the Sun Press, The Plain Dealer, Education Week, Newsweek and The Washington Post. He has been included in two documentaries, PBS – The Struggle for Integration by Stuart Math and CNN Presents: After Brown. He served on the Shaker Heights School Board from 2012 thru 2015 , and is most proud to have played a major role in the District’s adopting “equity” as a core concept and in the hiring of a new educational leader, a young African American, to replace the retiring Superintendent.

  • Roslyn English comes to COL as a part of her ongoing commitment to changing things for the better. For 25+ years, first as a member of Caring Communities Organized for Education (CCOE) and then with CAG, that commitment was on display as she worked to help resolve the achievement gap issue in the City of Shaker Heights School District.

    Prior to retirement, Roslyn spent a 30-year career in human resources management at the Cuyahoga County Board of Developmental Disabilities. During her tenure Roslyn served in various capacities. Among them - contract administrator to the teachers’ association, compensation manager, employment manager and EEO Officer. Roslyn was the creator of the Diversity and Inclusion department, which she managed until retirement.

  • Kelsey Fuller began working with the Conversations of Love Collective in 2022 and assists with marketing & communications. She works full time at University Hospitals, serving as the Director, System Value Performance & Transformation Communications. Kelsey has a strong passion for health equity and believes Conversations of Love offers an opportunity to illuminate the persistent inequities that are pervasive throughout our country and in healthcare.

  • Tony Vento cultivates cultures of trust that grow innovation, with 40 years of experience bringing people together across lines of difference. As a Center for Courage and Renewal© facilitator mentored by the social innovator Parker Palmer, he is founder of the consultancy Purpose Matters, reconnecting who we are with what we do.

    Tony knows in his very soul the power of people coming together in respectful small and large circles, linked with other circles, for renewing and transforming ourselves, our workplaces, and our communities regionally, nationally and internationally.

  • Rev. Dr. David Cann is a retired United Methodist Minister and Professor of Religion. He taught for many years at Clark Atlanta University in Georgia and has pastored numerous churches in Ohio.

    Throughout his career he has participated in many community organizations including being a founding board member of the Cleveland chapter of Habitat for Humanity, working with the East Ohio Black Methodists for Church Renewal, and serving on the executive board of the Chicago Bi-racial Family Network.

    He has worked in many cross racial/cultural settings including serving as a Ministerial Moderator in the Bahamas Conference of the Methodist Church.  He is dedicated to supporting religious organizations in their struggle for peace, justice and equality in the vision of Martin Luther King’s “Beloved Community.”