Our Team
Jorden Giger, Board President.
Jorden Giger is a South Bend, Indiana native and co-founder of Black Lives Matter South Bend. He worked as an educator in his community and recently served as the Director of Outreach for Black Lives Matter Grassroots, which is the chapter organizing arm of the global organization.
In 2016, he returned to South Bend from graduate school and began working closely with Regina Williams-Preston and a group of young, passionate activists. Since his return, he has worked tirelessly towards justice for Black and poor South Bend residents.
Emmanuel Cannady, Board Treasurer.
Emmanuel Cannady received his PhD from the University of Notre Dame. He has conducted research on race and ethnicity, trauma, racialization, family, social movements, and the sociology of knowledge.
His main research agenda interrogates the racialized meanings of interpersonal interactions across different contexts, including social movement organizations, bystander intervention, friendships, and partner selection to reveal the complex reality of race in the 21st century.
Igor Rodrigues, Secretary
Igor Rodriguez is a South Bend , in native and the founder of Linguismo Study, which was created to expand access to political participation by historically excluded groups in the Americas from perspective of linguistic rights . Igor received an MA in Latin American Studies at the University of California - Berkeley and then really became a language nerd as a doctoral student of Linguistic Anthropology at the CUNY Graduate Center. Today, Igor works with organizations and communities engaged in human rights, justice, democracy, and the environment as a consultant and interpretation coordinator.