2026 Village Keepers Honorees
The ZAMI NOBLA Village Keeper Award honors individuals whose lives and work demonstrate an enduring commitment to community, justice, care, and collective well-being. Village Keepers are those who show up for others, preserve our stories, challenge injustice, create spaces of belonging, and use their gifts and resources to strengthen our communities.
The 2026 Village Keeper Award recognizes individuals whose leadership, service, advocacy, creativity, and care have made a meaningful difference in the lives of marginalized people and the broader communities in which we live.
Above all, a Village Keeper helps make the village stronger for those who are here now, and those who will come after us.
Village Keepers:
Edith Biggers, M.D., Public Health Physician, HIV Clinic, Fulton County Dept of Health and Wellness
Dr. Edith Biggers is a public health physician in the HIV clinic at the Fulton County Department of Health and Wellness. She delivers compassionate and state-of-the-art medical care to indigent, uninsured, underserved, and substance-using HIV positive patients, with an emphasis on maximizing self-empowerment through education. As an African American woman specializing in HIV care and treatment, her presence has an empowering effect on those the clinic serves. She spent more than 10 years as a volunteer at AIDS Survival Project talking directly with people living with HIV on how to improve their health by understanding their own health care needs. Dr. Biggers is a native of Atlanta and received her Medical Degree from Emory University, MA in library science from Atlanta University and BA in music education from Smith College.
Tonia Poteat, Ph.D., Ruby L. Wilson Distinguished Professor in the Duke University School of Nursing
Dr. Tonia Poteat is the Ruby L. Wilson Distinguished Professor in the Duke University School of Nursing, Co-Director of the Duke Sexual and Gender Minority Wellness Program, and Associate Director of the Duke Center for AIDS Research (CFAR) Developmental Core. Her research, teaching, and clinical practice focus on LGBTQ+ health. She directs the RISE Lab, where her community-engaged research attends to the role of intersectional structural stigma in driving health inequities and seeks to identify strategies to advance health justice. As a certified PA, she has more than 30 years of experience providing medical care for LGBTQ+ adults and people living with HIV. She currently cares for adolescents and adults at the UNC Infectious Diseases Clinic. She is an associate editor for the journal LGBT Health and has served on consensus panels for the National Academies of Science, Engineering, and Medicine including Sex and Gender Identification and Implications for Disability Evaluation and Understanding the Status and Well-Being of Sexual and Gender Diverse Populations. In 2025, she received the GLMA Lifetime Achievement award, which honors health professionals who have had a career of transformational impact in advancing LGBTQ+ health equity. She has collaborated with ZAMI NOBLA for more than a decade and is deeply committed to conducting community-driven research with actionable findings.
Janyce Jackson Jones, Founder & President, ZAMI NOBLA North Carolina State Chapter
Janyce Jackson Jones is a founding member of ZAMI NOBLA (National Organization of Black Lesbians on Aging) North Carolina State Chapter and currently serves as President. A longtime advocate for social justice, community, and the empowerment of Black lesbians, Janyce brings decades of leadership and service to her work with ZAMI NOBLA. After more than 21 years of dedicated service to her church and social justice causes in New York and New Jersey, Reverend Janyce retired to coastal North Carolina, where she discovered a new passion: art. Through vibrant colors, fluid movement, and abstract expression, she describes the creative process as finding her own “Creative Happiness.” Before retiring, Reverend Janyce served as Co-Pastor of Newark’s Unity Fellowship Church. She was also instrumental in founding Liberation in Truth Unity Fellowship Church, where she served for eight years as Pastor and Executive Director of the Liberation in Truth Social Justice Center. Her ministry and community work have centered on creating spaces of affirmation, justice, healing, and empowerment. Janyce lives in coastal North Carolina with her spouse, Valerie Jones. She continues to serve her community through volunteer work with AARP, her local senior center, and her active involvement with Silver Pride Circle, a local LGBTQ+ senior organization. Today, Janyce’s life reflects the many colors of her journey—faith, activism, leadership, community, creativity, and love.
Yolo Akili Robinson, Founder & Executive Director, BEAM (Black Emotional and Mental Collective)
Yolo Akili Robinson (he/they) is an award-winning writer, Afro-Indigenous healing practitioner, and founder and Executive Director of the Black Emotional and Mental Health Collective (BEAM), a national nonprofit that resources, trains, and funds an international network of values-aligned healing justice and mental health initiatives. Under Yolo’s leadership, BEAM has distributed more than $700,000 to grassroots mental health organizations, provided over $200,000 in direct assistance to more than 800 families, and trained over 15,000 community members in non-carceral crisis response, healing justice, and emotionally intelligent leadership. A 2024 Ford Global Fellow and recipient of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Award for Health Equity, Yolo was honored with SNAP Co.’s Everything Is Love Award in 2026 and spotlighted by the BET Awards in 2020 as an “Empowerful” leader. Yolo is the author of Dear Universe, a contributor to the New York Times bestseller You Are Your Best Thing and Womanism Rising, and co-editor of What I Wish My People Had Known: The Psychiatric Green Book for Black Folks. Based in Los Angeles, he reimagines mental health and wellness through a southern, diasporic, and Afro-Caribbean lens.
Rev. Duncan E. Teague, Founding and Senior Minister, Abundant Love Unitarian Universalist Congregation (Abundant LUUv)
Rev. Duncan E. Teague and faithful, hardworking friends dreamed of and planted the Abundant Love Unitarian Universalist (UU) Congregation in The West End community of Atlanta, established in 2018. Abundant LUUv is committed to the work of healing communities in both the UU and Black church traditions. Emory University’s Rollins School of Public Health employed Rev. Teague, in Global Health department assisting research of faith-based projects doing HIV/AIDS anti-stigma work. Emory University, Candler School of Theology is also where he received his Master of Divinity degree in 2011. At the General Assembly (GA) 2025 of the UU Association, he celebrates gaining Full Fellowship as a UU minister. He is serving as the UU Ministers’ Association’s current vice-president and has been on the Committee on Anti-Racism, Anti-Oppression, and Multiculturalism (CARAOM). He also served on the Appointments Sub-Committee of the UUA Board of Directors and has served on the Appointments Committee of the Southeast UU Ministers Association chapter. Rev. Teague is quite familiar with ZAMI NOBLA and ZAMI as the senior member of the ADODI Muse; A Gay Negro Ensemble, performance poets who performed several years at the ZAMI Scholarship Recipient ceremonies. They also funded the Tony Daniels Scholarship in honor of their late founder and ZAMI supporter, Carl Anthony ”Tony” Daniels. The one organization all the members of the ADODI Muse haver performed for is ZAMI and ZAMI NOBLA: Tony Daniels, Malik M.L. Williams, Anthony Antoine, Teague, and Holiday Simmons. He has received proclamations honoring his work by the Atlanta City Council 2022 by Councilwoman Keisha Waites and endorsed by Council President, Doug Shipman. In the 2017 session of the State of Georgia House of Representatives, Rep. Park Cannon, District 58, and former Rep. Keisha Waites signed House Resolution #290, and the year 2024 Georgia State Senator Nan Orrock sponsored a proclamation also commending Teague for his thirty-eight years of HIV/AIDS and community work. Rev. Teague resides in Decatur, GA with his husband, David Thurman, a retired CDC researcher, celebrating thirty plus years together and 21 years married.
Charis Books and More/Charis Circle, South's oldest independent feminist bookstore celebrating radical and queer voices since 1974.
Charis Books and More is the South's oldest independent feminist bookstore, celebrating radical voices since 1974! Originally located in Little Five Points, Charis is now in Decatur, GA, adjacent to Agnes Scott College. Together with their non-profit programming partner, Charis Circle (founded in 1996), Charis Books and More fosters sustainable feminist communities, works for social justice, and encourages the expression of diverse and marginalized voices. Charis' honors include awards from the Human Rights Campaign, Georgia Voice, Creative Loafing, and the Feminist Women's Health Center. Charis has twice been honored to be a grand marshal at Atlanta Pride. Charis Books and More was awarded the We Need Diverse Books Bookseller of the Year in 2017, was a Publishers Weekly Bookstore of the Year Finalist in 2021, in 2023 received the Publishing Professional Award from Lambda Literary and in 2025 received The Guardian of the Narrative Award from Counter Narrative Project.