2026 Impact Award Winners

A proud Asheville native, she founded Woman Strong after recognizing how often Black women are expected to carry everyone else’s needs while their own exhaustion goes unseen. The self-funded movement has offered workshops, restorative gatherings, coaching, and self-care scholarships that have helped hundreds of women rest, seek support, and reconnect with themselves beyond survival mode. Brandy has built these experiences alongside local Black women-owned businesses, creatives, and organizations, including Healed Skin & Candle Co., The Envoy Guide, Asheville Buncombe Institute of Parity Achievement, and the Reparations Stakeholder Authority of Asheville.

Brandy also founded Brandy Mills Consulting. There, she has guided entrepreneurs, organizations, leaders, and individuals through strategic facilitation, leadership development, and human-centered programming. Across both ventures, Brandy has inspired people to recognize their worth, reclaim their voice, and reconnect with their purpose.

As Director of Systems and Engagement with Swannanoa Communities Together, she co-designed accessible systems to quickly connect residents affected by Hurricane Helene to food, housing, financial assistance, and long-term recovery support. The approach met people where they were, offering respect and trust instead of requiring them to repeatedly prove their need.

A Hurricane Katrina survivor with experience organizing for housing and transportation justice, Carmen brought a personal understanding of delayed response and a deep commitment to community care to local recovery efforts. She was instrumental in developing bilingual materials and a relationship-based alternative to traditional case management, giving immigrant, working-class, and housing-insecure families a place to seek assistance without suspicion or shame. Carmen also uplifted the recovery needs of mountain communities in statewide housing and power-building convenings, ensuring local realities informed the broader response.

For many returning citizens, racism, class inequality, and exclusion complicate the path home. Dustin has carved out dignified reentry pathways, including employment, trauma-resiliency circles, and tattoo cover-ups for those leaving harmful affiliations behind.

The name carries an invitation: “Deep Time, Not Hard Time,” reflecting his conviction that people deserve more than a life defined by punishment or obstacles. After Hurricane Helene, that conviction became hands-on relief. Working with grassroots partners, he coordinated the distribution of donated essentials worth tens of thousands of dollars and brewed more than 1,000 cups of coffee by candlelight in just two weeks, turning a daily ritual into a source of warmth, conversation, and familiarity during crisis.

A first-generation Filipino American from rural WNC, she also founded The Stoned Witch Church, an inclusive spiritual home where LGBTQ+ people, BIPOC community members, pagans, and survivors of religious trauma have found affirmation, healing, and connection.

Guided by the belief that advocacy is inseparable from community care, Josie has organized mutual aid, healing spaces, advocacy events, and public education in collaboration with regional partners including Asheville Drag Brunch, Tranzmission, and Youth OUTright. Working alongside diverse groups across WNC, she has elevated trans, BIPOC, drag, and pagan voices. Her intersectional and intergenerational work has brought diverse voices and experiences into fuller public view, opening more room for queer people to live with greater safety, dignity, and belonging.

With 52 years in the field, including 43 as a registered nurse, she has advanced public health education, chronic disease prevention, and access to care in WNC. More recently, Kathey has put that experience to work through Avery Health—Education and Consulting and the Institute for Preventive Healthcare & Advocacy (IFPHA).

At MAHEC, she has trained emerging nurses and community health workers, facilitated health-equity education, and connected families with trusted preventive support. As IFPHA’s Community Nurse, Kathey has spent the past five years preparing MAHEC residents to better serve people facing barriers to care, with a focus on maternal health, birth equity, and infant mortality in Buncombe County. Through training, collaborations, and board service, Kathey has translated health equity from an aspiration into practical knowledge, trusted relationships, and clearer pathways to care.

For Michael, family stability is a shared community responsibility, not an individual burden. As the founder of Be-More Alive Ministries and a chaplain with Operation Gateway, he has paired faith-based mentorship with concrete support for men rebuilding their lives and relationships.

Working with The SPARC Foundation, Michael has led peer-based men’s and fatherhood programs that link participants to essential resources, emotional wellness support, and personal growth opportunities. Through his business, Washed by The Water, he has also offered program participants employment and on-the-job mentorship. As a certified violence-prevention professional, Michael has applied a trauma-informed, culturally responsive lens to this work, giving men room to heal, lead, and thrive as sources of inspiration and stability in their families and communities.

Often the only Latina journalist in the room, Patricia has reported on local decisions involving immigration, housing, policing, transportation, and disaster recovery, making their daily consequences clearer for Latino communities. Through reporting and organizing, she has given Latino communities reliable information in their own language and space to tell their stories on their own terms.

During Hurricane Helene, she worked with Blue Ridge Public Radio, local media, and community organizations to share urgent, verified information in Spanish amid disrupted communication and spreading misinformation. She has also convened Spanish-language journalists and communicators to share knowledge and foster collaboration. These efforts affirmed Spanish as a language of public participation, memory, and belonging.

Her work has interwoven clinical care, ancestral Mesoamerican medicine, and community healing. For Paulina, joy is an act of resistance and a path toward liberation. Beyond Alegría, Paulina carried that vision into rapid-response efforts.

Amid escalating threats of immigration enforcement, she recruited and organized a bilingual network of 21 diverse practitioners to serve immigrant and undocumented communities navigating fear, displacement, and state violence. Together, they established a trusted system of care rooted in consent, confidentiality, collaboration, and cultural connection. Paulina’s contributions made this model of collective well-being possible, expanding access to comprehensive, culturally informed support and enabling allied practitioners to respond quickly when communities need it most.

Tea, calligraphy, martial arts, and storytelling have been her invitations to cross-cultural learning, connection, and healing. Following her residency as Story Parlor’s third artist-in-residence, Shunyu founded Asheville’s first Asian Culture Festival and launched Five Spice, a recurring live series of BIPOC-centered conversations and interactive performances.

In August 2025, Shunyu opened Wú Yōng Culture Space in Marshall, offering sliding-scale Mandarin and calligraphy classes, Chinese tea workshops, Chen Taiji lessons, and gatherings that invite neighbors into Chinese traditions. Her collaborations with Story Parlor, Francine Delany New School for Children, UNC Asheville, and the Asheville Poverty Initiative have encouraged students, creatives, and neighbors to share cultural pride, follow their curiosity, and build relationships across difference.

His films have used visual storytelling to preserve Black history, confront systemic injustice, and amplify community voices. In Black in Asheville and Urban Renewal Impact, he documented Black Ashevillians’ substantial contributions while examining how gentrification, mass incarceration, displacement, and the loss of generational wealth have shaped the city—forces that still constrain opportunity and equity today.

At the Youth Filmmakers Initiative, Todd has provided underrepresented youth with hands-on filmmaking education, community-storytelling experience, and career-development opportunities. By bringing overlooked histories into public view, Todd has challenged dominant narratives around race and racism in Asheville, inviting viewers to grapple with the systems and legacies that have shaped the region’s Black communities, past and present.