President & Executive Director

Adilah Muhammad is a native of Decatur, Georgia.  Prior to founding The Third Place, Muhammad worked as an independent strategic planning and research consultant for over fifteen years. In this capacity, she specialized in organizational development for ethnic and community-based organizations and nonprofit startups.

Muhammad currently serves as board chairperson for the Maine Community Foundation, board director for the Portland Regional Chamber of Commerce, member of the Lewiston Economic Development Council, Good Shephard Food Equity Collaborative, Bates College Institutional Review Board and is a Corporator for Androscoggin Bank. She is the former chairperson of Lewiston's Downtown Neighborhood Action Committee and Downtown Neighborhood Task force. She has served on the RaiseOp Housing Cooperative as a founding member and been a real estate investor for over twenty years.

Muhammad was selected as a 2021 Mainebiz Woman to Watch and chosen as a 2022 Mainer of the Year by Maine Magazine. Muhammad received her B.A. from DePauw University and M.A. from the USM -Muskie School of Public Service.

Board Member

Faith prides herself in being a recruiter and community connector. With 20 years in the talent acquisition industry, Faith  has helped organizations in Atlanta and Maine, hire and retain talent. Faith is most passionate about connecting within underrepresented minorities communities to share resources and employment opportunities. Prior to The Third Place, Faith has served on boards for Tree Street, Thrive and Maine HR Diversity Hiring Coalition.

In addition to her role as vice president, Faith organizes social and professional networking events for The Third Place.

Faith is a native Mainer but lived in Atlanta for over a decade. She moved back to Maine in 2007 and resides in Auburn with her daughter Norah.

Board Member, Treasurer

Kevin Loney was named the Assistant Athletic Director for Facilities and Event Management at Bowdoin in the spring of 2021. A 1999 graduate of Dickinson College, Loney has been a football coach for the last 20 years, holding numerous roles at every division of the NCAA. Most recently, from 2011-13, he was the head coach at Nichols College before coming to Bowdoin in 2015. During his career he has been an active member of the American Football Coaches Association and the Black Coaches & Administrators Association. Upon arriving at Bowdoin, Loney became a fixture in the campus community, supporting service efforts with Be The Match, Relay for Life and Big-Brother/Big Sister, among numerous others. Administratively, he has served as the Tournament Director for several NCAA Basketball Regionals at Bowdoin and has been an advisor to the Bowdoin Athletes of Color Coalition, as well as a member of the Bowdoin Athletics Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Committee and NESCAC Coaches of Color Consortium.Beginning in the summer of 2021, Loney will oversee game management operations and will coordinate facility scheduling, contracts and event management with outside organizations using Bowdoin athletic facilities, in addition to his continued work with the AoCC and DEI committees on campus. Loney graduated from Dickinson as a Religion major and History minor and attended graduate schools while coaching at Notre Dame and Southern Connecticut State University.

Flo came to Portland, Maine at the age of 12, when her parents moved here from New York. After graduating from Portland high, she attended college in the Chicago area. She came back in her twenties and attended classes at UNE and worked for various grade schools in southern Maine from Portland Adult Education to Spurwink in Chelsea. Soon she discovered that her passion is helping people smile which lead her to attend dental school at Howard University in Washington, D.C. Flo joined the U.S. Army after she earned DDS; being away from Maine for an extended period helped her realize that she wanted to settle down in Portland.

Now, she spends weekends kayaking, exploring Maine and camping with her wife, Donna Ekart, and two black labs. As a young adult in Portland, she participated in Outright and WMPG’s youth talk radio show. At this point in her life, she’s able to give back to the community that helped ground her. Flo is passionate about everyone being heard and having rights. Being black, lesbian, and female, she understands that marginalized people will always have to defend and demand equal human rights; they don’t have the privilege otherwise.

Sr Research Scientist at IDEXX

The Roux Institute, Community and Engagement Manager

Self-coined the Value Architect, Obinna is a connector of People, Brands, and Experiences. Obinna is an entrepreneur that is focused on creating lasting value for Africa and the Diaspora around the world. He is an Strategic Partnership Consultant and Co-founder/Chief Business Development Officer of a lifestyle brand called Naija Made. Over the past 7 years, he has sharpened his business acumen in a number of sectors including strategic partnership and start-ups through connecting seemingly unrelated ideas to drive fresh and innovative solutions to any given problem. Obinna has a B.S in Biology from Howard University and a M.S in Management from Wake Forest University.

Mindbridge, Healing Racial Trauma Fellow

Joy George, born and raised in the Bronx, NY as the daughter of Nigerian diaspora, has found herself at the intersections of human rights, transformative, healing and restorative justice, and social change in her work and activism. A recent graduate of Swarthmore College, she actively centers the livelihoods of marginalized peoples and seeks to bring together stakeholders in her community to transform the climate into one of intentional collective care. Joy is a facilitant of the YES! Education Transformation Jam and Re-Storying Justice Jam, and is currently serving as the Healing Communities Program Fellow with Mindbridge. She also is working excitedly to expand Community Coalitions to bring much needed conversation to the transformative and restorative justice ecosystem with the Restorative Justice Institute of Maine.