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Language Equity & Access Partners (LEAP) LLC is a limited liability company and a minority and women-owned firm founded in 2022 to support immigrant and refugee inclusion, language access, community engagement, and strategic planning. LEAP's mission is to support organizational and community change efforts that advance equity and access for culturally and linguistically diverse communities aligned to federal and local requirements and best practices.
LEAP is co-owned by Winta Teferi and Brittany Ford.
About Winta Teferi
Winta Teferi is a language access and organization development consultant, community interpreter, and community organizer. Winta served as Director of Language Access for the District of Columbia government and led District-wide implementation of language access through rigorous compliance monitoring, technical assistance, and authentic stakeholder engagement. Over the course of five years in this role, she worked with agency leaders, advocates, and stakeholders to build a robust citywide language access program and augmented implementation infrastructure and capacity across sixty municipal agencies. She published comprehensive annual reports assessing departmental compliance, trained hundreds of employees annually to increase skills and competence, and partnered with the DC Language Access Coalition to design effective multilingual outreach and public awareness campaigns. Winta currently serves as Strategy Principal on language access consulting projects for government clients, and builds tools and resources that support language access knowledge and implementation capacity. Winta holds a Master of Science in Organization Development from American University, School of Public Affairs and is based in Washington, D.C.
About Brittany Ford
Brittany Ford led language access, immigrant integration, and disability inclusion projects and programs for Lucas County in Toledo, Ohio as a Policy Analyst and Project Manager. Brittany founded the nationally-recognized initiative Welcome Toledo-Lucas County (TLC) and led the project for Lucas County to become the second county in the U.S. designated Certified Welcoming. In her 20 year career, Brittany has worked across organizations in Detroit, Michigan, Toledo, Ohio, and New York, New York and was a 2020-2021 Robert Bosch Fellow in Berlin, Germany. Most recently, Brittany is leading a language access planning process with Rutgers University Institute for Families and the State of New Jersey’s Department of Human Services Office for New Americans. Brittany holds a Master of Arts in International Education from Columbia University and is based in Toledo, Ohio.