About US
Beloved Community Incubator is a movement organization, incubator, lender, and worker self-directed non-profit in the Washington, DC metro region. We support and organize resources for community-based cooperatives and collectives, provide non-extractive financing through the DC Solidarity Economy Loan Fund, and organize & advocate for policies that build a regional solidarity economy.
BCI is a worker self-directed nonprofit, which means we as workers shape the programs in which we work, the conditions of our workplace, and the direction of the organization as a whole. We believe that because BCI exists to support workers to form their own democratic workplaces, we should be engaged in building our own collective, democratic power together as well. Building a collective, democratic practice together is a key part of the work of transforming ourselves and building a local and national solidarity economy.
As a worker self-directed non profit, BCI is managed by a Worker Board on which BCI workers always have majority voting power, with an Advisory Committee that reviews our annual organizational goals and budgets and is representative of the communities and organizations to whom we are accountable.
BCI Workers
Bianca Vazquez (she/her), Program Director
Bianca Vazquez is a community organizer who has lived and worked in Washington, DC for ten years. After the 2016 election, neighborhood listening sessions led her to engage small micro-business projects with local residents, which led to the founding of BCI. She believes in the power of worker-ownership to substantially transform communities and the economy. Bianca has been trained by the Industrial Areas Foundation and Cooperation Works, a national network made up of organizational and individual members working in cooperative development. Her favorite question is, "To whom have you been given to love?"
Geoff Gilbert (he/him), Legal & Technical Assistance Director
Geoff is an organizer, attorney and writer, and an Ashkenazi Jew originally from Miami, FL who committed to building deep roots in Washington, DC. Geoff leads BCI’s provision of legal and technical assistance to the more than 15 DC-area cooperatives, collectives and solidarity economy organizations, including the high-touch cooperatives in BCI’s incubation program. Geoff also does administrative work at BCI and is currently the main facilitator within BCI of the process through which BCI workers build collective practices and a culture of internal democracy. Geoff is also a committed mutual aid organizer with Ward 1 Mutual Aid in DC. Previously, Geoff worked for Seed Commons as a Staff Attorney for three years and earned a JD from the Georgetown University Law Center in 2018.
Samantha Wherry (she/her), Director of Operations and Internal Democracy
Samantha is an organizer for social justice and human rights who was born in Colombia and raised in Maryland. As BCI’s Director of Operations and Internal Democracy, she helps implement internal processes that foster collective and democratic systems in the workplace. Her commitment to social justice is deeply influenced by her work with Colombian land and water defenders who are creating alternative economic and social models grounded in care, reciprocity, and solidarity. Prior to joining BCI, Samantha was a Latin America Campaigner at CODEPINK, where she advocated for a feminist U.S. foreign policy in the Americas. Before that, she was based in Bogota, Colombia with Witness for Peace Solidarity Collective, where she helped restructure the decades-old human rights organization into a worker-run, horizontal collective.
Samantha received an MA in Human Rights and Politics from the London School of Economics and a BA in International Studies from Loyola University Chicago. In her free time, you can find her spending time outdoors, crafting, and advocating for an end to U.S. economic sanctions and military intervention abroad.