Ominira Project
What is the Ominira Project?
At Ominira Project, we create spaces rooted in freedom, care, and possibility.
Based in Durham, North Carolina, Ominira is a Black and queer-owned consulting practice working alongside nonprofits, grassroots organizations, and funders to strengthen organizations, develop strategies, and bring community-centered ideas to life. Our services include strategic planning, equity and inclusion training, program development, and philanthropic advising. We support organizations as they navigate growth, build stronger relationships, and align their everyday practices with their larger commitments to justice.
Our work is deeply rooted in the U.S. South and shaped by the long traditions of Black freedom movements, grassroots organizing, and collective care. These histories remind us that meaningful change is built through relationships, shared struggle, and the everyday work of people coming together to imagine and create something different. We carry these lessons into our practice, recognizing that the people closest to the challenges facing their communities often hold the knowledge and vision needed to move forward.
We believe that liberation begins with environments where people can show up fully as themselves, in community, and without fear. Whether we're facilitating difficult conversations, helping organizations plan for their futures, or working with funders to rethink how resources move, we approach each partnership with curiosity, care, and a commitment to building something that can last.
Behind the Name
We’ve always known that partnership, for us, meant building something bigger than ourselves. A project, a practice, a dream rooted in care, purpose, and possibility.
That’s how Ominira came to be.
We were drawn to the word Ominira (oh-me-near-a) because it holds so much of what we believe in. It honors the heart of what we’re cultivating together and offering to others: freedom, independence, and liberation.
Meet Our Team
Colleen Sullivan
Co-Founder
Colleen Sullivan (she/her) is a strategist, facilitator, and co-founder of Ominira Project. For over a decade, she has worked alongside nonprofits, foundations, and community-based organizations to develop programs, build partnerships, and support organizational growth. Her experience spans philanthropic advising, fundraising, grantmaking, strategic planning, and organizational development. Colleen enjoys helping people pull apart the knots, sit with complicated questions, and figure out a way forward that makes sense for their organization and the people doing the work.
At Ominira, Colleen supports nonprofits and foundations with organizational strategy, philanthropic planning, and equity and inclusion practices. She leads the firm's advisory work with the T.W. Haas Foundation, including its five-year philanthropic strategy and the Southern Hub, a three-year funding initiative across the Carolinas and Georgia. Previously, she served as Vice President of the Burt's Bees Foundation, managing its grantmaking and relationships with nonprofit partners and grantees.
Colleen's background in higher education includes work across community engagement, multicultural affairs, and sustainability at the College of Charleston and the University of South Carolina. She taught, developed curriculum and programs, advised students, secured funding, and supported university partnerships with community organizations. Her experience in equity and inclusion and environmental justice continues to inform her consulting work, particularly in organizational learning and educational programming.
Across these roles, Colleen has helped organizations navigate questions about resources, relationships, and future direction. She believes meaningful change takes time and that people need space to consider what is working, what needs to change, and what they want to build together. Her approach to strategic planning helps organizations turn those conversations into decisions they can carry forward.
Kamau Pope
Co-Founder
Kamau Pope (he/they) is a historian, storysharer, former community organizer, and co-founder of Ominira Project. For over a decade, Kamau has worked across Southern organizing, education, nonprofit leadership, and public history. His work brings together a love of history and storytelling with an interest in how people build movements, care for one another, and create institutions that can carry their commitments forward.
At Ominira, Kamau supports organizations through strategic planning, facilitation, and organizational change, helping teams think through where they are, what they want to build, and what it will take to get there.
Kamau is also a PhD candidate in History at Duke University, where his research examines queer organizing and movement building in North Carolina from 1986 to 2016. His dissertation explores how queer and trans communities built relationships, developed political strategies, and sustained movements across the South.
Kamau's recent public-history work includes curating Mandy Carter, Scientist of Activism at Duke University's Rubenstein Library. The exhibition brought Duke and the broader Durham community together to explore Mandy Carter's legacy and the history of Southern freedom movements. Additionally, Kamau contributed to Reckoning and Justice: Better Practices for Memory Work, a toolkit developed through Duke's John Hope Franklin Humanities Institute.
As a historian and organizer, Kamau understands that institutions are shaped by the people, histories, and communities around them. He enjoys working with organizations as they navigate change, highlighting the stories and relationships that brought them to where they are while helping them consider what comes next. His approach is grounded in care, accountability, and a belief that building a more just world requires us to think about what we leave for those who come after us.
Our Vision Ahead
Ominira is a living, evolving project. We are building toward a future grounded in shared space, sustainable living, and the conditions for real rest.
This work is not separate from our lives. It is a commitment to building a way of living rooted in liberation, care, and long-term sustainability. As we grow, this vision is taking shape across three interconnected areas: community space, homestead, and rest.