Presenters

Kal Alston is professor in Cultural Foundations of Education and in Women’s and Gender Studies at Syracuse University. She is Associate Dean for Academic Programs in the School of Education and previously served as Senior Associate Provost and Senior Vice President… More

Maritza Alvarez is a queer, Xicana, Indigenous, two-legged being that was birthed in Xalisco, Mexico and raised in East Los Angeles. At 18 Maritza was trained by the Center for Third World Organizing in Oakland, California.There, Maritza was assigned with Direct Action for Rights and Equality… More

For over 25 years, Nana Fofie has brought healing to her work as a cultural organizer, educator, activist, coach and facilitator. In 2015 she started Wisdom’s Ladder to work with individuals, families, and community organizations with a focus on addressing systemic and generational trauma.… More

Joe Bandy

Ron Bechet is the Victor H. Labat Professor of Art in the Department of Art at Xavier University of Louisiana. He is a practicing visual and has exhibited his work nationally and internationally. He has been teaching for 20 years at the college level.… More

Dominic is a community-engaged scholar and engineer. His research examines the institutional barriers of energy poverty recognition and response in the United States and explores the spatial, racial/ethnic, and socioeconomic patterns of residential energy affordability, consumption, and efficiency… More

Mallika Bose is Professor of Landscape Architecture and Associate Dean of Research, Creative Activity and Graduate Studies at the College of Arts and Architecture at The Pennsylvania State University. Trained as an architect specializing in Environment-Behavior Studies… More

Stephany Bravo was born in Los Angeles and raised in Compton, CA. to parents of Mexican descent. She is a third-year doctoral student at Michigan State University pursuing a dual degree in English and Chicano/Latino Studies. Her transdisciplinary research documents how BI&POC in Southern California… More

Jessa Calderon

Cathleen calls the San Fernando Valley of L.A. home and is in her third year of the American Studies & Ethnicity PhD program at USC. She researches migration, cultural arts, racialized space, and labor relations within the Valley, primarily via oral histories.

Paulina Camacho Valencia is an artist, teacher, scholar. She is a member of the Chicago ACT Collective, a group of friends committed to building political artistic collaborations in multiple communities through art-making. After working with youth as a high school teacher for six years… More

Caroline Cheung is an English PhD Candidate with a graduate certificate in Gender, Women’s, & Sexuality Studies at the University of Iowa. She works at the intersections of women of color feminisms, theories of state violence, transformative justice and prison abolitionism… More

Patti H. Clayton was born and raised and continues to live in North Carolina – with her husband, Kevin, and their feline family. She enjoys being in the mountains, especially in southwest Virginia, and visiting National Parks, especially Zion and Denali; John Denver, Parker Palmer, and Star Trek… More

LaShawnda Crowe Storm is an artist, community organizer and occasionally an urban farmer. Whether she is making artwork or sowing seeds, Crowe Storm uses her creative power as a vehicle to transform our community around topics such as racial and gender violence, social justice and community change… More

Tessa Cruz is the Program Manager for Equitable Engagement and Community Engaged Design at ISEEED. She is also the Director of Outreach and Engagement for Streetwyze and has over seven years of experience developing and implementing community facing geospatial tech platforms… More

Lizbeth De La Cruz Santana is a PhD candidate in Latin American Literatures and Cultures with a designated emphasis on Human Rights at the University of California, Davis. Her area of research focuses on digital storytelling, testimonial literature, and 20th and 21st Century Mexican… More

Educator, entertainer, emcee, and New Orleans native Frederick “Wood” Delahoussaye has propelled through the elements of artistry, entertainment, organizing, and advocacy for over two decades. Wood is a poet, producer, performer, director, emcee, arts administrator… More

Jayeesha Dutta is an artist, cultural organizer and daughter of Bengali immigrants from a place that was a colony of Britain when her father was born, was known as East Pakistan when her mother was born, and Bangladesh when she was born in Mobile, Alabama in the late 1970’s… More

Stephani Etheridge Woodson is a professor in the School of Music, Dance and Theatre at ASU where she specializes in community cultural development and community-engaged practices. She serves as director of the Herberger Institute’s Design and Arts Corps, an initiative to partner all Herberger Institute students with the community… More

Marisol Fila is a PhD Candidate in Romance Languages and Literatures Spanish and Portuguese. Her dissertation explores how Black female and male writers, artists and intellectuals in the twenty-first century Black presses of Buenos Aires, Argentina, São Paulo, Brazil, and Lisbon… More

Joe Garcia

Mark Gardner is a principal at NYC-based Jaklitsch/Gardner Architects (J/GA), an award-winning design practice and studio that works across scales from product design to interiors to buildings. Mark has led many of J/GA’s design initiatives, and works to best understand the role of design as a social practice… More

Jeremy is a performer, choreographer, educator, alchemist, dreamer, and new world conjurer. Born and raised in Los Angeles, the vibrations of the city tickled flesh and sinew and set the foundation for his movement vocabulary. Upon graduation from high school, his curiosity led him to the Mid-Atlantic… More

Michaela Harrison is an international vocalist and healer whose career is rooted in relaying the elevating, transformational power of music through song and supporting others in accessing the fountain of healing energy available in nature through ritual and creative practices… More

Alana is a Ph.D. Candidate in the Department of Sociology at the University of California, Davis. Her research uses an intersectional, feminist approach to study inequalities in the food system. She engages in public scholarship, as she researches stratification, the environment… More

Amy Hirayama is a Hapa writer and educator in Shoreline, Washington. She is interested in writing as a tool for social justice and self care. Her writing explores identity through imagined histories and world building. The beauty of the Pacific Northwest, humor and food are vital parts of her practice… More

I am an applied sociologist and community organizer working as an administrator in higher education. At the University of Richmond my work is informed by a justice-centered approach to institutional and social change. I regularly consult and scheme beyond UR… More

My experiences as a grandmother, director, author, connector, researcher, administrator, teacher, activist and traditional healer both inform and are informed by my deep commitment to justice and a better world. Underlying my personal and professional accomplishments have been a deep understanding… More

Brooke Kipling (she/they) is a Ph.D. candidate in the Spanish & Portuguese department at UC Davis. A member of the project Humanizing Deportation and a 2021 Mellon Public Scholar, Brooke’s research is informed by her experiences on the ground, whether in Chiapas or Tijuana… More

Erica Kohl-Arenas is an Associate Professor in American Studies at the University of California, Davis and the Faculty Director of Imagining America: Artists and Scholars in Public Life. She is a scholar of social movements, freedom struggles, and the politics of institutionalization… More

Will “The Poet” Langford is a community-engaged teaching artist who hails from Detroit, Michigan, and the 2017 Motown Mic Spoken Word Artist of the Year. Langford is a doctoral student in the College of Education at Michigan State University. Will’s scholarship focuses on arts-based community engagement… More

Jennifer Lewis is the Director of the Center for Community Design and Preservation – the public service and outreach arm of the University of Georgia’s College of Environment and Design (CED). She develops and promotes community engagement, service-learning… More

Monica Lewis-Patrick is an educator, entrepreneur, and human rights activist/advocate. Along with the other four founders of We the People of Detroit (WPD), she, with the leadership of volunteers and community experts, placed herself and WPD at the forefront of the water justice struggle in Michigan… More

Author of two books: The Medicine Wheel: Environmental Decision-making Process of Indigenous Peoples and The River of Life: Sustainable Practices of Native Americans and Indigenous Peoples… More

Stephanie Maroney Ph.D. is the Program Manager for the Mellon Public Scholars Program at the UC Davis Humanities Institute. In this role, she promotes the transformative power of the arts and humanities and help shape the future of graduate humanistic research to be collaborative… More

Charlene Martinez transgresses normative boundaries as a cultural weaver. She is Taiwanese-Colombian American, csi-woman of color, mother of three, child of immigrants and resides on Kalapuyan territory (known as Corvallis, Oregon)… More

Mina Para Matlon is an arts organizer, researcher, attorney, artist, and cultural equity advocate. Inspired by the spatial and temporal bridge building work of traditional knowledge bearers, Matlon’s research interests lie in the intersecting areas between arts and community development… More

Karma Mayet is based on Lenape land in Brooklyn, New York and originally from Chicago, of Mississippi heritage. For the last 25 years, she has offered healing modalities grounded in Sacred Rootwork. As yoga practitioner and creator of the Rootsong™ practice… More

Stephanie McKee-Anderson is a performer, choreographer, educator, facilitator and cultural organizer born in Picayune, MS and raised in New Orleans. She is the founder of Moving Stories Dance Project, an organization committed to dance education… More

Dr Janice McMillan is an Associate Professor based in the Centre for Innovation in Learning and Teaching (CILT) in the Centre for Higher Education Development (CHED) at the University of Cape Town. She was co-founder of the UCT Global Citizenship… More

JuliA Metzker serves as the director of the Washington Center for Improving Undergraduate Education at The Evergreen State College. JuliA holds an undergraduate degree from Evergreen, where she learned firsthand the value of a transformative liberal arts education… More

Peter is currently a fifth-year Geography Ph.D. candidate at UC Davis. He was a Posse Scholar at Oberlin College, where he received his B.A. in Environmental Studies & Geology. His research interests are focused on climate and environmental justice… More

New Orleans Native and Visionary, Sunni Patterson, is an internationally acclaimed Poet, Performer, Workshop Facilitator, Certified Spiritual Life Coach/Consultant, and an Initiated Priestess and Minister. She began her career as a full-time high school Teacher… More

For more than 25 years Nana Korantema Pierce Williams has been a Priest (Spiritualist) in the Akom Tradition of Ghana, W. Africa and an advocate for community growth, development, and healing through her practice ConjureWorks, LLC. With degrees from Howard University (BS) and Saybrook University… More

Since 2009, I have worked at the IUPUI Center for Service and Learning where I serve as the Director of Faculty Development. I was drawn to community engagement while a doctoral student in Anthropology in the 1990s… More

Haley is an enrolled member of the Muscogee (Creek) Nation of Oklahoma. She was born and raised in Billings, Montana. She has worked as a professional photographer for over 14 years. She began her photography career as a concert photographer at the age of 15… More

Dr. Robyn Magalit Rodriguez is a scholar-activist who has been committed advancing social justice through her writing and teaching as well as in the communities where she lives and works for over half her life. She currently serves as professor and is the former chair of Asian American Studies at the University of California, Davis… More

Cheryl Siemers serves as Director for Kenai Peninsula College, a branch campus of University of Alaska Anchorage. Siemers has a long-standing commitment to two-year colleges and the diverse communities in which they reside… More

Anna Sims

Brett Snyder researches and works at the intersection of architecture and media. Snyder is a principal of Cheng+Snyder an experimental architecture and design studio based in Oakland, California, an Associate Professor of Design at the University of California Davis… More

Sarah Stanlick, Ph.D., is a faculty member in the Department of Integrative and Global and Global Studies at Worcester Polytechnic Institute. She also directs the first year Great Problems Seminar program, which engages first year students in global-local project-based learning… More

Black music and southern culture intersect with deep roots in hip-hop, gospel, jazz, blues, and rock. They’re woven with rich history, resiliency, and storytelling that elicits a quest for a higher calling in those who connect with them. The same rings true in the offerings created by South Carolina Lowcountry artist Benny Starr.… More

Trina Van Schyndel is the Membership Director for Imagining America, and she also coordinates the Joy of Giving Something (JGS) Fellows program. She comes to IA with extensive experience in higher education settings, including community-engaged learning and community-campus partnerships… More

I’ve spent my career working at the intersections of technology, civic engagement, sustainability, and education. Most recently I spent a decade building ioby.org, the world’s first civic crowdfunding platform and coaching program, supporting the implementation of over $12M of community-led and -funded projects across the US… More

Powerful, bold, brilliant, I am Adreenah “Dreezy” Wynn. Art, for me, has always been my way to release pain and anxiety. Art gives me a platform to help improve the world, both the people and our environment. A large part of my desire to help others through art is because of my own healing from art… More

Nan Yang is a second-year Ph.D. student in Architecture at Pennsylvania State University. She joined the CoPED team as a student research associate in Spring 2021. She was trained as a landscape architect and received her master’s in landscape architecture at the Graduate school of Design, Harvard University… More

Bz (Brenda) Zhang is a designer, visual artist, organizer, and educator based on Tongva land (Los Angeles, USA). They are a founding member of Dark Matter University, an organizer with the Design As Protest Collective and Dark Matter University… More