Sarah Amsler (she/her) is a politically engaged teacher, writer, researcher and mother. She is an Associate Professor of Education at the University of Nottingham, UK and a member of the Gesturing Towards Decolonial Futures art-ecology-research collective. Her work is dedicated to understanding how systems of modern power perpetuate deep patterns of interpersonal and systemic harm that alienate us from ourselves, each other and the rest of nature (including white supremacy, cisheteropatriarchy and instrumental reason in relationships and institutions). Her research and writing focus on learning with the ‘otherwise’, ontological politics in projects for systemic social and ecological justice, pedagogies of relational liberation, countering coloniality in educational theory and practice, and biopoethics as a pedagogy for healing separability.

Dr. JuanCarlos Arauz is one of the most sought-after speaker and facilitator, inspiring and captivating audiences internationally through his creative storytelling approach. He has mastered the art of addressing the delicate topics of 21st century education, equity, immigration, and Black/Brown male youth development. He has written academically on the intersection of Social Emotional Learning & Equity as well as personal testimonials and is featured in a documentary that focuses on contemporary civil rights activists. His fresh and compelling vision cultivates collaboration between various sectors, providing solutions to humanize the educational process for everyone. “We cannot have educational excellence without equity.” (www.youtube.com/user/e3education) Dr. Arauz received his B.A. and M.A. in Social Science Education from the University of South Florida. He received his Ed.D. in International and Multicultural Education at the University of San Francisco. His dissertation focused on the racial identity development of undocumented youth. His belief that we cannot have educational excellence without equity led him to found the nonprofit, E3: Education, Excellence & Equity, where he serves as the founder and has reached 20 states & 6 countries. In addition, he has been an adjunct professor at Dominican University and has served as a trustee for several independent schools and educational organizations. His work speaks for itself. Fun facts are that JuanCarlos is a proud member of a family that includes his partner, a woman of grace, and have extended their family to include 29 children (there’s a story!). He was born in Brazil to Nicaraguan parents living in 6 different U.S. states & countries by age 21. He taught in the classroom and coached men and women state high school basketball championship teams of which he is inducted into the Hall of Fame.

Sonali Sangeeta Balajee (she / her) is a mother, daughter of Sri Lankan and Indian immigrants, a teaching artist, activist, organizer, and emerging health practitioner. She is the founder of Our Bodhi Project (Bodhi), which focuses on the intersection of Belonging, Organizing, Decomposing, Collective Health and Interconnectedness. Bodhi and the Embodying Belonging and Coliberation frame (the project’s centerpiece) stem from her active research as a Senior Fellow with the Othering and Belonging Institute with UC Berkeley. Sonali spent 13 years for Multnomah County and City of Portland as a senior policy advisor on equity and empowerment, as manager of a health equity program and of a City-wide community-visioning project. She has spent over 10 years of community organizing in the areas of youth organizing, arts, queer liberation, HIV/AIDS issues, and environmental justice. Sonali served as a healing practitioner with the W.K.Kellogg Truth, Reconciliation, and Healing Initiative, and serves on the boards of World Trust and Bioneers. Her life's work has sought to integrate her various influences, cultures, grounding in earth-and-cosmos-based practices, and experiences of spirituality in multiple forms. Our current moments of social and environmental oppression, decomposing, heartbreak, and transformation call Sonali to offer and learn through such integrative and collectively liberating practices.

Dr. Jacqueline Battalora is a keynote speaker, author, trainer, and consultant in workplace and educational inclusion. Her keynotes about the legal invention of the human category “white” people, turn contemporary conceptions of race upside down and reorient thinking about race and human divisions. The keynotes are steeped in law and history made both accessible and nuanced. They are engaging, thought provoking, and relevant. The keynotes provide attendees with immediate actions and longer-term processes for transforming their lives, workplaces, and communities into a strong reflection of inclusion and equal opportunity. Jacqueline Battalora is the author of, Birth of a White Nation: The Invention of White People and Its Relevance Today, and numerous articles. She is an attorney and professor of sociology at Saint Xavier University, Chicago and a former Chicago Police Officer. Battalora is an editor for the Journal of Understanding and Dismantling Privilege. She completed her law degree from the University of Toledo and came to Chicago to practice. Her interest in the role of law in creating human difference shaped her graduate work at Northwestern University where she received her Ph.D. Jacqueline has numerous publications related to the construction of human difference in law including Birth of A White Nation: The invention of white people and its relevance today.

Fania Davis is a leading national voice on restorative justice, a quickly emerging field which invites a fundamental shift in the way we think about and do justice. Restorative Justice is based on a desired set of principles and practices to mediate conflict, strengthen community and repair harm. She is a long-time social justice activist, Civil Rights trial attorney, restorative justice practitioner, writer, and scholar with a PhD in Indigenous Knowledge. Coming of age in Birmingham, Alabama during the social ferment of the civil rights era, the murder of two close childhood friends in the 1963 Sunday School bombing crystallized within Fania a passionate commitment to social transformation. For the next decades, she was active in the Civil Rights, Black liberation, women's, prisoners', peace, anti-racial violence and anti-apartheid movements. After receiving her law degree from University of California , Berkeley in 1979, Fania practiced some 27 years as a Civil Rights trial lawyer. During the mid 1990's, she entered a Ph.D. program in Indigenous studies at the California Institute of Integral Studies, and apprenticed with traditional healers around the globe, particularly in Africa. Since receiving her Ph.D. in 2003, Fania has been engaged in a search for healing alternatives to adversarial justice. She has taught Restorative Justice at San Francisco's New College Law School and Indigenous Peacemaking at Eastern Mennonite University's Center for Justice and Peacebuilding. She writes and speaks on these subjects. The search for a healing justice also led Fania to bring restorative justice to Oakland. A founder and currently Director of Restorative Justice of Oakland Youth (RJOY), Fania served as counsel to the International Council of Thirteen Indigenous Grandmothers. Numerous honors include the Ubuntu award for service to humanity, the Dennis Maloney Award for excellence in Youth Restorative Justice, and World Trust's Healing Justice award. The Los Angeles Times recently named her a New Civil Rights Leader of the 21st Century. Fania's research interests include race and restorative justice, social justice and restorative justice, and exploring the Indigenous roots, particularly the African Indigenous roots, of restorative justice.

Elizabeth Drame, Ph.D. is a special educator, racial justice advocate, participatory action researcher, traveler, connector and mother. In her work, she collaborates with Black mothers, community advocates, educators and students to create spaces where Black people’s narratives drive equity change. She is a Professor in the Department of Teaching and Learning at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee where she prepares special educators, coordinates the Autism Spectrum Disorders Certificate Program, and chairs the department. She earned her Ph.D. in Learning Disabilities/Communication Sciences and Disorders from Northwestern University and served as a U.S. Fulbright Senior Research Fellow in the African Regional Research Program from 2011-2012 and 2018-2020.

Dr. Joy DeGruy holds a Bachelor of Science degree in Communication, a master's degree in Social Work (MSW), a master's degree in Clinical Psychology, and a Ph.D. in Social Work Research. Dr. Joy DeGruy is a nationally and internationally renowned researcher, educator, author and presenter. She is an Assistant Professor at Portland State University and the President of JDP Inc. Dr. DeGruy has over twenty-five years of practical experience as a professional in the field of social work. She conducts workshops and trainings in the areas of mental health, social justice and culture specific social service model development. Dr. Joy DeGruy authored the book entitled Post Traumatic Slave Syndrome: America’s Enduring Legacy of Injury and Healing, which addresses the residual impacts of trauma on African Descendants in the Americas. Post Traumatic Slave Syndrome lays the groundwork for understanding how the past has influenced the present, and opens up the discussion of how we can eliminate non-productive attitudes, beliefs and adaptive behaviors and, build upon the strengths we have gained from the past to heal injuries of today. Post Traumatic Slave Syndrome: “The Study Guide” is designed to help individuals, groups, and organizations better understand the functional and dysfunctional attitudes and behaviors that have been transmitted to us through multiple generations. The Guide encourages and broadens the discussion and implications about the specific issues that were raised in the P.T.S.S. book and provides the practical tools to help transform negative attitudes and behaviors into positive ones.Dr. DeGruy has published numerous refereed journal articles and has developed the “African American Male Adolescent Respect Scale” an assessment instrument designed to broaden our understanding of the challenges facing these youth in an effort to prevent their over-representation in the justice system. Randall Robinson, Al Sharpton, and many more have praised the book. Susan Taylor, Editorial Director of Essence Magazine says that “Post Traumatic Slave Syndrome is a master work…Her book is the balm we need to heal ourselves and our relationships. It is the gift of wholeness.” Adelaide Sanford, Vice Chancellor of the Board of Regents for the State of New York states that “Dr. Joy DeGruy’s mesmerizing, riveting book is vital reading for our time…With Dr. DeGruy’s potent words we can and will heal.” In addition to her pioneering work in the explanatory theory and book, Post Traumatic Slave Syndrome, she has developed a culturally based education model for working with children and adults of color.

aishafukushima.com

Aisha Fukushima is a Performance Lecturer, Justice Strategist, Singer/Songwriter, and RAPtivist (rap activist). Fukushima founded RAPtivism (Rap Activism), a hip hop project spanning 20 countries and four continents, amplifying universal efforts for freedom and justice. She is a multilingual, multiracial African American Japanese woman who has done lectures and performances everywhere from the United States to France, Morocco, Japan, Germany, England, South Africa, Senegal, India, Denmark and beyond. Fukushima’s ‘RAPtivism’ work has been featured on Oprah Magazine, TEDx, KQED Public Television, The Seattle Times, TV 2M Morocco, The Bangalore Mirror, HYPE, South Africa’s #1 Hip Hop Magazine, and Tour highlights include performing for audiences of over 20,000 people in Nepal, speaking with the President of Estonia about the power of music to create change, and sharing stages with the likes of Bernie Sanders, Emory Douglas (Black Panthers), KRS-One, Herbie Hancock, Christian McBride, The Isley Brothers, and M1 (Dead Prez). As a public speaker, Aisha combines the art of performance and lecture. In my keynotes she links themes such as hip hop, global citizenship, empowerment, feminism and cultural activism through storytelling as well as live musical performance. As a public speaker, Fukushima combines the art of performance and lecture. In her speeches she links themes such as hip hop, global citizenship, empowerment, feminism and cultural activism with live musical performance. She was the first non-Native person to deliver a keynote address at Montana’s 2012 Schools of Promise Conference for Indigenous youth and has presented at such diverse venues as Stanford University, Yale Law School, Duke University, the National Conference On Race and Ethnicity (NCORE), People of Color in Independent Schools (POCIS) conferences, UMass Amherst, TEDxSitka, TEDxBend, TEDxWhitman, TEDxUWCCR, Rock The School Bells, Osaka University, among others.

Similar to her sister Ana, Clarisa Godinez was born in Leon, Guanajuato Mexico, and immigrated with her family to Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Clarisa, along with her parents, own and manage a family appliance and repair shop located in the south side, blocks away from her childhood home. Clarisa uses her experiences in the academic system as she continues to grow her family business while uplifting her community in the south side of Milwaukee. She too, reflects on her advantages and disadvantages in the education system, especially in regard to being an undocumented American.

Amanda Florence Goodenough (she/her/hers) is a dedicated educator operating from a cultural humility framework to center and elevate historically marginalized voices, promote belongingness and mattering, disrupt structural inequities, and advance intersectional social and racial justice. Amanda has over 15 years of professional experience in equity, diversity, inclusion, and justice efforts within a higher education setting. Currently, Amanda serves as the Director of Campus Climate at the University of Wisconsin-La Crosse (UWL), while also being a part-time doctoral candidate in UWL’s Student Affairs Administration and Leadership program. On campus, in addition to facilitating workshops, programming, and assessment, Amanda has provided leadership for Awareness through Performance and the Hate Response Team for over a decade and has co-founded RISE UP (Racial & Intersecting Identity Symposium for Equitable University Progress) and the nationally-growing Hate/Bias Response Symposium. Amanda is also a consultant, speaker, and team-lead with Social Responsibility Speaks, LLC. Amanda's focus areas include campus climate/culture, cultural humility, hate/bias response, anti-blackness, racial justice, multiracialism, microaggressions, bystander intervention, student activism, power/privilege/oppression, and healing centered engagement. Amanda resides in Wisconsin, where she attended the University of Wisconsin-Platteville for her Bachelor's degree in Communications, before heading to the University of Wisconsin-La Crosse to earn a Master's in College Student Development & Administration. In her personal life, Amanda and her partner enjoy raising their multiracial kiddos and helping them to make meaning of the world.

Heather Hackman received her doctorate in Social Justice Education from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst. For 12 years she served as tenured professor in the Department of Human Relations and Multicultural Education at St. Cloud State University. While at SCSU she taught courses on social justice and multicultural education, heterosexism and homophobia in the US, race and racism in the US, social justice education, and oppression and social change. In 2005 she founded Hackman Consulting Group and began to consult nationally on issues of equity and social justice with an emphasis on issues of racism and whiteness, gender oppression, climate justice, classism, and heterosexism / homophobia. In 2012 she resigned from SCSU to consult and train full time and now addresses a wide array of equity and social justice issues in myriad contexts such as education, government, non-profit, philanthropy, for-profit, and communities of faith. Dr. Hackman has published in the area of social justice education theory and practice, sexism and gender liberation in the widely read Readings for Diversity and Social Justice, racism in health care (with Stephen Nelson), whiteness and climate change, whiteness and trauma (with Susan Raffo), and has contributed chapters to Everyday White People Confront Racial and Social Injustice (2015) and The Guide for White Women Who Teach Black Boys (2017). Dr. Hackman is also currently a companion book for her training with Routledge that will be published the summer of 2021. In 2009, she was awarded a Research Fellowship with the Great Place to Work Institute and has developed workplace racial equity training rubrics augmenting GPTWI’s frameworks. She received the Kappa Delta Pi “Professor of the Year” award four times while at St Cloud State and is nationally known for her teaching and training. She has served on boards for several social justice organizations, participated in numerous professional committees focused on social justice work, and was an Advisory Board member for the White Privilege Conference.

My name is Megan P. Her and I identified myself as a Hmong American woman. I’m a second generation Hmong student at University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire where I’m currently majoring in Marketing with a minor in Multimedia Communications. Both sides of my family immigrated to the United States from Laos in the late 1970 to mid 1980 post the Vietnam War. While the journeys and stories are but memories in time, they are the very fabrication of my existence.

Armando Ibarra is an Associate Professor in the Department of Labor Education at University of Wisconsin Madison. Professor Ibarra serves as Director of the Chican@ and Latin@ Studies Program, as a Faculty Latino Specialist for Cooperative Extension, as a Research Affiliate in the Applied Population Laboratory and as affiliate faculty in the Labor Center at UMASS Amherst. He earned his Ph.D. in Political Science from the University of California, Irvine, and joined the UW in January 2011. Ibarra holds a Master's in Public Administration, and a B.A. Sociology and Spanish. His research and fields of specialization are Mexican, Mexican American, Chicana/o/x and Latina/o/x working communities, social movements, community development, international labor migration, and community-based participatory applied research. His publications include award winning books, journal articles, policy and applied research reports, and documentaries.

His most recent co-authored book, The Latino Question: Politics, Laboring Classes and the Next Left, won the 2019 Best Book in Latino Politics awarded by The Latino Caucus of the American Political Science Association. This book engages timely debates on Latino working class struggles, politics, immigration, and inequality in the US. His co-edited book, Man of Fire: Selected Writings of Ernesto Galarza, was designated an Outstanding Academic Title by Choice Reviews for Academic Libraries a publication of the American Library Association. For more information, see his website.

Dr. Decoteau Irby supports groups, collectives, and organizations create conditions for anti-racist organizational learning and continuous improvement with an emphasis on racial equity change. He enjoys playing guitar and recording songs, writing short stories, and designing games and activities that help make a more racially just world. His academic research examines equity focused school leadership and how it can be used to improve Black children and youth’s academic achievement and social emotional wellness. He is an Associate Professor at University of Illinois at Chicago in the Department of Educational Policy Studies. He is a 2020 recipient of the highly competitive Spencer Foundation for Education research Large Grant, author of numerous peer-reviewed journal articles and edited volumes, which include his recently self-published children’s book Magical Black Tears, the forthcoming edited volume Somebodiness: a Call for Dignity-affirming Education (Teachers College Press, 2021), and Stuck Improving: School Leadership and Racial Equity (Harvard Education Press, 2021).

Jerlando F. L. Jackson is the Vilas Distinguished Professor of Higher Education, Department Chair of Educational Leadership and Policy Analysis, and the Director and Chief Research Scientist of Wisconsin’s Equity and Inclusion Laboratory (Wei LAB) at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Fueled by more than 125 publications, Professor Jackson’s research on hiring practices, career mobility, workforce diversity, and workplace discrimination has evolved into his focus on organizational disparities. He has authored or edited six books, including Measuring Glass Ceiling Effects: Opportunities and Challenges (2014) and Ethnic and Racial Administrative Diversity: Understanding Work Life Realities and Experiences in Higher Education (2009). Professor Jackson has established multiple groundbreaking initiatives that include serving as Founding Executive Director of the Center for African American Research and Policy (CAARP) in 2005, Founding Co-Director of the Asa G. Hilliard III and Barbara A. Sizemore Research Course on African Americans and Education held at the American Educational Research Association since 2007, Founding Director of Wisconsin’s Equity and Inclusion Laboratory (Wei LAB) in 2010, and Co-Founder of the International Colloquium on Black Males in Education in 2011. He has also received external funding to develop the Beyond the Game program and the National Study of Intercollegiate Athletics, transformational projects related to the experiences of student-athlete and staff in intercollegiate athletics.

The recipient of more than 20 honors and awards, Professor Jackson was awarded the Mildred Garcia Senior Exemplary Scholarship Award from the Association for the Study of Higher Education, Alumni Achievement Award from the College of Human Sciences at Iowa State University, Distinguished Scholar Award from the Committee on Scholars of Color at the American Education Research Association, and the Brown Award for Excellence in Higher Education and Community Service from the Charles Hamilton Houston Institute. He was named to Education Week’s 200 Most Influential Education Scholar list in 2019, Diverse: Issues in Higher Education’s list of “Nine Distinguished Educators that Are Making a Mark” and Madison365’s “Black Power List” both in 2018. He earned a Doctor of Philosophy in Educational Leadership and Policy Studies from Iowa State University. Professor Jackson has delivered over 250 research papers and keynote addresses globally. He also has a portfolio of research focused on interventions designed to broaden participation for underrepresented groups in the scientific workforce.

Dr. Monique Liston is an unapologetic Black woman that also identifies as a warrior scholar, joyful militant, evaluator, sister and friend. She is the founder of UBUNTU Research and Evaluation, a professional learning community led by Black women. If global white supremacy hadn't wrecked havoc on her existence, she would probably be a food scientist and homemaker. Her professional interests include race work, Black-centered education, and critical media studies. She is a proud alum of Howard University and currently resides in her hometown Milwaukee, Wisconsin.

“Sometimes it seem like to tell the truth today is to run the risk of being killed. But if I fall, I'll fall five feet four inches forward in the fight for freedom. I'm not backing off." - Fannie Lou Hamer

Dr. Bettina L. Love is an award-winning author and the Athletic Association Endowed Professor at the University of Georgia. She is one of the field’s most esteemed educational researchers. Her writing, research, teaching, and activism meet at the intersection of race, education, abolition, and Black joy. Dr. Love is concerned with how educators working with parents and communities can build communal, civically engaged schools rooted in Abolitionist Teaching with the goal of intersectional social justice for equitable classrooms that love and affirm Black and Brown children. In 2020, Dr. Love co-founded the Abolitionist Teaching Network (ATN). ATN’s mission is simple: develop and support teachers and parents to fight injustice within their schools and communities. In 2020, Dr. Love was also named a member of the Old 4th Ward Economic Security Task Force with the Atlanta City Council. Dr. Love is a sought-after public speaker on a range of topics, including: Abolitionist Teaching, anti-racism, Hip Hop education, Black girlhood, queer youth, Hip Hop feminism, art-based education to foster youth civic engagement, and issues of diversity and inclusion. She is the creator of the Hip Hop civics curriculum GET FREE. In 2014, she was invited to the White House Research Conference on Girls to discuss her work focused on the lives of Black girls. For her work in the field of Hip Hop education, in 2016, Dr. Love was named the Nasir Jones Hiphop Fellow at the Hutchins Center for African and African American Research at Harvard University. In April of 2017, Dr. Love participated in a one-on-one public lecture with bell hooks focused on the liberatory education practices of Black and Brown children. In 2018, Georgia’s House of Representatives presented Dr. Love with a resolution for her impact on the field of education. She has also provided commentary for various news outlets including NPR, Ed Week, The Guardian, and the Atlanta Journal Constitution. She is the author of the books We Want to Do More Than Survive: Abolitionist Teaching and the Pursuit of Educational Freedom and Hip Hop’s Li’l Sistas Speak: Negotiating Hip Hop Identities and Politics in the New South. Her work has appeared in numerous books and journals, including the English Journal, Urban Education, The Urban Review, and the Journal of LGBT Youth.

Ana Manríquez grew up on the Southside of Milwaukee and a piece of her heart has always lived in Leon, Guanajuato Mexico—the city where she was born. She is a cancer disparities researcher and, as such, daily navigates the world of academia, often using her past experiences to guide her next steps. Reflecting on her own privileges and intersectionalities, Ana hopes her narrative supports educators and students alike as we collectively strive towards education equity.

Richie Morales is a self-taught painter, born in Guatemala and with a deep appreciation for Madison and Wisconsin as his second home. He started creating his art as a way to resist the violent impact of systemic oppression and marginalization in his life. Richie started to explore painting as a child while working in trades of wood and construction work to support his family. His mother noticed this passion and put together a home-made encyclopedia of art reusing different articles from magazines she could find around as she worked as a public teacher in rural areas. He cherishes this gift as the door that introduced him to the work of renowned self-made painters such as Picasso, Van Gogh, Basquiat, Francis Bacon, Basquiat, Botero and Frida Kahlo. He has been an artist fellow at Vermont Studio Center, an artist-in-residence at Centro Hispano of Dane County and The Bubbler at Madison Public Library, his current studio is housed at the Arts and Literature Laboratory building in Madison, Wisconsin. Richie has exhibited paintings at various galleries and community organizations in Guatemala and the United States.

Ismalis Nuñez is a racial equity strategist who focuses on identity, leadership, and building communities for justice. Ismalis holds a Masters Degree in Social Work from Loyola University Chicago. She has experience in recruiting and facilitating Seeking Educational Equity & Diversity (SEED) seminars both within the school and community settings. She spent the last two years as an equity transformation specialist at Courageous Conversations About Race. She is a Leadership Evanston class of XXIV alumni and was nominated for the 2017 Chicago African Americans in Philanthropy (CAAIP) Social Justice Champion Award. Ismalis is the Founder of Anew Collective Consulting. She can be found on LinkedIn.

Currently president of the Center for Transformation and Change, www.drkathyobear.com, Dr. Kathy Obear is nationally recognized as an expert in helping leaders, change agents, and facilitators develop the capacity to create equitable, inclusive, and racially/socially just organizations. Kathy is a Co-founder of the Social Justice Training Institute, www.sjti.org, an intensive professional development experience to deepen capacity to dismantle dynamics of racism and white supremacy in ourselves and in our organizations. Kathy works with leaders and change agents to deepen their capacity to recognize and interrupt racist and white supremist attitudes and behaviors before they do harm, acknowledge the devastating impact of past racist behaviors and institutional racism, shift current racist behaviors and organizational practices, and develop strategies to truly partner with colleagues of color and Indigenous colleague to eradicate racism and white supremacy culture in their spheres of influence to create true racial equity and justice in everything they do.

Gery Paredes Vasquez is a multi-disciplinary, bilingual educator, consultant and practitioner passionate about co-creating learning experiences and transformative change processes that center, deepen and expand equity, justice and liberation within systems and cultures. Currently, she is starting her third year of serving as YWCA Madison’s Race and Gender Equity Director where she previously worked as programs coordinator and lead facilitator for six years. Gery was born in Bolivia and has over 15 years of experience in program development, training, co-facilitation and consulting around the globe, both in English and Spanish. She has worked public, private and community based organizations serving a very broad range of race, ethnic, gender, socioeconomic and ideological identities in countries such as Argentina, Bolivia, Colombia, Costa Rica, Guatemala, Mexico, United States, Swaziland, Netherlands, Sweden, Spain and Italy. She co-authored MAYMA “intercultural youth empowerment” in Bolivia, twice awarded as National Best Social Inclusion Initiative, as well as Tuanis and Agents of Change co-curricular programs for youth from all around the world at UWC Costa Rica.

john a. powell is Director of the Othering and Belonging Institute and Professor of Law, African American, and Ethnic Studies at the University of California, Berkeley. He was previously the Executive Director at the Kirwan Institute for the Study of Race and Ethnicity at the Ohio State University, and prior to that, the founder and director of the Institute for Race and Poverty at the University of Minnesota. john formerly served as the National Legal Director of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU). He is a co-founder of the Poverty & Race Research Action Council and serves on the boards of several national and international organizations. john led the development of an “opportunity-based” model that connects affordable housing to education, health, health care, and employment and is well-known for his work developing the frameworks of “targeted universalism” and “othering and belonging” to effect equity-based interventions. john has taught at numerous law schools including Harvard and Columbia University. His latest book is Racing to Justice: Transforming our Concepts of Self and Other to Build an Inclusive Society.

Dr. Anton Treuer (pronounced troy-er) is Professor of Ojibwe at Bemidji State University and author of 19 books. He has a B.A. from Princeton University and a M.A. and Ph.D. from the University of Minnesota. He is Editor of the Oshkaabewis (pronounced o-shkaah-bay-wis) Native Journal, the only academic journal of the Ojibwe language. Dr. Treuer has presented all over the U.S. and Canada and in several foreign countries on Everything You Wanted to Know About Indians But Were Afraid to Ask, Cultural Competence & Equity, Strategies for Addressing the “Achievement” Gap, and Tribal Sovereignty, History, Language, and Culture. He has sat on many organizational boards and has received more than 40 prestigious awards and fellowships, including ones from the American Philosophical Society, the National Endowment for the Humanities, the National Science Foundation, the MacArthur Foundation, the Bush Foundation, and the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation. His published works include Everything You Wanted to Know About Indians But Were Afraid to Ask, The Language Warrior’s Manifesto: How to Keep Our Languages Alive No Matter the Odds, Warrior Nation: A History of the Red Lake Ojibwe (Winner of Caroline Bancroft History Prize and the American Association of State and Local History Award of Merit), Ojibwe in Minnesota (“Minnesota’s Best Read for 2010” by The Center for the Book in the Library of Congress), The Assassination of Hole in the Day (Award of Merit Winner from the American Association for State and Local History), Atlas of Indian Nations, The Indian Wars: Battles, Bloodshed, and the Fight for Freedom on the American Frontier, and Awesiinyensag (“Minnesota’s Best Read for 2011” by The Center for the Book in the Library of Congress). Treuer is on the governing board for the Minnesota State Historical Society. In 2018, he was named Guardian of Culture and Lifeways and recipient of the Pathfinder Award by the Association of Tribal Archives, Libraries, and Museums.

Kabzuag Vaj is a Hmong refugee who was born in Laos and raised in Madison, WI. She is the founder and co-executive director of Freedom Inc and the executive director of Freedom Action Now, Inc. She has dedicated the majority of her life to ending gender-based violence. Her advocacy started when she was 16 years old, assisting and housing at-risk teens, and challenging abusive gender norms within her community. She is a strong believer that those who are most deeply impacted must be at the forefront of the movement and must have opportunities and resources to advocate for themselves and tell their own stories. In the past 20 years, Vaj has spent her life working to build collective power and social change within Southeast Asian and Black communities. She was recognized as a Champion of Change at the White House during Domestic Violence Awareness month in 2011, and was part of NOVO’s Move to End Violence 4th leadership cohort. In 2020 she was named one of "20 Women of Color in Politics to Watch in 2020" by She the People. She is a co-founder of Building Our Future, a global feminist Hmong movement that works to change traditional practices, behaviors, and beliefs that contribute to gender-based violence within Hmong communities. Kabzuag is also a co-owner/founder of Red Green Rivers, a social enterprise that works with women and girl artisans from the Mekong Region in Southeast Asia. Kabzuag is a daughter, mother, artist, feminist and organizer. Her first love is the movement.

Dr. Robin Wall Kimmerer is a mother, scientist, decorated professor, and enrolled member of the Citizen Potawatomi Nation. She is the author of Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge and the Teaching of Plants, which has earned Kimmerer wide acclaim. Her first book, Gathering Moss: A Natural and Cultural History of Mosses, was awarded the John Burroughs Medal for outstanding nature writing, and her other work has appeared in Orion, Whole Terrain, and numerous scientific journals. She tours widely and has been featured on NPR’s On Being with Krista Tippett and in 2015 addressed the general assembly of the United Nations on the topic of “Healing Our Relationship with Nature.” Kimmerer lives in Syracuse, New York, where she is a SUNY Distinguished Teaching Professor of Environmental Biology, and the founder and director of the Center for Native Peoples and the Environment, whose mission is to create programs which draw on the wisdom of both indigenous and scientific knowledge for our shared goals of sustainability. As a writer and a scientist, her interests in restoration include not only restoration of ecological communities, but restoration of our relationships to land. She holds a BS in Botany from SUNY ESF, an MS and PhD in Botany from the University of Wisconsin and is the author of numerous scientific papers on plant ecology, bryophyte ecology, traditional knowledge and restoration ecology. She lives on an old farm in upstate New York, tending gardens both cultivated and wild.

Martinez White, Emmy Award recipient, founding member of the Wisconsin Association of Black Men and CEO of Intuition Productions, upholds the belief that “Dreams Are Made To Be Achieved™”. As a member of Alpha Phi Alpha Fraternity, Inc., White’s mission is to empower one billion people to join his Dream Circle by self-actualizing their dreams & living their most abundant destiny. Living in Mombasa, Kenya and volunteering at Alicia Keys’ Keep A Child Alive campaign’s BOMU Medical Center, fighting the HIV/AIDS pandemic forever changed White’s world perspective. As a licensed investment advisor, White teaches clients how to create intergenerational financial freedom, regardless of socioeconomic class. He believes artrepreneurship, the monetization of artistic gifts, is the best defense against institutionalized racism. Based on this belief, at just sixteen years old, White emerged from a single-parent home of six children in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Against all odds, White earned his Bachelor of Arts in Communication Arts and Afro-American Studies from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, as a PEOPLE and Chancellor’s Scholar at a mere twenty years old. A DJ, filmmaker, and author, White inspires us all through the power of his unparalleled style of multimedia storytelling. “If You Want It Done Right, Get M. White.”

Maisha T. Winn is the Associate Dean and Chancellor’s Leadership Professor in the School of Education at the University of California, Davis where she co-founded and co-directs (with Dr. Lawrence “Torry” Winn) the Transformative Justice in Education (TJE) Center. Much of Professor Winn’s early scholarship examines how young people create literate identities through performing literacy and how teachers who are “practitioners of the craft” serve as “soul models” to emerging writers. Most recently, she has examined how restorative justice theory can be leveraged to teach across disciplines using a Transformative Justice Teacher Education Framework. Professor Winn was named an American Educational Research Association Fellow (Spring 2016). In 2014 she received the William T. Grant Foundation Distinguished Fellowship and was named the American Educational Research Association Early Career Award recipient in 2012. Professor Winn served as the Jeannette K. Watson Distinguished Visiting Professor in the Humanities at Syracuse University for the 2019/2020 academic year. She is the author of several books including Writing in Rhythm: Spoken word poetry in urban schools (published under maiden name “Fisher”); Black literate lives: Historical and Contemporary Perspectives (published under maiden name “Fisher”); Girl Time: Literacy, Justice, and the School-to-Prison Pipeline; and co-editor of Humanizing Research: Decolonizing Qualitative Research (with Django Paris). She has two new books, Justice on Both Sides: Transforming Education through Restorative Justice (Harvard Education Press) and Restorative Justice in the English Language Arts Classroom (with Hannah Graham and Rita Alfred on National Council of Teachers of English Principles in Practice Series). She is also the author of numerous articles in peer-reviewed journals including Review of Research in Education; Anthropology and Education Quarterly; International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education; Race, Ethnicity and Education; Research in the Teaching of English; Race and Social Problems; and Harvard Educational Review.