Sr. Helen Saldanha is member of the Missionary Sisters Servants of the Holy Spirit and an executive co-director of VIVAT International, a global human rights advocacy organization that works at the United Nations. VIVAT International is a Non-Governmental Organization which has a membership of more than 25,000 Sisters, Brothers and Priests from 12 Catholic Religious Congregations, working in 120 countries for promotion of human rights through advocacy in international and local levels. VIVAT International has the Special Consultative Status with the Economic and Social Council of the United Nations (ECOSOC) and Associated with the United Nations Department of Public Information (DPI).

Rob Robinson is a member of the Leadership Committee of the Take Back the Land movement and a staff volunteer at the Partners for Dignity and Rights (formerly National Economic and Social Rights Initiative (NESRI). After losing his job in 2001, he spent two years homeless on the streets of Miami and ten months in a New York City shelter. He eventually overcame homelessness and has been in the housing movement based in New York City since 2007. In the fall of 2009, Rob was chosen to be New York City chairperson for the first official mission of a UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to Adequate Housing. He was a member of an advanced teamcoordinated by the U.S. Human Rights Network in early 2010, traveling to Geneva, Switzerland several times to prepare for the United States’ initial appearance in the Universal Periodic Review. Rob Robinson has worked with homeless populations in Budapest, Hungary and Berlin, Germany and is connected with housing movements in South Africa and Brazil. He works with the European Squatters Collective, International Alliance of Inhabitants; Landless People’s Movement (MST) and the Movement of People Affected by Dams (MAB) and is a member of the Steering Committee of the USA Canada Alliance of Inhabitants. In December 2008, he completed a course with People’s Production House and the Community News Production Institute and has been a member of a social justice media collective which produces and airs a monthly radio show over WBAI in New York City called Global Movements Urban Struggles.

Dr. Erica Richardson is an Assistant Professor of English at Baruch College, CUNY. She received her dual B.A. in English and Classical Civilization from Wellesley College and her PhD from Columbia University. Her scholarship and teaching interests include the aesthetics and intellectual history of black social life as depicted in late 19th and 20th century African American literary production; the corpus and thought of W.E.B. DuBois; print culture of the Harlem Renaissance; African American drama; and theories of gender and sexuality in African American literature. Her current research project explores how black authors incorporate, critique, and subvert the discourses of the so-called Negro problem through a range of literary productions following the demise of Reconstruction through the Harlem Renaissance. She has presented segments of her work at the American Studies Association (ASA), the National Women’s Studies Association (NWSA), and the American Literature Association (ALA). At Baruch, she teaches courses in the Great Works program and on Harlem Renaissance and Black Women’s Writing.

Dr. Ana Y. Ramos-Zayas is Frederick Clifford Ford Professor of Ethnicity, Race, and Migration, Anthropology and American Studies at Yale University. She received her BA in Economics and Latin American Studies from Yale College, and her MA/PhD in Anthropology from Columbia University. Her most recent book, Parenting Empires: Whiteness, Class, and the Moral Economy of Privilege in Latin America (Duke University Press, 2020), examines the parenting practices of Brazilian and Puerto Rican upper-classes, as these alter urban landscapes; provide moral justifications for segregation, surveillance, and foreign interventions; and recast idioms of crisis, corruption, and austerity according to the dictums of US empire. Some of her earlier works include National Performances: Class, Race, and Space in Puerto Rican Chicago (The University of Chicago Press, 2003; ASA Latino Studies Book Award, 2006) and Street Therapists: Affect, Race, and Neoliberal Personhood in Latino Newark (The University of Chicago Press, 2012; Frank Bonilla Book Award 2010-12). Ramos-Zayas is also co-author of Latino Crossings: Mexicans, Puerto Ricans, and the Politics of Race and Citizenship (Routledge, 2003); co-editor of Critical Dialogues in Latinx Studies: A Handbook (NYU Press, in press); and co-editor of Whiteness in Latin America and the Caribbean (LACES, Latin American Studies Association, forthcoming). Ramos-Zayas’ ethnographic work aims to understand and disentangle systems of power and privilege at a variety of scales, ranging from U.S. imperial and white supremacist politics to how individuals and communities make sense of everyday forms of power and subordination. Issues of social justice and the intersection of intimate worlds, anthropology of affect, and political economy are fundamental concerns in her research. Her current research focuses on Latinx and Latin American “life coaches,” therapeutic social justice initiatives, and the cultural sociology of projects of the self.

Deepa has been a member of Ma-Yi Writers Lab since 2014 and is also a trained actor. She co-founded and ran Rising Circle Theater Collective (www.risingcircle.org) for 12 years (2000-2012), overseeing the development of over 20 plays by writers of color. When she’s not writing, she is a voice and speech coach for leaders working for educational equity in our country. She also trained as an actor and has appeared in TV and film. Education: MFA, Brooklyn College (Playwriting.) MPH, Columbia University (Health Promotion Disease Prevention. BA, Northwestern University (History, African Studies). Deepa currently lives in Brooklyn with her husband and son and works as a communications coach for executive leaders in education. Playwriting credits include: The In Between w/NAATCO (dir. Aya Ogawa), slated for production in June 2022 in NYC. Mothering: A collection of short form works for performance. Elyria: in partnership with Ma-Yi Theatre Company: 2018 Recipient of NEA ArtWorks Grant & 2018 Jerome Foundation Grant for research, 2018 SPACE on Ryder Farm two-week residency. Crushed Earth: 2017 Recipient of New Play Frontiers Residency and Commission at People’s Light Theatre – co-written w/Sanjit De Silva. M xx – perience (in development) The Wake: 2017 Ma-Yi Writers Lab/Andrew W. Mellon Creative Fellowship Residency at the University of Washington, Ma-Yi Writers Lab Fest 2015. A Valentine: 2017 Kilroys Honorable Mention, Ma-Yi Writers Lab Fest 2017. Have Sari. Will Travel! : Rising Circle’s June 2017 Refinery Workshop, 2016 Lilly Awards Foundation Family Residency at SPACE on Ryder Farm. Flight: Developed in 2011with Rising Circle Theater Collective’s 2011 InkTANK PlayLab. Short plays: LotusMart, Ohio (Desipina Productions 2003), Exiled (2001). Writing w/Sanjit De Silva and Rising Circle: Grace (2010), The American Family Project (2007), Pulling the Lever (2004, Published in Plays and Playwrights 2006, 2004 NYIT Award for Best Ensemble).

Bill Prinzivalli is an entrepreneur and business consultant with a Master of Science Degree and a Master of Business Administration Degree, who integrates traditional business strategies with mindful, awareness, and experiential practices to promote organizational and team building effectiveness. His extensive experience in business spans over 40 years. He has worked in both large and small organizations and, as an entrepreneur, has created four startup companies. His business consulting has specialized in corporate and business strategies, sales and marketing consulting, business partnerships, and executive coaching. In 2012, he began the study of Improvisational Acting. He has studied in New York at the Open Door Acting Company, the Magnet, and The PIT. He has performed on multiple NY stages including the Jan Hus Theater, The Producer’s Club and The PIT’s Stryker, Loft and Underground, and currently on Instagram’s Socially Distant Improv network. Bill’s active engagement in both business and improvisational acting has led him to develop a training program focused on the applications of improvisational practices in the corporate world. He notes that applied improv is not a comedy or standup performance but instead an application of improvisational principles to enhance a company’s internal and external communication, increasing its overall effectiveness and performance. Bill is passionate about integrating his experiences in both areas to help organizations and teams improve their communications and performance, and ultimately realize their stated missions. Currently Bill is co-authoring a book entitled, “Improvisational Leadership”.

Dr. Morton works in philosophy of action, moral philosophy, philosophy of education, and political philosophy. Her book, Moving Up Without Losing Your Way: The Ethical Costs of Upward Mobility (Princeton University Press), won the 2020 Frederic W. Ness Book Award from the Association of American Colleges & Universities. You can learn more about her research here and here. At the University of Pennsylvania, Dr. Morton will hold the position of Presidential Associate Professor. She starts there in Fall of 2021.

Dr. Ira Katznelson is Columbia University’s Interim Provost, Ruggles Professor of Political Science and History, and Deputy Director, Columbia World Projects. His 2013 Fear Itself: The New Deal and the Origins of Our Time was awarded the Bancroft Prize in History and the Woodrow Wilson Foundation Award in Political Science. Other books include Southern Nation: Congress and White Supremacy After Reconstruction (2018; co-authored with David Bateman and John Lapinski), and Liberal Beginnings: A Republic for the Moderns (2008; co-authored with Andreas Kalyvas). Professor Katznelson, a fellow of the British Academy, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and the American Philosophical Society, is a former president both of the American Political Science Association and the Social Science Research Council. He earned his BA at Columbia College and his PhD in History at the University of Cambridge, where he served in 2017-2018 as Pitt Professor of American History and Institutions. Prior to his arrival at Columbia in 1994, where he also had been an assistant and associate professor, he had taught at the University of Chicago, where he served as Chair of the Department of Political Science, and the New School for Social Research, where he was Dean of the Graduate Faculty.

Jen Hoyer volunteers her time to organize programming at Interference Archive in Gowanus. She is an Educator with the Brooklyn Connections program at Brooklyn Public Library. She earned her MLIS at McGill University and joined the team after running a music outreach program in South Africa, working as a school librarian in Montreal, and organizing the archives of the oldest public lending library in Canada.

jean amaral is an Associate Professor and Open Knowledge Librarian at BMCC/CUNY. Her co-authored publications include “Mapping Student Days: Collaborative Ethnography and the Student Experience” and “A Decade of Research at Urban Commuter Colleges. One of her areas of expertise is in OER and Professor amaral leads frequent raining workshops to instruct faculty on how to use open educational resources. In 2020 amaral won the Elton B. Stephens Company (EBSCO) Community College Learning Resources Leadership Award, recognizing amaral’s leadership in developing BMCC’s Open Educational Resources (OER)/Zero Textbook Cost (ZTC) and Open Pedagogy Programs — which have saved an estimated 50,000 students over $6 million in four years.