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.

Dr. Gunja SenGupta is a professor and former chair of the History Department at Brooklyn College. She is a past director of the Macaulay Honors College at Brooklyn College. Her expertise lies in 19th-century United States and slavery/abolition in the Indian Ocean; sectional conflict; and African-American and women’s history. She is the author of, among other works, two books, For God and Mammon: Evangelicals and Entrepreneurs, Masters and Slaves in Territorial Kansas (University of Georgia Press, 1996) and From Slavery to Poverty: The Racial Origins of Welfare in New York, 1840–1918 (NYU Press, 2009).

Dr. Linda M. Sama is Associate Dean for Global Initiatives and Joseph F. Adams Professor of Management in the Peter J. Tobin College of Business (TCB), St. John’s University. In 2009, she founded the GLOBE (Global Loan Opportunities for Budding Entrepreneurs) microloan academic program at TCB, a student-managed micro-credit fund and experiential learning initiative. The program has introduced students to microfinance as practiced in some of the world’s most impoverished communities and earned her the Academy of Management’s Innovation in Entrepreneurship Pedagogy Award in 2012, and the AACSB 2017 Entrepreneurship Spotlight Challenge award. She also was instrumental in St. John’s decision to become a signatory of the U.N. PRME (Principles for Responsible Management Education) initiative in 2011 and serves as the university’s PRME liaison. As an outgrowth of that initiative, she launched the TCB Center for Global Business Stewardship, and acts as its Executive Director. Dr. Sama earned her Ph.D. from Baruch-CUNY. Her doctoral dissertation addressing the twin impact of governance mechanisms and strategic slack on corporate social response strategies earned her the 1999 Lasdon Dissertation Award. Her research has resulted in over 90 publications that address issues of corporate social responsibility, business and the natural environment, and global business ethics dilemmas in the new economy. Most recently, her research has focused on the connections between micro-lending and women empowerment, sustainability, religiosity, food security, and post-conflict resolutions in the developing world’s Base of Pyramid (BoP) markets.