Assistant Professor and Graduate Director, Howard University

Nathan Alexander

Nathan Alexander, PhD, is an assistant professor of data science and education. He holds a joint appointment in the Howard University School of Education and the Center for Applied Data Science and Analytics (CADSA), and he is the assistant director of the MS Program in Data Science. Dr. Alexander teaches courses in computational methods, curriculum & instruction, and applied statistics. His research explores the history and development of critical and justice-oriented practices in quantitative literacy development, especially in Black educational contexts. This work sits at the intersection of the humanities, social sciences, mathematics, and the computational sciences, with a particular focus on Black history and futurity in national and global contexts. He is also the founding director of the Quantitative Histories Workshop, a community-centered teaching and learning lab for students, faculty, youth, and community partners.

From Prison Cells to Phd, Inc.

Stanley Andrisse

Dr. Stanley Andrisse is an endocrinologist scientist and assistant professor at Howard University College of Medicine researching type 2 diabetes and insulin resistance. Dr. Andrisse is a visiting faculty at Georgetown University Medical Center, held a visiting faculty position at Imperial College London, and held an adjunct professorship at Johns Hopkins Medicine after completing his postdoctoral training.

Dr. Andrisse completed his PhD at Saint Louis University and his MBA and bachelor’s degree at Lindenwood University, where he played three years of collegiate football. Dr. Andrisse’s service commitments include: Executive Director and Founder of From Prison Cells to PhD, Vice President of the board for the Formerly Incarcerated College Graduates Network, board member on The Endocrine Society, past president of the Johns Hopkins Postdoctoral Association, founder of the Diversity Postdoctoral Alliance, member on several local and national committees, motivational speaker, and community activist.

University Distinguished Professor of Law; Director, Civil Rights and Restorative Justice Project; Faculty Co-Director, Center for Law, Equity and Race (CLEAR)

Margaret A. Burnham

Professor Burnham is an internationally recognized expert on civil and human rights, comparative constitutional rights, and international criminal law. She is the faculty co-director of the law school’s Center for Law, Equity and Race (CLEAR) and founded and directs the Civil Rights and Restorative Justice Project (CRRJ), which investigates racial violence in the Jim Crow era and other historical failures of the criminal justice system. CRRJ serves as a resource for scholars, policymakers and organizers involved in various initiatives seeking justice for these crimes. Among her impressive accomplishments, Professor Burnham headed a team of outside counsel and law students in a landmark case that settled a federal lawsuit. Professor Burnham’s team accused Franklin County Mississippi law enforcement officials of assisting Klansmen in the kidnapping, torture and murder of two 19-year-olds, Henry Dee and Charles Eddie Moore. CRRJ’s investigations are widely covered in the national press, including a PBS Frontline documentary series, “Un(re)solved.” In 2021, President Joe Biden nominated Professor Burnham to serve as a member of the Civil Rights Cold Case Records Review Board; in 2022, the U.S. Senate confirmed her appointment. The board is charged with reviewing the records of Civil Rights era cold criminal cases of murders and other racially motivated violence that occurred between 1940 and 1979. Many of these records are still closed to the public. The board is examining agency decisions to withhold access and to engage with them to determine if the records should still be withheld. Professor Burnham began her career at the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund. In the 1970s, she represented civil rights and political activists. In 1977, she became the first African American woman to serve in the Massachusetts judiciary, when she joined the Boston Municipal Court bench as an associate justice. In 1982, she became partner in a Boston civil rights firm with an international human rights practice. In 1993, South African president Nelson Mandela appointed Professor Burnham to serve on an international human rights commission to investigate alleged human rights violations within the African National Congress. The commission was a precursor to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. She joined Northeastern Law in 2002. A former fellow of the Bunting Institute at Radcliffe College and Harvard University's W.E.B. DuBois Institute for Afro-American Studies, Professor Burnham has written extensively on contemporary legal and political issues. In 2016, Professor Burnham was selected for the competitive and prestigious Carnegie Fellows Program. Provided to just 33 recipients nationwide that year, the fellowship provides the “country’s most creative thinkers with grants of up to $200,000 each to support research on challenges to democracy and international order.” Professor Burnham used the funding to deepen and extend CRRJ’s work and research dedicated to seeking justice for crimes of the civil rights era. Professor Burnham’s book, By Hands Now Known: Jim Crow’s Legal Executioners (W.W. Norton, 2022), is a paradigm-shifting investigation of Jim Crow-era violence, the legal apparatus that sustained it, and its enduring legacy. Publishers Weekly, which reviewed it with a coveted “star,” has called it, “An essential reckoning with America’s history of racial violence.” The book was also selected as a finalist for the 2022 Kirkus Prize in nonfiction. Legendary activist Angela Davis has said, “By Hands Now Known: Jim Crow’s Legal Executioners needs to be read by everyone who recognizes the historic mandate of our time: to interrupt cycles of racist violence that are rooted in slavery and have repeatedly found new modes of expression, even as the unresolved old forms plague our historical memory.”

National Director Emeritus of the Industrial Areas Foundation (IAF) and Co-Director of Interfaith Education Fund

Ernesto Cortes

Ernesto Cortés, Jr. is the National Director Emeritus of the Industrial Areas Foundation (IAF) and Co-Director of Interfaith Education Fund. IAF provides leadership training and civics education to poor and moderate-income people across the US and UK. Cortés has been instrumental in the building of over 30 broad-based organizations whose hallmark is the development and training of ordinary people to do extraordinary things. He is the executive director of the 30 organizations of the West / Southwest IAF.  

He formally launched this work in 1974, starting with the Communities Organized for Public Service (COPS), the nationally recognized church-based organization of San Antonio’s west and south side communities. This work has since expanded to include organizing projects across ten states including Texas, California, Nevada, Arizona, Louisiana, Nebraska, New Mexico, Iowa, Oklahoma and Mississippi. Over the years, these organizations have leveraged billions of dollars for poorer communities including $700 million in infrastructure improvements in the colonias (areas of Texas which lacked basic drainage systems) in the 80s and 90s, $2.8 billion in increased public funding to equalize school funding in Texas in the mid-1980s, and in recent years, $15 million in state funding for workforce development projects equipping underemployed adults with job training options. Millions more have been invested (and saved) in community level infrastructure, healthcare reform and housing.  

Aided by Cortés’ imagination and skill, the West / Southwest IAF organizations have produced impressive results in the area of job training. By building the capacity of constituents to create the political will to mobilize for hard monies, IAF organizations have built ten independently operating labor market intermediaries: Project Quest in San Antonio, Capital IDEA in Austin, Project ARRIBA in El Paso, Project VIDA in the Rio Grande Valley, JobPATH in Tucson, NOVA in Louisiana, SkillsQuest in Dallas, Capital IDEA-Houston, Arizona Career Pathways in Phoenix, and Project IOWA in Des Moines. The graduation rates of these projects consistently outpace those of the community college with which they partner, transforming over 12,000 adults into knowledge workers equipped with needed skills in high demand fields. MIT economist Paul Osterman has also documented the results of living wage campaigns in Texas finding they raised the wages of 10,000+ in the Valley plus those in Austin and San Antonio.  

Cortés also envisioned and launched the Alliance Schools strategy – a much lauded initiative to engage communities of adults in public education. Identifying and training parent and community leaders to change the culture of their schools, the Alliance Schools have been successful in building a broad base of support for public education, both locally and statewide. The success of the Alliance schools in raising test scores by building a culture of collaboration has been well documented, most recently by the Annenberg Institute for School Reform.  

The work of the West / Southwest Industrial Areas Foundation, pioneered by Cortés, has been written about extensively. Cortés has been awarded honorary degrees from Princeton University, Rutgers University, Southern Methodist University, University of Houston, University of St. Edwards in Austin, and Occidental College. In addition to being the recipient of the HJ Heinz Award in Public Policy and the MacArthur Genius Award, Cortés has completed multiple fellowships at the JFK School of Government at Harvard and MIT’s Department of Urban Studies and Planning (Martin Luther King Jr.). In 2015, as a Stewart Fellow in Religion, he co-taught a course on Religion and Power in Grassroots Democracy at Princeton University. He is a graduate of Texas A & M University.  

Professor, Duke University

William A. Darity Jr.

William A. (“Sandy”) Darity Jr. is the Samuel DuBois Cook Professor of Public Policy, African and African American Studies, Economics, and Business and the director of the Samuel DuBois Cook Center on Social Equity at Duke University. Darity’s research focuses on inequality by race, class and ethnicity, schooling and the racial achievement gap, North-South theories of trade and development, skin shade and labor market outcomes, and the economics of reparations. In 2005, he launched the subspecialty of stratification economics. Darity is the 2022 W.E.B. Du Bois Fellow of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, and he became a Fellow of the National Academy of Social Insurance in 2021. He received the Samuel Z. Westerfield Award from the National Economic Association in 2012. He and A. Kirsten Mullen are coauthors of award-winning From Here to Equality: Reparations for Black Americans in the Twenty-First Century (2020).

Morehouse College

Kade Davis

My name is Kade Davis, I am a Junior Sociology major and economics minor specializing in deviance, and police brutality. My current research involves studying how presenting police brutality in the news affects how the audience assigns blame.

Volunteer, Exchange for Change

Carlos Gonzalez

I am a mindful movement, meditation, writing teacher, and grandpa who focuses on helping others discover their voice, passion, and heart as I discover mine. My primary work over the past three decades has been joyfully to invite disruptive spaces within the unlikely environment of institutional education/prisons to allow heart, mind, and soul to emerge for brief periods of time in a dance of learning and freedom.

Former Dean of Columbia University Graduate school of Journalism, staff writer for The New Yorker and author of Redemption: The Last Battle of the Civil War

Nicholas Lemann

Bio forthcoming

Professor of History, African American Studies, and Law, Yale University, Yale Law School

Elizabeth Hinton

Elizabeth Hinton is Professor of History, African American Studies, and Law at Yale University. Hinton’s past and current scholarship provides a deeper grasp of the persistence of poverty, urban violence, and racial inequality in the United States. She the author two acclaimed and award-winning books of From the War on Poverty to the War on Crime: The Making of Mass Incarceration in America (Harvard University Press, 2016) and, most recently, America on Fire: The Untold History of Police Violence and Black Rebellion Since the 1960s (Liveright, 2021), both of which were named New York Times notable books.

Professor, Love Educational Services

Bettina Love

Dr. Bettina L. Love holds the esteemed William F. Russell Professorship at Teachers College, Columbia University, and is the acclaimed author of the New York Times bestseller Punished for Dreaming: How School Reform Harms Black Children and How We Heal. This groundbreaking work garnered the prestigious Stowe Prize for Literary Activism and was a finalist for the LA Times Book Award. Recognized by the Kennedy Center in 2022 as one of the Next 50 Leaders dedicated to fostering inspiration, inclusivity, and compassion. 

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BettinaLove.com​

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Associate Clinical Professor, Florida International University/Bob Moses Research Center

Maria Lovett

Maria K. Lovett, PhD is an Associate Clinical Professor in Educational Policy Studies at Florida International University; a Faculty Fellow with The Bob Moses Research Center for Math Literacy through Public Education and the Faculty Liaison to the Florida Local Alliance for Math Literacy and Equity (FLAME). She has over 30 years of experience working with young people, communities, and schools, including incarcerated, formerly incarcerated and system impacted young people. Maria has had the honor of collaborating with the Algebra Project and the Young People’s Project for over 16 years. Her research and teaching is informed by community engaged and youth participatory action research methodologies and primarily focuses on critical pedagogy, cultural studies, youth advocacy, education, and justice. Maria received the FIU Faculty Convocation Award for Excellence in Teaching in 2020 and the Martin Luther King Service Award for Civic Engagement in 2013.

Postdoctoral Fellow, Duke University

Tasseli McKay

Tasseli McKay is a postdoctoral fellow at Duke University and incoming assistant professor of social medicine at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Dr. McKay is principal investigator of the NICHD-funded study, Institutional Contact and Family Violence in a Time of Mass Incarceration. Her prior work on the Multi-site Family Study of Incarceration, Parenting, and Partnering culminated in her first book, Holding On: Family and Fatherhood During Incarceration and Reentry (University of California Press, 2019) with Comfort, Lindquist, and Bir. Her most recent book is, Stolen Wealth, Hidden Power: The Case for Reparations for Mass Incarceration (University of California Press, 2022).

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TasseliMckay.com

Executive Director of the Algebra Project, Inc.

 Ben Moynihan

Ben Moynihan is Executive Director of the Algebra Project, Inc. Ben joined the project in 1992, fostering collaborations among mathematicians, math educators, and researchers, and gathering input from students, teachers, school system administrators, parents, and community organizers. His work in these diverse contexts builds on a BA in nonWestern music at Dartmouth College (1987), Ed.M. in educational technology from Harvard Graduate School of Education (1999), training in group facilitation under Hay Group, Boston, and experiences in West Africa and the U.S. He also is co-developer of the Algebra Project’s African Drums & Ratios Curriculum materials for the late elementary grades (1992-2000).

Founder/ Director, Artefactual

A. Kirsten Mullen

Folklorist, founder of the arts-consulting practice Artefactual, and the literary consortium Carolina Circuit Writers, A. Kirsten Mullen was a member of the Freelon Adjaye Bond concept development team that won the commission to design the Smithsonian Institution’s the National Museum of African American History and Culture. She worked with the North Carolina Arts Council to expand the Coastal Folklife Survey; trained students to research and record the state’s African American music heritage for the Community Folklife Documentation Institute; and was a consultant on the North Carolina Museum of History’s “North Carolina Legends” and “Civil Rights” exhibitions. Coauthor of From Here to Equality: Reparations for Black Americans in the 21st Century and coeditor of The Black Reparations Project: A Handbook for Racial Justice, her recent work includes “Black Culture and History Matter” (The American Prospect), a look at the politics of funding black cultural institutions and The Queen Mother a profile of black nationalist and reparations advocate Audley Moore (Vanity Fair).

The Educational Justice Institute at MIT

(Founding Co-Director)

Lee Perlman

Lee Perlman teaches social philosophy at MIT.   He has been teaching in prison settings since the 1980’s.  In 2017 he received funds from MIT to develop a prison education program, and in early 2018 he and Carole Cafferty launched The Educational Justice Institute at MIT (TEJI).  TEJI offers around 7 classes every semester along three curricular tracks:  Philosophical Life Skills, Computer Science, and Business Education.  TEJI founded and manages The Massachusetts Prison Education Consortium.  In 2022-3, with the New England Board of Higher Education (NEBHE), TEJI ran the New England Commission on the Future of Higher Education in Prison which issued a comprehensive report in June 2023.  TEJI and NEBHE are now engaged in a five year project to implement the recommendations of the Commission, with the goal of ensuring high quality, interest and skill specific, and job-ready education for each and all carceral residents in New England.

teji.mit.edu/

UCLA PEP Program Participant

 Summer Pichon

There are so many layers to the person you know as Summer. Life wasn’t always simple at times I’ve felt very out of place and had no clue as to what my purpose could possibly be. Maybe having a mother who abandoned me for most of my life due to her drug addiction played a part or maybe it could have been spending some time in foster homes until my modern day super man came along (my dad) to give me a home. Who knows but what I do know is that I’ve never let the odds or the bad times keep me down. I’ve always strived to understand and be the best version of me that I could possibly be. I’m not the perfect Daughter, Sister or Mother but everyday I show up and give life the best I got. Through my creativity in all art forms and my powerful yet Subtle voice I stand to be heard, seen, felt and understood. I am proud to be a participant in the PEP program with UCLA (Prison Education Program). I was incarcerated for almost 3 years and throughout my journey I met some pretty amazing people and most importantly I got more in tune with myself. Since being home from prison I’m currently employed at a nonprofit organization fighting the fight using my voice to promote change and creativity. Today I stand in solidarity with those whom Don't seek comfort with things remaining as they are but with those who stand for absolute equality, peace and love for all change starts from within.

Street Theory

Victor Quinonez

Victor "Marka27" Quiñonez is a renowned international street artist who is known for his diverse works that intersect contemporary art, graffiti, vinyl toys, fashion and design, and art activism. His public art street murals are a continuation of his heritage and connection to the Mexican Masters Diego Rivera, José Clemente Orozco, and David Siqueiros, who are referred to as "los tres grandes" (the three great ones).

His work is inspired by the empowerment of marginalized communities and the fight for representation. Marka27's artistry encompasses paintings, murals, drawings, mix-media pieces, and private commissions for major brands. His robust palette combines elements of street and pop culture with Mexican and Indigenous aesthetics, that he has coined as his signature look "Neo Indigenous." Marka27's work has cemented his place in graffiti and street art history, and he has flourished as a product designer, gallery artist, toy designer, and more.

He has emerged as one of the most sought after muralists in the world and has mastered his craft since before "street art" was even a term. Marka27 resides and works in Brooklyn, NY, with his wife and creative partner, Liza, where they run their award-winning creative agency, "Street Theory Gallery."

http://marka27.com

Senior Strategy and Research Analyst, ETS

Jonathan Rochkind

I have spent 20 + years working on research that advance equity, ensure opportunities, and raise the voices of people who often go unheard.

ETS.org

 Howard University (PhD Student)

Qyana M. Stewart

Qyana is a Tech, Social, and EdTech entrepreneur, social justice advocate, educator, speaker, and award-winning philanthropist with over 20 years of combined experience in the nonprofit and for-profit sectors. By training, she is a certified Software Product and Project Manager and is passionate about developing technologies that solve complex social problems in our world. As an entrepreneur, Qyana serves as the CEO & Principal Consultant of GlobalForce Tech Consulting, LLC, a technology and software development company, and President of GlobalForce For Girls, Inc., a 501(c)(3) education technology nonprofit organization founded during the pandemic.

Qyana holds a Master of Science in Information Technology, a Graduate Certificate in Project Management from the University of Maryland University College, and a Bachelor of Science degree in Psychology from Howard University. She returned to her alma mater in the fall of 2021 as a Ph.D. student in the School of Education, Higher Education Leadership & Policy Studies program. She serves as the Graduate Research Assistant in the College of Engineering and Architecture, Department of Mechanical Engineering, and in 2022, served as the Senior Teaching Fellow for the Leadership Academy, a STEM program in partnership with the Women in Public Policy Program at The Harvard Kennedy School – Harvard University and Institute of Diversity Sciences at The University of Massachusetts at Amherst. In 2024, Qyana was invited by the Peer Review Panel of the U.S. Department of State’s Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs into the Fulbright Specialists Program. As a Fulbright Specialist, she will leverage her academic and professional experiences to strengthen international relations across a robust network of host institutions in over 150 countries globally.

Executive Director and Research Faculty,  Bob Moses Research Center at Florida International University

Brian Williams

Dr. Brian Williams is a scholar, author, speaker, and educational advocate, with over 25 years of experience working in schools, universities, and other educational communities. He currently serves as the Executive Director of The Bob Moses Research Center for Math Literacy Through Public Education at Florida International University in Miami, Florida. His work is situated at the intersection of science education, urban education, and education for social justice. Additionally, he is interested in how equity issues influence science teaching and learning and the access to science literacy. His scholarly work has been published in Democracy and Education, Science Education, School and Community Journal, Negro Ed Review, and International Journal of Social Research Methodology, and his research has been supported by grants from the National Science Foundation and the United States Department of Education.

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https://mosescenter.fiu.edu/

 Bob Moses Research Center for Math Literacy Through Public Education/FIU (Co-Founder/ Senior Advisor)

Joan Wynne

Joan T Wynne, Ph.D. co-directed Urban Education Centers at Georgia State University and Florida International University; was a professor in Ed Leadership; directed two Urban Master’s Programs; facilitated Faculty workshops for Global Learning; leadership and equity consultant for public schools and business; taught literature & writing at Morehouse College; directed Benjamin Mays Teacher Scholars Program; publishes research studies and chapters in multiple journals and books; received the “Martin Luther King Jr. Peace Award” and in 2015 an Urban Affairs Association-SAGE Activist Scholar Award. Her recent text is: Reckoning with our roots---Unearthing injustice to find our way home; co-authored texts include Who speaks for Justice: Raising our voices in the noise of hegemony; Confessions of a white educator: Stories in search of justice and diversity; Quality education as a Constitutional right; and Research, racism, & educational reform: Voices from the city; is currently a writer and co-founder/advisor for The Bob Moses Research Center.

Presenter, Princeton University

Julian Zelizer

Professor of History and Public Affairs at Princeton University. Zelizer is the author and editor of 25 books on American political history as well as an analyst on CNN and NPR. He is currently writing a book about the MFDP and the 1964 Democratic Convention.