Reckonings Summer Institute Participants

Kyara Andrade-Howell

Artist, Educator, Event Curator

Kyara Andrade-Howell also known as DJ TROY Frost is an artist, educator, and event curator from Dorchester and Roxbury. She started DJing in 2013 and completed Scratch DJ Academy’s certification program in 2015. After graduating from Barnard College in 2017, she worked for Boston Public Schools in varying roles. In 2019, she piloted The Breaks, an enrichment program which gave 15 Boston youth an introduction to the pillars of Hip Hop. Kyara now works part time as a library coordinator at middle/high school and at Frugal Bookstore in Roxbury. She teaches Hip Hop & Black History classes periodically. She is currently working on growing Purple Produce, an event series dedicated to creating events focused on Hip Hop, wellness, literacy and community collaboration.

Emily Avery-Miller

Associate Teaching Professor, English Department, Northeastern University

Emily Avery-Miller is an Associate Teaching Professor, Northeastern University’s English Department, where she teaches first-year writing and interdisciplinary advanced writing courses. She has taught community-engaged service learning courses for eight years, partnering with organizations that serve immigrants and young people through intergenerational mentoring and tutoring programs. In her home community, Watertown, she serves on the boards of Friends of Project Literacy and the local cooperative preschool. Her essays and criticism have appeared in WBUR’s Artery and Art New England magazine.

Debbie Britt

Co-founder and Executive Director, The National Black Doll Museum

Debbie Britt is co-founder and executive director of The National Black Doll Museum in Mansfield, MA and nationally recognized expert on the art, craft, and history of Black dolls. At the Museum and on the road, Debbie uses pieces from her collection of over two thousand dolls to share African American culture with audiences throughout New England. She has a special dedication to nurturing self-esteem in children, and has brought her dollmaking and storytelling presentations to thousands of school kids. Debbie is MassHumanities and Mass Cultural Council grant recipient and has received community service awards from the town of Mansfield and The Massachusetts Black & Latino Legistlative Caucus among other organizations. In 2022, Debbie and her sister, Felica Walker, devised the exhibit “What Only You Could Make” at the Beard & Weil Gallery at Wheaton College, showcasing the Museum’s signature handmade African wrap-dolls. Debbie recently co-founded The Southeast Massachusetts Juneteenth Coalition and continues to work as a community leader in the region.

Sage Carbone

Director, Fenway-based Nonprofit; Indigenous Scholar

Sage Carbone is a Director at a Fenway-based nonprofit and an Indigenous scholar. She holds a B.A. in Humanities from Wheelock College (now Boston University) and M.S. in Communications Management from Simmons University. Her current projects center the ‘Land Back’ movement to rematriate property, historical narratives, and policy making.

Patrice Collins

Assistant Professor, School of Criminology and Criminal Justice, Department of Cultures, Societies and Global Studies in Africana Studies, Northeastern University

Dr. Patrice Collins is an Assistant Professor in the School of Criminology and Criminal Justice and Department of Cultures, Societies and Global Studies in Africana Studies at Northeastern University. Her research focuses on children with incarcerated families. More broadly, her research agenda is situated at the intersection of urban sociology, race and ethnicity, social justice, parental incarceration, and child wellbeing. Dr. Collins earned a Ph.D. in Sociology from Yale University. She also earned a B.A. in Child Development and M.A. in Early Childhood Education, Sociology, and Philosophy.

Beth Danesco

Playwright; Researcher and Writer, The National Black Doll Museum

Beth Danesco is playwright based in Foxboro, Massachusetts. She has spent the last ten years collaborating with the National Black Doll Museum as a researcher and writer. Her work for the Museum includes a series of short history plays often performed by The All Stories Theater Company, a group she founded in 2013, as well as exhibit text, digital content and local histories. Along with Debbie Britt, she recently completed an 18-month long project “Faces In The Crowd: The Turner Sisters of Boston & The Art of The Peddler Doll” – part of MassHumanities Expanding Massachusetts Stories project. Beth holds a BA in history from Providence College and a MFA in film from The University of Miami.

Patricia Davis

Associate Professor of Communication Studies. Northeastern University

Patricia Davis (Ph.D. University of California, San Diego) is an associate professor of communication studies at Northeastern University. She is a critical/cultural studies scholar whose research and teaching lies at the nexus of rhetoric and media studies. She studies public memory, identity, race, gender, and representation. Her book, “Laying Claim: African American Cultural Memory and Southern Identity” (University of Alabama Press, 2016) won the Best Book Award from the American Studies Division of the National Communication Association in 2017, and from the Critical/Cultural Studies Division of the National Communication studies Association in 2018. Her essays have appeared in The Southern Communication Journal, Text and Performance Quarterly, Rhetoric Review, and The Journal of Intercultural and International Communication, as well as a number of edited collections. She is currently working on a book foregrounding the corporeality of black women’s bodies with respect to rhetorics of respectability. She has taught courses on public memory, media ethics, race and gender in the media and popular culture, and communication and diversity.

Emilie Diouf

Assistant Professor of English, Brandeis University

Emilie Diouf (she, her, and hers) is an Assistant Professor of English at Brandeis University. She specializes in Anglophone and Francophone postcolonial African women’s writings and film with an emphasis on African and Black feminism, violence, and cultural memory. Her publications have focused on the interdisciplinary study of the relationship between political violence, migration, and literary narrative. She is interested in how gendered violence figures in perceptions of political injury, restorative justice, and public memory. She has been collaborating with Africano Waltham for 4 years. 

Audrey Falk

Professor in the Winston School of Education and Social Policy, Merrimack College

Dr. Audrey Falk is a Professor in the Winston School of Education and Social Policy at Merrimack College. She is the Director of the Master’s Program in Community Engagement and Chair of the Department of Applied Human Development and Community Studies. Dr. Falk was previously a faculty member at Towson University and she completed post-doctoral research fellowships at the University of Maryland, College Park and at American Institutes for Research. She serves as Country Director, Northeast Region, USA, for the International Higher Education Teaching and Learning Association and on the editorial boards of Ubiquitous Learning: An International Journal and the Journal of Special Education. Dr. Falk holds an EdM in Risk and Prevention and an EdD in Administration, Training, and Policy Studies with a specialization in Community Agency Educational Administration.

Julia Garrett

Associate Teaching Professor, English Department, Northeastern

Julia Garrett is an Associate Teaching Professor in the English Department at Northeastern who specializes in community-engaged courses taught within the Writing Program. Her primary areas of research and teaching focus on food justice scholarship and local action, as well as supporting emerging immigrant writers and activists. This work has been funded by grants from the College of Social Sciences and Humanities at Northeastern, and previously by the Morgridge Center for Public Service at UW-Madison and the Baldwin Wisconsin Idea Endowment. She draws from 15 years of community work with organizations that support the needs of immigrant and refugee communities in four different cities.  Her collaborative grant-writing work with the Dominican Development Center has recently secured funding from Mass Community Health and Healthy Aging for an initiative to support wellness and community leadership among Latinx seniors. During her time at Northeastern, her students have also developed projects in partnership with several local nonprofits, including The Food Project, Lifeboat Boston Food Pantry, NU Mutual Aid, and Fenway CDC.

Maxine Gross

Founding Chairperson, Lakeland Community Heritage Project; Boards of Directors, College Park City-University Partnership, Streetcar Suburbs Publishing, Embry Center for Family Life

Maxine Gross is a fifth-generation member of College Park’s historic African American community, Lakeland. She is the founding chairperson of the Lakeland Community Heritage Project and serves as a member of the boards of directors for the College Park City- University Partnership, Streetcar Suburbs Publishing and Embry Center for Family Life.

Sarah Jackson

Master's Student in Public History; Intern, The National Black Doll Museum

Sarah Jackson is a graduate of Calvin University in Grand Rapids, Michigan where she earned a degree in History this past spring. She has worked in-person and remotely as an intern for the National Black Doll Museum for the last two years. In 2022-23, Sarah also interned with the Grand Rapids African American Museum and Archives while finishing her undergraduate degree. Sarah will begin graduate studies this fall at UMass Boston working towards a master’s degree in Public History.

Eva Macias

Helaine B. Allen and Cynthia L. Berenson Distinguished Visiting Professor in Indigenous Women, Genders, and Sexualities Studies, Brandeis University

Eva Macias is a Helaine B. Allen and Cynthia L. Berenson Distinguished Visiting Professor in Indigenous Women, Genders, and Sexualities Studies at Brandeis University. Her research focuses on Dance Studies, Native American and Indigenous Dance, Gender, and Sexuality

Sivia Malloy

Learning Strategies and Media Technologist

Sivia Malloy holds a M.Ed. in Instructional Design and a graduate certificate in Instructional Technology Design from UMass Boston’s College of Education and Human Development. Her capstone project entitled “Hip-Hop History: Grades 9-12 local history curriculum” was developed to encourage educators and students to develop critical thinking skills to advance understanding of hip-hop culture in their local community. She received a bachelor’s degree in Visual and Media Arts from Emerson College and an Associate’s degree in Telecommunications Technology from Springfield Technical Community College in Springfield Massachusetts. Combining just a few of her passions for vintage relics and stories through media technology, her work also includes lead videographer for the Mass Hip Hop Archive’s Rock Against Racism 40th Anniversary in 2019 and Show ‘Em Watcha’ Got in 2018. 

Full Profile

Isabel Martinez

Associate Professor and Director of Latinx, Latin American and Caribbean Studies

Dr. Isabel Martinez is a Latinx youth immigration scholar whose research has primarily focused on the transnational lives of unaccompanied immigrant teenagers from Mexico/Central America. She is currently developing the New York Latinx Comedy Project, an oral history project that situates Latinx voices within a history of the NYC stand-up comedy industry. She is the founding director of the Unaccompanied Latin American Minor Project (U-LAMP) and is the Fall 2022 CMAS Visiting Scholar at UH.

María José Morales

Director, In Home Therapy Program; Supervisor and Consultant, Clinical Mental Health

Came from Nicaragua 45 years ago. Associate degree in early Childhood education from Massachusetts Bay Community College, Bachelor’s in Psychology and minor in education from Wellesley College, Masters in Mental Health Counseling from Boston College, Licensed Mental Health Counselor in the State of Massachusetts (LMHC).

Worked intensely with immigrants from Spanish Speaking countries for the last 12 years in New Bedford, MA.

Has been a Director of an In Home Therapy Program, Supervisor and consultant in Clinical Mental Health.

At present working with unaccompanied, uninsured youth from Central America through the Immigrants Assistance Center in New Bedford, MA. Work at a private clinic in Lakeville as a Mental Health Counselor and provide pro bono for a few uninsured adults in New Bedford. 

Juliet Najjumba

Founding  Executive Director and Lead Facilitator, Africano Waltham

Juliet Najjumba (she, her, hers) is the founding  Executive Director and lead facilitator of Africano Waltham. She provides strategic vision for the organization manages the financial administrative, and outreach activities. She works with a team of 4 staff, interns, and volunteers. She advocates for the needs and concerns of immigrants youth and their families with schools, community organizations, and employers. She also provides mediation services for families served by Africano Waltham. She consults with community organizations, universities and schools serving the Ugandan community. Najjumba has created and implemented curriculum for Africano Waltham with partner organizations to bring visibility to Ugandan culture and issues facing the community. She is the chief editor of Africano’s magazine, Your Story Matters.

Isaura Oliveira

Actress, Singer, Dancer, Costume Designer, Dance Teacher

Isaura Oliveira was born and raised in Salvador-Bahia, Brazil. She is an actress, singer, dancer, costume designer, dance teacher, yoga instructor, choreographer, community leader, healer, activist, innovator and visionary. Isaura’s expertise is African Brazilian Cultural Dance. Spirituality and Nature are Isaura’s medicine and The Ancestors are her guides.  Isaura holds a BFA from the School of Dance, Federal University of Bahia, and won numerous awards in Brazil, France, and the U.S. She has taught at many Colleges and Universities, such as Smith, UMASS Amherst, Radcliffe, and UC Santa Cruz .  Her first one-woman show,  Malinke premiered in 1988 at the Festival Cantar da Costa, Italy. Ancentrais, was sponsored and produced by MIT in 1990. Isaura’s works have been documented by PBS and BBC TV. Dancing #5: New Worlds, New Forms, features her, representing Brazilian dance. In the Bay Area, Isaura created “de Corpo e Alma” and “CUBAHIA, meu Amor.” She choreographed for Dimensions Dance Theater.  Since returning to Boston in 2019, Maestra Isaura has collaborated with local musicians in dance workshops and performances such as “LEVANTE” (Racines Festival, October, 2020), “MEDICINE everywhere” (2021-2022) and “POWER OF SKIRT”  (2021-present). She created the Living Experience Outdoor Program, a healing movement class for BIPOC held in public parks during Covid. She was a Fall ’21 Indigo Artist Alliance artist in residence in Portland Maine and currently a teaching artist at the Dance Complex. She is a nominee for the Boston Foundations Brother Thomas Fellowship.

Ebere Oparaeke

Doula, Community Performer

Ebere is a doula and community performer under the guidance and teaching of Mestra Isaura Oliveria. Since childhood, Ebere has always engaged creative outlets of expression, spending hours creating solo choreography in her basement, singing in her school choirs, and leading a West African dance student group during her undergraduate career.  When she’s not in the dance studio, Ebere enjoys spending time in nature, cooking comfort foods, and deepening her Spotify playlist curations. 

Full Profile

Jessica Parr

Professor of the Practice in History

Jessica Parr (she/they) is a historian of the Early Modern Atlantic, specializing in race and memory long eighteenth century, as well as in digital humanities, and archival studies. They are the author of Inventing George Whitefield: Race, Revivalism, and the Making of a Religious Icon (U. Press of Mississippi). The book explores Whitefield’s development as a symbol shaped in the complexities of revivalism, the contest over religious toleration, and the conflicting roles of Christianity for enslaved people. Evangelical Christianity’s emphasis on “freedom in the eyes of God,” combined with the problems that the rhetoric of the Revolution posed for slavery, also suggested a path to political freedom.

Mary Sies

Assoc Prof, Dept of American Studies; Co-Director, Museum Scholarship and Material Culture Grad Certificate Program; Affiliate Faculty, Program in Historic Preservation, Univ of Maryland, College Park

Dr. Mary Corbin Sies is an associate professor in the Department of American Studies, Co-Director of the Museum Scholarship and Material Culture Grad Certificate Program, and an affiliate faculty member of the Program in Historic Preservation at the University of Maryland, College Park. She is a board member of the Lakeland Community Heritage Project and a Lakeland Digital Archive team member. Her scholarship focuses on North American suburbs, critical museum studies, and transforming preservation and heritage scholarship and practice to embody AEIJ values.

Vanessa Silva

Cultural Worker, Artist, Story Teller, Activist, Organizer

A first-generation Cabo-Verdean American raised in inner-city Boston, Vanessa Silva is a cultural worker, artist, story teller, activist, and organizer. She uses her creative expression to transcend spaces, relate across differences, dismantle structures of domination, and co-create worlds that hold a more just future for humanity, the earth, and all beings. As a co-narrator of a film documentary, her work has been exhibited at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, Jeu de Paume in Paris, and the Visual Arts Vienna. She has collaborated with Askia M. Touré, Makanda Project, and was invited recently to present a poem for the President of Cabo Verde, José Maria Neves, and distinguished journalist, Charlayne Hunter-Gault, at the 25th Annual King/Cabral Commemorative program hosted by the Africana Studies Department at University of Massachusetts Boston.

Brandon Sloan

Master's Student in Business Administration

Brandon dances with several NYC and Boston based troupes. Professionally, he works to support women and BIPOC owned businesses and collectives through administration and capacity building. He holds multiple degrees and certificates in both business and the healing arts, but he is currently working towards a Masters degree in Business Administration and an Associates of Science degree in Horticulture

Magalis Troncoso Lama

Executive Director and Founder, Dominican Development Center

Magalis Troncoso Lama is the Executive Director and Founder of the Dominican Development Center.  She is an experienced community organizer and one of the founding members of the Domestic Workers Bill of Rights in Massachusetts.  Magalis has a background in journalism from her home country, the Dominican Republic, graduated with a Bachelor’s degree in Human Services and Organizing from UMass Boston, and also earned a Master’s degree in Business Administration from Phoenix University.  Magalis is a recognized leader with 20 years of experience working for different nonprofit and grassroots organizations and running Spanish communication programs. She currently serves as a board member of the Greater Boston Legal Services, Boston Women’s Fund, Haymarket People’s Fund, and was recently named as part of the board of the National Domestic Workers Alliance. She is also one of the founders of the American Alliance: an immigrant national organization dedicated to immigration issues at a national and transnational level.

Tony Van Der Meer

Senior Lecturer, Africana Studies Department, University of Massachusetts Boston

Tony Van Der Meer, PhD is a Senior Lecturer in the Africana Studies Department at the University of Massachusetts Boston. He is a scholar-practitioner rooted in Leadership and Change praxis; liberatory pedagogies; and African indigenous spiritual knowledge systems. He was a 2021 co-recipient of the Chancellor’s Distinguished Service Award for his leadership in campus-wide efforts to help transform the university into an anti-racist and health-promoting public research institution. During 2022, he collaborated with Dr. Keith Jones in directing, coordinating and facilitating “The Shift,” a six-part learning series designed to help the Cities Network within The Nature Conservancy build equitable, impactful, and sustainable conservation programs that center racial justice in climate justice initiatives. Additionally, Van Der Meer chairs the Board of the North Carolina Communiversity, a non-profit organization focused on leadership development for Black workers and the archiving of their narratives.

Cynthia Wilkerson

Program Design, Little Brothers - Friends of the Elderly

Since joining LBFE Boston in 2015, Cynthia has led the organization’s program design and
evaluation efforts as well as its embrace of intergenerational engagement. She earned a Master
of Divinity from Harvard Divinity School and a Nonprofit Management and Leadership Certificate
from Boston University’s Questrom School of Business, and has more than 15 years of program
management experience. Her board memberships include the Massachusetts Healthy Aging
Collaborative’s Executive Committee, Northeastern University Office of City and Community
Engagement’s Community Advisory Board, and the Steering Committee for OutstandingLife (A
Virtual Community for LGBTQ+ Older Adults). In her free time, Cynthia is an avid movie- and
museumgoer.

Sam Williams

Executive Director, Concord Prison Outreach; Founder, One Circle Health and Wellness, LLC

Mr. Sam Williams has been in the nonprofit sector for over twenty years. Mr. Williams is the Executive Director for Concord Prison Outreach and the founder of One Circle Health and Wellness, LLC. He has been instrumental in various local/statewide/national initiatives, including historical racial injustice, racial profiling, juvenile justice reform, restorative justice, racial profiling, positive youth development, and public safety. He is currently the co-chair for the Community Advisory Board of the Crime Race and Justice Center in the School of Criminology and Criminal Justice at Northeastern University. Mr. Williams is a native Bostonian and a graduate from Boston University with a Master’s Degree in City Planning. 

Linda Zimmerman

Executive Director, Neighbors In Need

For the past 19 years, Linda Zimmerman has been the Executive Director of Neighbors In Need, in Lawrence, MA, providing food and basic needs to hungry families at Food Pantries strategically located in the neediest neighborhoods of Lawrence, Methuen, and Andover.   She currently serves on the Regional Food System Resiliency Partnership task force, the Mayor’s Health Task Force, and Greater Boston Food Babk community advisory team, working with organizations in the region to address healthy food access for those in need. 

In a past life, she worked with immigrant populations throughout Greater Boston, Lowell and Manchester, NH, as CFO of the International Institute of New England. 

For the past 6 years, she has been a mentor/host organization for Fellows from the Merrimack College Community Engagement Graduate program, working with extraordinary students who have served in a variety of roles at Neighbors In Need, including Strategic Planning, Fundraising Events, video production, volunteer coordination and social media management.

 Zimmerman has an MBA degree from the Simmons Graduate School of Management and an AB from Wheaton College.