Keynote Speakers and Presenters

Opening Keynote Speaker

Gloria Ladson-Billings is Professor Emerita and former Kellner Family Distinguished Professor in Urban Education in the Department of Curriculum & Instruction and was Faculty Affiliate in the Departments of Educational Policy Studies, Educational Leadership & Policy Analysis and Afro American Studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. She is the Immediate Past President of the National Academy of Education. She was the 2005--2006 president of the American Educational Research Association. In 2021 she was named a Corresponding Fellow the British Academy. She is a 2020-2021 Hagler Institute Fellow at Texas A&M University. She is a Fellow in the American Academy of Arts & Sciences. She is the inaugural Distinguished Scholar in Race and Social Justice for the Rutgers Graduate School of Education. Ladson-Billings’ research examines the pedagogical practices of teachers who are successful with African American students. She also investigates Critical Race Theory applications to education.

Ladson-Billings is the author of the critically acclaimed books, The Dreamkeepers: Successful Teachers of African American Children, (currently in its 3^rd edition), Crossing over to Canaan: The Journey of New Teachers in Diverse Classrooms, and Beyond the Big House: African American Educators on Teacher Education and recently released Culturally Relevant Pedagogy: Asking a Different Question, and Critical Race Theory: A Scholar’s Journey. She is editor of 6 other books and author of more than 100 journal articles and book chapters. She is the former editor of the American Educational Research Journal and a member of several editorial boards. Her work has won numerous scholarly awards, including the H. I. Romnes Faculty Fellowship, Spencer Post-doctoral Fellowship, and the Palmer O. Johnson outstanding research award. She is the 2015 winner of the Social Justice in Education Award given by the American Educational Research Association. She was named the 2012 winner of the Brock International Prize in education. In 2021 she was awarded honorary degrees from Colorado College and the University of Johannesburg. In 2018 she was awarded an honorary degree from Morgan State University. In 2012 she was awarded an honorary degree from the University of Alicante, Alicante, Spain. In 2010 she was awarded an honorary degree from the University of Massachusetts – Lowell. In 2002 she was awarded an honorary doctorate from Umeå University, Umeå, Sweden. During the 2003--2004 academic year she was a fellow at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences, Stanford, California. In fall 2004 she received the George and Louise Spindler Award from the Council on Anthropology and Education for significant and ongoing contributions to the field of educational anthropology. In spring 2005 she was elected to the National Academy of Education and the National Society for the Study of Education. In 2007 she was awarded the Hilldale Award, the highest faculty honor given to a professor at the University of Wisconsin for outstanding research, teaching, and service. She is a 2008 recipient of the state of Wisconsin’s Martin Luther King, Jr. Heritage Award and the Teachers College, Columbia University 2008 Distinguished Service Medal. In 2009 she was elected to Kappa Delta Pi International Education Honor Society’s Laureate Chapter—comprised of 60 living distinguished scholars. Former laureate members include notables such as Albert Einstein, John Dewey and Eleanor Roosevelt. Ladson-Billings was one of the NEA Foundation Fellows charged with providing advice on its “Achievement Gap Initiative.” In 2014 she was a panelist on the White House’s African American Educational Excellence Initiative’s Essence Festival, “Smart Starts at Home” panel. In 2015 she received the Distinguished Lifetime Achievement Award from the Literacy Research Association. In 2016 she received the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Benjamin Banneker Association of the National Council for Teachers of Mathematics. In Fall 2017 she received the John Nisbet Award from the British Educational Research Association at the University of Sussex in Brighton, England. In April 2018 she received the American Educational Research Association’s Distinguished Research Award and the Division B (Curriculum Studies) Lifetime Achievement Award.

Ladson-Billings has an active community life that includes serving on several community boards such as the Urban League of Greater Madison, the Madison Children’s Museum, the United Way of Dane County, and the Susan G. Komen for the Cure of Madison. She is a member of the Links, Inc. and a 50-year plus member of Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority, Inc. At the 2017 Leadership Summit she was named the Omega Psi Phi Fraternity, Inc. International Citizen of the Year. As an active member of the Mt. Zion Baptist Church of Madison, WI she is the 2^nd woman named to the 109 year old church’s Board of Deacons.

Closing Keynote Speaker

Mirelsie Velázquez, PhD, is an associate professor of Latina/o Studies. As an interdisciplinary scholar, her work centers history of education, women's history, Puerto Rican studies, gender and sexuality, and teacher education. Her book, Puerto Rican Chicago: Schooling the City, 1940-1977 (University of Illinois Press 2022), chronicles the Puerto Rican community’s response to the urban decay in which they were forced to live, work, and especially learn. Her work has most recently appeared in the journals Latino Studies, Centro, and Gender and Education. Dr. Velázquez is currently working on a second book project that historicizes Puerto Rican women and other Latina activists in higher education across the Midwest, from the 1970s to the 1990s, as they worked to create homespaces.

Session Presenters

Session: Building Safe and Inclusive Campus and Community Environments for BIPOC Students

Dr. Mauriell Amechi is a social scientist, professor, consultant, and speaker with an enduring commitment to social justice and educational equity, particularly improving college and workforce outcomes for marginalized students. Previously, he served on the Old Dominion University and the University of Redlands faculty, producing policy-relevant research and teaching classes in higher education and student affairs administration. Dr. Amechi’s research agenda aims to understand and identify protective factors and policies that ensure more equitable educational experiences and workforce outcomes among young people impacted by foster care systems. A native of Chicago, Amechi earned a B.A. from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and M.A. from the Ohio State University. He also holds a Ph.D. in Educational Leadership and Policy Analysis from the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Session: "From Learning to Action - How to apply concepts and foundations of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Work"

Raylene Gomez is an educator and linguist by profession from Illinois State University with studies in three different languages including Spanish, French and Japanese. As a scholar and as a professional she has dedicated most of her career to helping break the barriers of disadvantage and bias for students from underrepresented and historically excluded sectors of the population. She devotes her work to the betterment of the educational field, and to make students' academic experiences positive and nurturing, with the hope that one day education will be an equally accessible and welcoming field for all students without reservations.

Session: Cultivating a Practice of Equity Mindedness

Angell Howard is a two-time graduate of Illinois State University, with a bachelor's degree in psychology and a master's degree in social work, and currently pursuing her doctoral degree in Higher Education Administration. Angell's 14-year career consists of support and development of students and staff from minoritized populations and staff professional and career development. She is also the owner of Necessary Change Consulting LLC and has spent the last 12 years creating and facilitating diversity, equity, and inclusion trainings, challenging professionals to create change within their organization utilizing an antiracist lens.

“Building Global Asian Studies: The Legacy of a Student-led Movement at the University of Illinois Chicago (UIC)”

Anna Guevarra, PhD, is an interdisciplinary scholar whose research, teaching and community engaged work focus on immigrant and transnational labor, the geopolitics of carework, the Philippine diaspora, and critical race/ethnic studies. At the University of Illinois Chicago, she is the Founding Director and Associate Professor in the Global Asian Studies Program and a Co-PI of the UIC AANAPISI Initiative (https://glas.uic.edu/initiatives-community/uic-aanapisi-initiative/), which has designated the campus as a Minority-Serving Institution since 2010. She is currently working on projects that focus on exploring the geopolitics of carework at the intersection of science and technology; food and foodways that connect India and the Philippines; as well as mapping the urban removal projects and resistance movements currently underway in Chicago, focusing specifically on the Uptown neighborhood. She is the author award-winning works such as the book, Marketing Dreams: Manufacturing Heroes: The Transnational Labor Brokering of Filipino Workers (Rutgers University Press) and “Mediations of Care: Brokering Labor in the Age of Robotics” (Pacific Affairs Journal). She co-founded a public history multi-media project with Gayatri Reddy entitled “Dis/Placements: A People’s History of Uptown” (https://dis-placements.com), which brings together scholars, students, and community members to trace a People’s History of Uptown, a northside neighborhood of Chicago intentionally shaped by multiple forms of displacement and urban renewal, as well as active resistance to it. Prof. Guevarra works and volunteers with Chicago based community organizations that focus on issues of racial and economic justice, immigration rights, and cross-racial solidarity work. Her teaching pedagogy is anchored by social justice and intersectional frameworks, alongside experiential and field-based learning. She previously served as a Public Voices Fellow in the OpEd Project. Her PhD is in Sociology from the University of California, San Francisco and B.A. in Women’s Studies and Biology from the University of California, Irvine.

Session: A CRCC Conversation: Roots, Fruit, and Agents of Change

Dr. Christa Platt is a Kansas native and a graduate of Wichita State University with a bachelor’s degree in criminal justice. She earned a Ph.D. in higher education administration and a master’s degree in college student personnel from Illinois State. Dr. Platt’s career has positioned her to take a critical examination on how language, narratives, policies, systems, and structures impact the lives of students often forced to live on the margins. These set of experiences and her desire to see these lives thrive, have deeply influenced her commitment to being an equity-minded champion.