Keynote Speakers
Kelly Hurst
Crossroads AntiRacism Training
Noon, Monday, November 18
Registration to the CRCC Conference is required.
Kelly Wickham Hurst is a national organizer and trainer for Crossroads Antiracism Organizing and Training, where she facilitates conversations and learning about anti-racism, critical cultural competency, and anti-bias education.
Hurst has been an organizer and trainer for Crossroads Antiracism Organizing and Training since 2017 and has been involved in antiracism efforts in Springfield, IL since 2014. The work of Crossroads is to dismantle systemic racism and build anti-racist, multicultural diversity within institutions and communities implemented primarily by training institutional transformation teams.
Hurst is also the founder and executive director of Being Black at School. After spending 23 years in the public education system as a teacher, literacy coach, guidance dean, and assistant principal, Hurst witnessed first-hand how the system helped white students thrive while continuing to marginalize black students. She left the education system and started Being Black at School, which provides training and curriculum for teachers, school boards, and students to navigate tough conversations in the classroom. The organization combines research, policy development, and advocacy to influence public debate and catalyze change regarding race and education in America.
Author of the award-winning blog Mocha Momma, Hurst chronicles her life as a former teen parent, a birth mom, and a single mother who took her then 3-year old daughter to college with her. She has appeared on NPR’s “Tell Me More.”
Estela Mara Bensimon
USC Rossier School of Education
Noon, Tuesday, November 19
Registration to the CRCC Conference is required.
Estela Mara Bensimon is a professor of higher education at the USC Rossier School of Education and the director and founder of the Center for Urban Education.
The Center for Urban Education, known as CUE, has worked with thousands of college professionals—from presidents to faculty to academic counselors, helping them take steps in their daily work to reverse the impact of the historical and structural disadvantages that prevent many students of color from excelling in higher education with the help of a process Bensimon developed called the “Equity Scorecard.” With a focus on increasing racial equity in higher education outcomes for students of color, the Equity Scorecard is a process for using inquiry to drive changes in institutional practice and culture.
In 2017, Bensimon was elected to the National Academy of Education and she was presented with the 2017 Social Justice in Education Award by the American Educational Research Association. She is also a Fellow of the American Educational Research Association and in January 2018, Governor Jerry Brown appointed Bensimon to the Education Commission of the States. She also serves on the Campaign for College Opportunity Board of Directors.
Bensimon has published extensively about equity, organizational learning, practitioner inquiry and change; and her articles have appeared in journals such as the Review of Higher Education, Journal of Higher Education, Liberal Education, and Harvard Educational Review. Her most recent books include Critical Approaches to the Study of Higher Education, Division of Postsecondary Education; Engaging the Race Question: Accountability and Equity in US Higher Education, Confronting Equity Issues on Campus: Implementing the Equity Scorecard in Theory and Practice.