Spark

Steven P. Alvarez is assistant chair and professor of English at St. John's University. He specializes in literacy studies and bilingual education with a focus on Mexican immigrant communities.

Christopher Brown II serves as executive director of the Dr. N. Payne Center for Social Justice at the Thurgood Marshall College Fund. Dr Brown’s work focuses on combating epistemophobia through a scholarship of praxis in organizational behavior, public policy, and education. He is the founder of the Atwood Institute on Race, Education, and the Democratic Ideal and the former executive director and chief research scientist of the Frederick D. Patterson Research Institute of the United Negro College Fund.

María Cioè-Peña is an associate professor of educational linguistics at the University of Pennsylvania Graduate School of Education. Her work explores how race, disability, and language shape the schooling experiences of Latinx bilingual students and families; she is the author of [M]othering Labeled Children and co-founder of Racial Justice in Multilingual Education (RJME).

Kevin Cokley is a Diversity and Social Transformation Professor of Psychology at the University of Michigan. His research lies in the area of African American psychology, with a focus on racial and ethnic identity development, academic motivation, and academic achievement.

Tamanika Ferguson is visiting feminist scholar in the Department of Women’s and Gender Studies. Her area of expertise is abolition feminism and feminist criminology, focusing on how incarcerated women, trans, and nonbinary people in women’s prisons in California theorize lived experience and practice resistance, media advocacy, and movement-building across time and space for transformative change and liberation.

LaShawnda N. Fields studies the experiences and outcomes of Black women in higher education through an intersectionality lens as they navigate sexism and racism. Dr. Fields is currently an assistant professor in the School of Social Work at the University of Arkansas.

Tia Sherèe Gaynor is an award-winning community-partnered researcher whose work explores identity, policy, and shared humanity. She is currently an associate professor in leadership and management at the Hubert H. Humphrey School of Public Affairs at the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities.

Patrick R. Grzanka is a feminist psychologist and an applied social issues researcher. He uses interdisciplinary tools to study complex inequalities and structural violence at the nexus of race, gender/sex, and sexuality. He is a University Diversity and Social Transformation Professor of Women's and Gender Studies and Psychology at the University of Michigan.

Marita Inglehart is originally from Germany and now a professor of dentistry at the University of Michigan School of Dentistry and a University Diversity and Social Transformation Professor. Her research focuses on how to best educate future health care providers to become patient-centered and embrace their civic responsibilities.

Christopher Jenkins is a scholar and performer whose work focuses on racialized aesthetics and the music of African-American composers. He is dean and associate professor of musicology at Lawrence Conservatory.

Nadeeka Karunaratne is an assistant professor in the Department of Women’s Spirituality at the California Institute of Integral Studies and a research associate at the University of Utah’s McCluskey Center for Violence Prevention. Her research focuses on promoting healing through spiritually- and culturally-grounded practices, and identifying the strategies necessary to interrupt sexual and relationship violence in higher education and beyond.

Victoria Kim is an assistant professor of higher education in the Department of Educational Leadership and Policy Studies at The University of Texas at San Antonio. Her research interests include studying Minority-Serving Institutions and the students they serve, including the underserved populations, such as Asian American community college students.

Seanna Leath is an associate professor and the principal investigator of the Fostering Healthy Identities and Resilience Collaborative in the Psychological and Brain Sciences Department at WashU. She is an education and psychology researcher whose work considers how cultural and ecological factors inform positive developmental outcomes among Black youth and young adults, with a focus on gendered and racialized processes.

Betsy Lucal is a professor of sociology at Indiana University South Bend, where she also directs the First Year Seminar program and serves on the Women’s & Gender Studies Governing Board. She is a former deputy editor of Gender & Society and has served four terms on the editorial board of Teaching Sociology.

Wunpini Fatimata Mohammed is an activist-scholar whose research focuses on feminisms, media, decolonization, and social movements. She is an assistant professor in the Department of Communication at Cornell University and the author of Media, Culture, and Decolonization: Re-righting the Subaltern Histories of Ghana (2025).

Hawani Negussie is an associate professor and program chair of Early Childhood Education at the University of Massachusetts Global. Dr. Negussie specializes in early childhood education, infant mental health, and child development, with a focus on integrating traditions and indigenous knowledge into curriculum and instructional practice. Committed to advancing equitable policies, her research advances approaches that honor children’s identities, elevate families’ strengths, and center community cultural wealth across local and global contexts.

Lori Delale-O’Connor is an associate professor at the University of Pittsburgh and chair of the Department of Educational Foundations, Organizations, and Policy; additionally, she is serving as interim director of the school’s Center for Urban Education. Dr. Delale-O’Connor’s research focuses on examining the connections between families, communities, and education across spaces with a particular focus on fostering equity and justice for children and youth in urbanized educational systems.

Lis Regula is an advocacy associate and a biologist whose dissertation research was primarily ecology-oriented, and has transitioned into his current human focus as a response to the need for more inclusive medical training. Lis has enjoyed his life at the intersections in many ways — as an ecologist working in family-building advocacy, a single dad to a teen daughter, and a former surrogate sitting on the board of Planned Parenthood Advocacy of Ohio.

Julie (Juliette) Roddy is an economist and enrolled member of the Sault Ste. Marie Tribe of Chippewa Indians. Dr. Roddy’s work applies economic theory to the study of addiction. She is currently the Wurgler Endowed Chair of Criminal Justice and Behavioral Health at Northern Arizona University.

Michael R. Williams is an assistant professor and program coordinator at Virginia Commonwealth University. As an educational leader, storyteller, and innovator who believes that leading is loving and leadership is inherently social justice work. His approach to leadership centers on liberation, collaboration, and care — anchored in the understanding that equity isn't an add-on, but the very foundation of transformative change.

Michelle Sharonda Williams is an associate professor in the Department of Global and Community Health at George Mason University. Williams is a health behavior scientist who develops and disseminates population specific health behavior interventions for cancer prevention and control.

James E. Wright II is an associate professor of public affairs at Arizona State University. His research specializes in race, justice, equity, policing, and organizational management. His studies have examined the impacts of body cameras on racial disparities in policing, the impacts of providing public access to police misconduct allegations, police officer decision-making during police stops, how physical appearance impacts use of force, and community protests, among other issues.