Andrea N. Baldwin is an associate professor in the divisions of Gender Studies and Ethnic Studies in the School for Cultural and Social Transformation at the University of Utah. She is an attorney-at-law who holds a master’s degree in international trade policy and a Ph.D. in gender and development studies from the University of the West Indies Cave Hill campus in Barbados. Dr. Baldwin has several publications, including her 2021 book monograph, "A Decolonial Black Feminist Theory of Reading and Shade: Feeling the University;" 2019 and 2023 co-edited texts in the Standpoints Black feminisms book series with Virginia Tech Publishing, and a 2023 co-edited Global Black feminisms volume. She is the creator and co-host of Standpoints, a Black feminist podcast produced by Virginia Tech Publishing, and the co-curator of the Caribbean feminist series for Black Women Radicals. Dr. Baldwin was born and raised on the small Caribbean Island state of Barbados. She considers herself an all-around Caribbean woman and loves everything coconut and soca.

Kaye L. Batson is a distinguished alumna of the University of Connecticut and Newcastle University, UK, where she pursued her passions in Natural Resources Management and Clean Technology, respectively, as a Chevening Scholar. While her academic journey began with a fascination for the external elements of nature, it soon expanded to explore the intricate relationship between the innate aspects of humanity and holistic health. Driven by this exploration, Kaye delved into various modalities, earning certifications in Yoga, Reiki, Reflexology, and Massage Therapy. Additionally, she became certified in Medical Aesthetics through the National Laser Institute, USA. Currently, Kaye's focal point lies in fostering self-awareness and mindfulness. She achieves this through deep breathing practices and a commitment to serving others, guiding each individual she encounters towards their most authentic selves. With a dedication to holistic well-being, Kaye endeavors to empower others on their journeys towards balance and fulfillment.

Chelsea N. Bouldin is an Octavia E. Butler scholar, Ph.D. candidate, and university fellow at Syracuse University in the Cultural Foundations of Education department. She is also pursuing a Certificate of Advanced Study in women’s and gender studies. Her dissertation research considers how Afrofuturist literature/Afrofuturist ideologies serve as both tools for, and expressions of, Black women’s autonomous understandings and creations of self. Her work also explores archives as sites of epistemic repossession. As a practice of democratizing archival knowledge, she developed the So be it; See to it: Archiving Project–a community engaged interactive reading collective for Black women in Syracuse, N.Y. to converge her academic research with the Butler archives, parts of Butler’s literary canon, and collective histories beyond the academy. Most recently, Chelsea’s work has been generously supported by Imagining America (IA), Humanities New York (HNY) the Huntington Library, and Syracuse University’s Humanities Center.

Flavorful food, Black sci-fi, boundless writing, impromptu exploration, and laughing endlessly fill her dreamiest days.

Dr. Nana Brantuo is a highly skilled researcher, educator, and advocate dedicated to addressing systemic inequalities and centering marginalized populations. With a background in education policy and leadership, curriculum and instruction, and African studies, she specializes in interdisciplinary research, policy analysis, and advocacy. As a non-residential fellow at the University of San Diego Kroc School VIP Lab, Dr. Brantuo focuses on researching transnational systemic violence against Black migrants seeking refuge. As the founder and principal of Diaspora Praxis, LLC, she provides clients with comprehensive research, policy, and technical products, emphasizing data-driven insights and strategic recommendations. Dr. Brantuo is deeply engaged in service work, holding roles on the board of directors at The Person Center, contributing to FAIR SHARE's Data Advisory Committee, and providing thought leadership at the Africa Data Governance Hub Advisory Council. She is also enrolled in the Center for AI and Digital Policy's AI Policy Certificate program, furthering her expertise in ethical AI governance

Adrienne is an Associate Professor in the School of the Environment and Society at the University of Utah where she directs the SPARC Environmental Justice Lab. Using a critical participatory action research framework, Adrienne’s research spans topic areas including educational equity, food and energy sovereignty, climate grief, critical sustainability, homelessness, and ethnobotany.

Pamela Cappas-Toro is the Operations Director of Higher Education in Prison, concurrently serving as a faculty member in the World Languages and Cultures Department. Dr. Cappas-Toro has worked in higher education across the U.S. promoting institutional practices, policies, and programming to best serve incarcerated, first-generation, and eHSI (emerging Hispanic serving institution) learners.

Cydney Y. Caradonna is a queer Latinx scholar, activist, and poet originally from the California Bay Area. She currently lives in the Salt Lake Valley and is pursuing a Ph.D. in Educational Leadership in Policy at the University of Utah. She has a bachelor’s degree in Spanish and master’s degree in higher education administration and leadership. Her scholarly praxis explores the systems and potential ruptures that inform a de/carceral ethos for higher education. Caradonna’s poetry centers the similar tensions to her academic work and research and experiences along multiple systems of marginalization and how we unsettle those systems by speaking back to them. Caradonna’s interdisciplinary approach to inquiry and praxis in higher education has included grant supported research in intersectional studies, policy discourse analysis, and Feminist methodological theory. Caradonna currently works for the Utah Prison Education Project supporting higher education in prison programming, research and publishing while working to create a Black Feminist Eco Lab in the School for Cultural & Social Transformation.

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Jaimie D. Crumley is an assistant professor in the Gender Studies and Ethnic Studies Divisions with the School for Cultural & Social Transformation at the University of Utah. She is a Black feminist public historian who interrogates the history of race, gender, and religion in eighteenth and nineteenth-century New England.

Jaimie is engaged in two research projects. The first is a study of the people of African and Indigenous descent who participated in the religious, social, and cultural life at Christ Church in Boston (more commonly known as the Old North Church) from 1723 to 1860. She argues that African and Indigenous peoples’ engagement with the rituals of Episcopal Old North produced trans-Atlantic ideologies of race, gender, and sexuality that inform contemporary ideologies of the same. Jaimie has documented her research in the video series Illuminating the Unseen, produced by Old North Illuminated. Dr. Crumley’s second research project is her first scholarly monograph, “We Will Live: Black Christian Feminists in the Age of Revolutions.” “We Will Live” is about New England’s Black women abolitionists, theologians, sisters, and friends from roughly 1770 to 1870. It argues that Black New England women remade Christian theology to articulate their desire to abolish slavery, sexism, and racism.

My name is AlLisia Dawkins. I started the PhD program in the Instructional Technology and Learning Sciences Department at Utah State University in Spring 2021. I am a native of the Southside of Chicago and have a background in STEM with a Bachelor of Science degree in chemistry from Northeastern Illinois University. My research areas of interest include the development of STEM identity in minoritized youth, specifically African American students, within informal STEM learning environments and co-designing formal curricular incorporating aspects in positive STEM identity development. Currently, I have been developing a STEM identity ecosystem that highlights the interpersonal and intrapersonal interactions influencing an individual's STEM identity, based upon the principles and factors as described by marginalized youth. This past academic year, I have been able to bring my leadership skills to the forefront and participate in on-campus organizations taking on the Vice President of the Instructional Technology Student Association (ITSA) position within my department and the President of Graduate Students of Color Association (GSCA) that serves the entire USU. When I am not busy doing research or leading, I enjoy puzzles, trash reality TV, dancing, and traveling.

Rae Duckworth is the current operating chairperson for the Black Lives Matter Utah Chapter and a board member of the first Utah Black History Museum. Duckworth became involved in political organizing after the death of her cousin Bobby Ray Duckworth, who was killed by police during a mental health crisis on World Suicide Prevention Day, September 10, 2019.

Duckworth joined the Black Lives Matter Utah Chapter to enhance awareness and participation both politically and within the community, focusing on decolonizing and accepting mental health practices and conversations. The chapter hosts an annual Kids Camp at the end of summer to promote self-empowerment among Black and Brown youth in Utah.

With a lived experience in Utah, growing up as a Black queer womxn and parent, Duckworth deeply understands the importance of preserving Black stories, amplifying intersectionality, raising awareness, and creating safe spaces for youth to learn, teach, and grow.

As chairperson of the Black Lives Matter Utah Chapter, Duckworth advocates for an abolitionist framework through their participating in policy, lobbying, registering community members to vote, and sharing knowledge about current issues and voter rights.

Duckworth has a degree in nursing with plans to continue their education in health and wellness.

Hello! My name is Hannah Goins, a now-junior at University of Utah majoring in Linguistics. I have an interest in the ways that language interacts with people and culture, as well as how it is used to uphold social hierarchies. In my free time, I enjoy reading, crocheting, and making art. I also am a big music fan and love exploring new genres.

Logan Rae Gomez is an assistant professor of communication at the University of Utah in the areas of rhetoric and critical/cultural studies. Long invested in social movement activism and theorizing, resisting gender violence, and confronting racism, their academic research interests lie at the intersections of rhetoric, race, and violence. Informed by Black feminist theories, perspectives, and activism, Logan’s current research engages Say Her Name—a campaign and social movement that illuminates racialized police violence against Black women by naming, reclaiming and making their stories visible. Broadly, this research trajectory compels Logan to ask questions about racialized temporalities and the rhetorics of erasure, preservation, and possibility. Most recently, Logan co-edited a forthcoming special issue in the Journal of Rhetoric, Politics & Culture entitled, “Rhetoric and the Abolitionist Horizon: Endings, Openings, Ruptures, Beginnings” which encouraged scholars to imagine (im)possible horizons where societal transformation and liberatory futures are already a given. Logan’s other work has been published in Rhetoric Society Quarterly, Communication and Critical/Cultural Studies, Women's Studies in Communication, and First Amendment Studies.

Dr. Tonya Haynes is a Caribbean feminist teacher, scholar and lecturer at the Institute for Gender and Development Studies: Nita Barrow Unit, University of the West Indies. Her doctoral students are researching women farmers’ citizenship in Trinidad and Tobago and Caribbean women’s digital lives. She is co-editor (with Dr. Andrea Baldwin) of "Global Black Feminisms: Cross Border Collaboration Through An Ethic of Care" (Routledge 2023) and co-principal investigator (with Dr. Nicole Charles) of Diabetes and the Afterlife of Slavery in Barbados: Art, Archive and the Gendered Dimensions of Risk. Tonya researches primarily in the area of Caribbean feminisms and Caribbean feminist thought. Her work is published in Small Axe: A Caribbean Journal of Criticism, Social and Economic Studies, Journal of Eastern Caribbean Studies, Global Public Health, sx archipelagos, the Scholar and Feminist Online. She has led a number of public scholarship initiatives aimed at capacity building for state functionaries and community activists and inclusive policy-making with LGBTQ+, disability rights and women’s organizations. Tonya served as co-Lead organizer of the inaugural Gender and Development Forum at the 15th session of the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development in October 2021. In 2022 she served as a jury working group member (care work, decent work and informalization) of the Global Women Workers Tribunal organized by International Women's Rights Action Watch. Most recently, she chaired the Bajan Host Committee and was a plenary speaker at the 2024 Black Feminisms Forum hosted by the Black Feminist Fund.

My name is Nkiruka, but I go by Kiru. As a non-binary artist based in Florida, I connect with the world through touch and sound. I am a rhythm maker, occasionally a note-bender, and a lover of everything rooted in soul and childlike curiosity. My journey into feminism began through music, growing up with the message that women and non-binary people were not allowed to play drums in the Black church. However, feminism has given me the space to express and release my inner rudiment. I look forward to connecting because it fuels my creativity and passion.

Shalonda Ingram is a dynamic leader and innovator, passionately dedicated to community, culture, and impactful change. As a Co-Founding Member of Zebras Unite, she drives initiatives that position businesses as transformative agents, fostering a more equitable economy. Her role as a Fellow at Public
Democracy America highlights her global impact, tackling pressing issues such as sex trafficking and advocating for justice.

In her work with the Universalist National Memorial Church and the Church of the Holy City, Shalonda redefines communal spaces through strategic placemaking, blending architecture and community engagement to create vibrant, connected environments. Her leadership in these roles extends from
Washington, DC, to Wilmington, Delaware, amplifying community growth and resilience.

Shalonda's innovative spirit shines as a Special Projects Consultant at Idea Connection Systems, where she transforms challenges into opportunities. At TTJ Productions, she ensured the success of every event component, leading a team committed to excellence.

As the Founder of Born Brown: All Rights Reserved®, Shalonda empowers the Global Majority through a dedicated social enterprise. Her visionary leadership also manifests in the Nursha Project, fostering creative collaborations that transcend boundaries. Shalonda's journey is a testament to her unwavering commitment to inclusivity and transformative change.

Chantel Kemp is an AmeriCorps alumnus of Green City Force, where she maintained and built 5 NYCHA farms in New York City. Directly after, she worked under a master composter, gardener, hen keeper and beekeeper as an assistant farm manager in Brownsville, Brooklyn. Later, as an education assistant and community chef at Red Hook Farms, she honed her educational and instructional skills by working with public schools, community, AmeriCorps members and volunteers. Chantel is a graduate from Farm School NYC and maintains a role as a manager of the gardens at the NYCHA program at GrowNYC. She is a multi-award winner, with recognition coming from Hunter College’s 40 under 40 award, Community Board 9, for her environmental programming during the pandemic, and the city council with an environmental justice citation for her urban agricultural programming and stewardship in the South Bronx. Chantel is an urban gardens specialist and food justice advocate who uses art, freedom of expression and popular education to lead dynamic culturally relevant workshops and events. Additionally, she is creating urban agricultural spaces and does curriculum development and community building workshops, both independently and collaboratively. Chantel has spent the last eight years dedicated to urban agriculture and to the continued education and health of communities lacking in food access and equitable green spaces.

Vivian Lee recently graduated with her M.Ed. and is continuing her academic journey with a Ph.D. in the College of Education housed in the Department of Education, Culture, and Society here at the U. She is a dog mom to two sweet boys, Shinee and Haru. Born in Denver, CO, but calls Utah home. As a first-generation student, and proud daughter of a single mom. She is a queer Asian-American scholar with a background in Communication and an emphasis on critical rhetoric and social justice. She is inspired by scholars such as bell hooks, Leanne Simpson, Audre Lorde, and Stuart Hall! Vivian’s research interests involve student and community sense of belonging, rhetorical shifts between first-generation-queer studies, and aliveness! As an emerging scholar, she hopes to create safe spaces for critical dialogue to occur in student engagement.

Charlen McNeil-Wade, a seasoned justice, equity, diversity, & inclusion (JEDI) professional with 15+ years' experience, specializes in fostering equity through leadership development, innovative hiring processes, and empowering workshops. Currently contributing her expertise at the University of Utah serving as the manger of health and well-being strategic initiatives. She is also the founder and executive director of The Moore Foundation, Inc. Charlen champions education for formerly incarcerated individuals and their families. Her impactful training sessions in both private and academic sectors raise awareness about JEDI practices. Charlen is a third-year doctoral student at the University of Utah, researching the reintegration of formerly incarcerated students through education. She holds master's and bachelor's degrees from Columbia University and Fairleigh Dickinson University, respectively, and an associate degree from Bergen Community College. Charlen's commitment revolves around supporting marginalized students to succeed on their own terms, and she fosters unity, education, and empowerment through her involvement with Beta Kappa Sigma Black and Latina Sorority Inc.

Dr. Ocqua Gerlyn Murrell is a sociologist, Black and Caribbean feminist, curator, and assistant professor in the department of gender, sexuality, and women’s studies at the University of Florida. Dr. Murrell holds a Ph.D. in sociology and a women’s and gender studies certificate from Virginia Tech. She has taught gender relations and the sociology of family, sex, and gender at Virginia Tech and Ferrum College. She teaches interdisciplinary perspectives in women’s studies, girlhood studies, transnational feminisms, and transitional feminisms at the University of Florida. Dr. Murrell’s research interests include sex education curriculums, reproductive justice, social inequality, gender relations, women’s studies, queer studies, sex work, and girlhood studies. Her work aims to give volume and visibility to the stories of Black women, girls, femmes, and LGBTQ+ people in the west and from the global south.

Ruhan S. Nagra is Associate Professor of Law and founding director of the Environmental Justice Clinic at the University of Utah S.J. Quinney College of Law. Prior to joining the Law School, Nagra was Director of the Environmental Justice Initiative and a Senior Clinical Supervisor at the University Network for Human Rights, which she co-founded in 2018. At the University Network, Nagra worked with frontline communities in the United States and globally to challenge environmental injustice. Nagra was previously a clinical instructor at Stanford Law School’s Human Rights Clinic. In close partnership with affected communities and grassroots organizations, Nagra brings an interdisciplinary approach to her work, which has included: a peer-reviewed community health study in Louisiana’s Cancer Alley; an analysis exposing racially discriminatory effects of an industrial buyout in Mossville, Louisiana; and litigation challenging the expansion of Liquefied Natural Gas infrastructure in Brooklyn, New York. Her most recent article, forthcoming in Duke Law Journal, explores the justice implications of climate-induced relocation in the United States. Nagra has also lived and worked on human rights issues in the occupied Palestinian territory, including on environmental justice, freedom of movement and access, and the right to education. She is on the board of Tikkun Olam Productions, a documentary film nonprofit that highlights social justice issues through narrative storytelling and historical examination. Nagra’s work has been covered in major news outlets, including VICE, CBS Evening News, The Washington Post, Reuters, The Guardian, USA Today, Axios, Newsweek, and Democracy Now. She holds a J.D. from Stanford Law School and a B.A. in Human Biology from Brown University.

Nagra’s work has been covered in major news outlets, including VICE, CBS Evening News, The Washington Post, Reuters, The Guardian, USA Today, Axios, Newsweek, and Democracy Now. She holds a J.D. from Stanford Law School and a B.A. in Human Biology from Brown University.

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Jocelyn Navarro is a Mexican-American scholar from Southern California. She is currently pursuing a Ph.D. in ecology and evolutionary biology at the University of Arizona, while holding a bachelor’s degree in botany with minors in environmental studies and gender & women studies. Navarro studies the effects of anthropogenic climate change on plant communities in water-limited environments, and how these changes alter ecosystem functioning. Her research has taken her to several beautiful places all over the world such as Colorado, Arizona, Peru, Norway and South Africa to collect data. Navarro recognizes humans are not always included in scientific discussions about the environment, and would like to make her work more interdisciplinary to include the effects of anthropogenic climate change on humans. She enjoys spending time outdoors and wants to make these spaces more safe and accessible to people who have been historically excluded from these spaces, such as people of color and people with disabilities. Navarro is honored to be a part of the Black Feminist Eco Lab in the School for Cultural & Social Transformation.

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Rosa is a third-year student at the University of Utah's College for Cultural & Social Transformation where she is pursuing a degree in ethnic studies (BAS) and a minor in chemistry. In their studies, Rosa is learning to center Black feminist theory as a praxis for de-colonial and intersectional geographies of care. Her interest in chemistry originates from her interest in locating her undergraduate work in healthcare. Upon completion of their undergraduate studies, she intends to apply to graduate school to further her knowledge of de-colonial and intersectional practice intending to pursue a career as a lawyer or PA.

Leah Ramnath completed her doctoral studies at Virginia Tech in the Alliance of Social, Political, Ethical, and Cultural Thought with a dissertation entitled, Cynical Futurities: A Critical Methodological Intervention Toward a Cynical Geography. She is currently based in Brooklyn, New York, continuing her critical theoretical work as an independent scholar. Her research primarily focuses on critiques of dominant ideologies as it relates to race, ethnicity, gender, and sexuality, particularly in the political realm. Through her research, Leah seeks to challenge universalized narratives, advocating not just for inclusion but for social and cultural transformation. She uses a distinctly Black feminist theoretical lens, grounding her analyses in a sociospatial conceptual framework. Her work aims to elevate and contribute towards the intellectual tradition of Afro- and Indo-Caribbean feminist scholars and creative writers, articulating their nuanced and intersectional experiences as part of an overarching ontological and epistemological project. Her recent publications include “Cynical (Dis)Positions: Cultivating Cynical Sensibilities” in Black Feminist Theorizing Toward Futurity: A Standpoints Volume, Virginia Tech Publishing, “Planetary Ecological Crisis, Climate Change, and Conflict: Unsettling Understandings and Geographies of Encounter” in the SAGE Handbook on Peace and Conflict Studies (forthcoming April 2025), and “The Caribbean Woman as Non-citizen: The Caribbean Feminist as Cynic” in The Routledge Companion to Gender in the Caribbean, Routledge (forthcoming 2025).

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Dr. Adena Rivera-Dundas is an assistant professor of English at Utah State University. Her research examines how Black American scholars, poets, and novelists deploy personal archives to disrupt oppressive epistemologies. Working at the intersections of personal narrative, Black feminism, and affect studies, she examines the ways in which contemporary writers use embodied experience as evidence to create intimacy with readers while simultaneously resisting easy, unearned access to Black subjectivities. She is currently working on a book titled "Intimate Scholarship: Embodying the Personal in Black Feminist Writings."

Crystal S. Rudds received her Ph.D. from the University of Illinois and is assistant professor of African American literature and culture in the Department of English at the University of Utah. She served as the assistant editor to Audrey Petty for the oral history High Rise Stories: Voices from Chicago Public Housing and is currently working on a book project that explores representations of public housing in film, African American literature, photography, and Black men’s qualitative narratives. Dr. Rudds’ other research/teaching interests include Black feminist theories and ecological praxis, Afrofuturism, literary ethnography, and digital expressions of Black Spatial Humanities. With an MFA from Indiana University, she also publishes creative work that has appeared in Obsidian, NightBallet Press, After Hours Press, Midnight & Indigo and, as part of the collective poem, American Gun, published by Big Shoulders Books.

Dr. Jervette R. Ward is the President and a lifetime member of the College Language Association (CLA), the oldest and largest organization of Black professors of languages and literatures in North America. She is the Director of Black Studies at The City College of New York (CCNY) in the City University of New York System (CUNY) and a tenured Associate Professor of Media and Communication Arts. She is the editor of Real Sister: Stereotypes, Respectability, and Black Women in Reality TV (Rutgers University Press). Her forthcoming book, Black Women vs Errbody: An Intellectual Tradition of Great Debates, is under contract with The Ohio State University Press. She is a former journalist and public relations professional who writes, teaches, consults, and speaks on the power of language and popular culture as avenues for social change. Her writing and communications work is focused on social justice, equity, and equality.   Dr. Ward earned the rank of Associate Professor with tenure at the University of Alaska Anchorage, and she was previously at Mississippi State University and Pine Manor College. She earned her Ph.D. in English – Literary & Cultural Studies from The University of Memphis. She can be booked, followed, and contacted via www.jervette.com.

As assistant vice president for faculty support, Myra Washington works with departments and colleges across the U campus to ensure attention to equity, diversity and inclusion in all aspects of the faculty hiring process—starting with hiring plans and recruitment and continuing through campus visits and onboarding. Additionally, Myra develops and oversees programs that support and mentor faculty from to boost retention, promotion and tenure as well as faculty review processes. She has substantial experience with the design and leadership of professional development and support organizations for faculty of color, including the Center for Critical Race and Digital Studies, where she is a founding member. Myra received her doctorate in communications research from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 2012. Her research includes analyses of race and gender in popular culture—across television, film, celebrity culture, and digital media. She taught communication and journalism at the University of New Mexico for eight years.