A passionate advocate of social justice and human rights, Antonia Adams is an honors graduate of Piedmont Technical College and current student at the University of South Carolina’s Honors College with a Business Economics major and Political Science minor.  At Piedmont Tech, she served as a Presidential Ambassador, Student Body President, Vice President of Diversity in Action, Student Worker in the Student Success Center and was a Christopher A. Calhoun Scholar with Phi Theta Kappa.  At the University of South Carolina, she is a peer leader in the Leadership and Service Center, where she plans the annual Student Leadership and Diversity Conference and engages in education and activism with the Civic Leadership Education and Action Team.

Antonia is also a Gamecock Guide in the Student Success Center, where she supports students and provides academic and social resources during the COVID-19 pandemic.  After graduation, she will obtain a JD in Public Policy law and hopes to advocate for disadvantaged minority populations who seek to obtain financial independence.  When she is not studying or finding ways to advance educational equity, she is watching Hulu with her Labrador Retriever, James.

Salih Cevik is a PhD candidate and a graduate assistant in the Educational Administration and Policy program at the University of Georgia. He obtained his Master of Arts degree in Educational Leadership and Policy in University of Minnesota. For his studies, he received the Turkish Study Abroad Scholarship, CEHD Advanced Study Scholarship, and the Ray E. Bruce Award.

Haley Gray, originally from Loganville, Georgia, is a Senior at Vanderbilt University. She is double majoring in Child Studies and Human & Organizational Development with a concentration in Education Policy. While at Vanderbilt, Haley has been an active member of several campus and community organizations that are dedicated to mentoring and providing equitable educational resources to low-income and minority K-12 students in Metro-Nashville Public Schools. Haley’s experiences within the Nashville community led her to interning at KIPP Nashville Collegiate High School during the Spring semester of her Junior year, where she was able to develop a peer mentorship program and help encourage students at KIPP to be advocates for their own learning. In addition to youth advocacy, Haley is also passionate about matters of social justice. For this reason, she has served as Vice President of S.T.R.A.N.D.S., Vanderbilt’s Black Women’s Association, for the past two years. Currently, Haley works as an intern for the Georgia Coalition for Public Education, assisting in the Coalition’s efforts to promote community schooling and whole child education within the state of Georgia. After undergraduate graduation, Haley plans on continuing her education at Vanderbilt as she has been admitted as a candidate in Vanderbilt’s fifth year Education Policy MPP Program.

Anthony Jones is currently pursuing a graduate degree at Jackson State University in Social Work. He graduated from Jackson State University with a Bachelor’s in Psychology in 2014. While pursuing his Master’s remotely in Tulsa, OK, Anthony began teaching elementary music, grades K-6, at Sequoyah Elementary School. Through his experience as a music teacher, coupled with his time as a Master’s of Social Work student, Anthony has had the unique opportunity to combine his passion for community, children, and education. During his college years, he has been a member of Jackson State University’s Sonic Boom of the South Marching Band, Symphonic Wind Ensemble, and the Jazz I Ensemble. Additionally, he was the president of JSU’s Psychology at Work club. As a member of the Environmental and Public Health Research Scholars program, Anthony’s research focuses on the influences of parents’ and teachers’ expectations on English language learners’ self-efficacy and academic achievement.

Theo M. Moore II was born and raised in Anniston, Alabama, where his dreams of being of service to others first began. After graduating from Anniston High School, Moore continued his academic career at Troy University in Troy, Alabama, where he earned a BS in History and a MS in Post-Secondary Education-History with hopes of following in the footsteps of his former teachers from high school. Currently, Moore is a Collection Manager and Educator at the Legacy Museum at Tuskegee University and a second-year PhD student in the Integrative and Public Policy and Development (IPPD) program at Tuskegee University. Within the IPPD program, Moore’s dissertation will focus on the representation of African Americans in Alabama’s social studies curriculum. Lastly, Moore founded a 501(C)(3) nonprofit organization, Hiztorical Vision Productions (HVP), in 2017 to educate the public on the untold-but-inspiring history of African Americans in the South through short film documentaries. Along with providing inspiring short films, HVP includes lesson plans with each film, which are accessible to all educators with hopes of contributing to practices of equity and cultural inclusion in the social studies curriculum in Alabama.

Taylor Newkirk is a student in the University of Maryland College Park’s Master of Public Policy Program. Her interests include education policy and reform, civic engagement, and mentoring youth. Having had many opportunities to serve students from marginalized groups in various US states and internationally, Taylor is hoping to further develop her leadership and advocacy skills to eventually acquire an administrative position in a locality that aligns with her passions.

Virginia Sciolino recently received her Bachelor’s degree in Religious Studies from Wesleyan University in Middletown, Connecticut. While at Wesleyan, Virginia captained the Mock Trial team to three nationals bids and interned for public interest attorneys on issues of police reform and economic equity. She also founded the club Activist South to act as a social and educational resource for Southern students interested in grassroots progressive activism. She recently completed her High Honors thesis, “Visualizing the White ‘Unborn,’” which addressed the de facto private school segregation in Hattiesburg, Mississippi, where she grew up.

Alexandria Tomkunas (Lexi) is a second-year doctoral student in the Human Development and Family Sciences Department at the University of Connecticut. Her research interests include children’s social, emotional, and behavioral well-being, as well as school interventions that support children’s well-being. She previously taught kindergarten in Miami, Florida, and is currently teaching elementary special education in Jacksonville, Florida. She is incredibly passionate about quality, equitable education for all and aspires to work in education policy in the future.

Adele Weaver (Addy) is a Social Psychology graduate student at the University of Maine, and a researcher in the Emotion, Pain, and Interpersonal Communication Lab at the University of Maine. She considers education to be her life purpose and has exhibited this through her teaching and tutoring practice in Statistics, Psychology, and Math.

As a member of a faculty and graduate student community at her university, Addy discusses equity issues and solutions that can be implemented in her teaching practices and used in bias awareness presentations she conducts for teachers and students.

Addy believes that education is the key to breaking the cycle of poverty and serves as an equalizer and researches interracial interactions, nonverbal behavior, and power dynamics to understand how educators can optimize their students’ performance and empower leaders of color.  She plans to earn a PhD and become a professor of Psychology.