2022 Building a Diverse and Inclusive Culture of Remembrance (DAICOR) Program
Participant Bios
German Cohort
Mariette Nicole Afi Amoussou. Consultant & trainer for development education, 1st chairwoman of the board of the association Meinewelt.e.V.
My name is Nicole. I have been actively involved in international project work since 2010 including Benin, Germany, France and Cameroon. Since 2012 I advise and accompany institutions and non-governmental organizations, in the field of anti-racism sensitization, non-discriminatory process. As a process facilitator, I design pedagogical concepts for volunteer service organizations. I am co-founder of the association MeineWelt e.V and Place e.V. I lead the black academy program which focuses on competencies of black people.
I work a lot with the analysis of images, language, and power structures in political education work. I support institutions in making their public relations sensitive to discrimination and in establishing a permanent and sustainable process of raising awareness. I am particularly experienced in community work and empowerment of diaspora organizations and people and/or children and youth with migration experience. Another focus of my work is capacity building, decolonization, and reflection on colonial continuities as well as process support for institutions and organizations in the field of development cooperation. I speak Fon, French, German and English and am very open to other forms of communication.
Juliane Bischoff is a curator at the Munich Documentation Centre for the History of National Socialism, where she conceived, among other projects, the digital exhibition “Departure Neuaubing. European Histories of Forced Labor” (2022). She co-curated the exhibition “Tell me about yesterday tomorrow” (2019/20) as well as the accompanying podcast series “History is not the Past”. From 2015 to 2019 she worked at Kunsthalle Wien, Vienna, where she curated solo and group exhibitions such as “Kate Newby: I can’t nail the days down” (2018) as well as “How To Live Together” (2017); and organized discursive programs such as “Political Futures” (2018). She regularly writes for art publications and exhibition catalogues, among others “Jonas Hoeschl. Politics of Media Images” (Hatje Cantz, 2022), “Who’s Next? Homelessness, Architecture, and Cities” (ArchiTangle, 2021), “Karsten Födinger. Nischenhain” (Strzelecki Books 2020), “Malte Zander. Languor” (Sternberg Press, 2019), “Olena Newkryta. folding unfolding refolding” (Sternberg Press, 2017) and “2015″, edited by Vivien Trommer (MINI/Goethe-Institut Curatorial Residencies Ludlow 38, 2015).
Freya Schwachenwald is an art historian and social and cultural activist. She is currently working on her PhD project at Technische Universität Berlin as Fellow of the German Academic Scholarship Foundation. Her dissertation deals with the narratives of 19th-century travel, ‘exploration’ and art, and the hauntings of imperialism and racism in German history and museums. Her research and activism combine a critical engagement with history and memory making in metropolitan and non-metropolitan spaces. As an activist in the fields of social and cultural empowerment, diversity and literature, she has held lectures and seminars across Asia, South America, Europe, Africa and the Middle East, bringing together diverse communities in order to create shared projects and stories. Since 2009, she has been part of the German NGO Bücherpiraten for literature, reading promotion and civil participation, currently acting as their vice-president. For the Bücherpiraten, she has developed and executed workshops for children, teenagers and professionals on multilingual creative writing and storytelling, colonial pasts and presents. From 2018 to 2019, she was a Visiting Scholar at the Department for the History of Art at Yale University, USA. She holds an M.A. in Transcultural Studies from Heidelberg University and a B.A. in European Media Culture from Bauhaus-University Weimar and Université Lumière Lyon 2, France. In 2015, she was awarded with the Medal of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany for her social and cultural commitment.
Anke Schwarzer studied sociology, psychology, and politics at the universities of Marburg and Frankfurt/Main followed by graduation at a school of journalism in Berlin. The sociologist and editor currently works for the program department of the Hamburg Adult Education Centre (Volkshochschule) in the area of society and politics. She is also a freelancer in historical-political adult education and lecturer at various universities, most recently for the seminar “Colonial History and Present in Hamburg” at the Hamburg University of Applied Sciences (HAW). Furthermore she works as a journalist for media and web projects, most recently for “ReMapping Memories Lisboa – Hamburg“ by the Goethe-Institute. On the board of the non-governmental association Bildungsbüro Hamburg e.V. she is committed to power-critical education and a diverse culture of remembrance. She designs tours on colonial traces in urban space and is a member of the advisory board of the Ministry of Culture and Media on the decolonisation of the city of Hamburg.
Maja Sojref. As a senior strategist and account manager at Cosmonauts & Kings, an agency for digital political communications, I am currently leading the digital COVID response and vaccination campaign of the German Federal Ministry of Health. Besides this, I have always been very interested in historiographies and cultures of remembrance, as well as their role in nation-building and civic education: I studied History, French and Arabic at University College London, Paris-Sorbonne and the University of Oxford. From 2017 to 2019, I worked as project manager at the Willy Brandt Center in Jerusalem, where I was responsible for facilitating exchanges between progressive youth movements from Israel, Palestine and Germany. More recently, I co-founded and co-led the interdisciplinary storytelling festival #mygration, which brought together different migrant communities in Berlin to explore questions of identity, belonging, trauma and more. I am also an active board member of the New Israel Fund in Germany and in 2023, I hope to focus my professional activities on building up the organization’s regional office in Berlin.
Aron Mir Haschemi has worked in foreign policy and international relations for two decades. As a member of the German Foreign Service, he has served in Bonn, Beijing, Berlin, Mexico, Lagos, Kinshasa, and Juba. Throughout his career, he has advocated for diversity, inclusion, and a culture of remembrance at Germany’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs and beyond. His most recent initiative resulted in the creation of a memorial in public space, in remembrance of German diplomats persecuted by the Nazis. His advocacy efforts focus on increasing representation of minority communities in public administration. He is also promoting knowledge about colonialism to overcome the impact of postcolonialism in diplomacy.
Anna Yeboah is an architect and curator. She studied architecture with a focus on cultural theory at the Technical University of Munich and the UPC Barcelona. Anna Yeboah was a lecturer at the Institute for History and Theory of Design at the Berlin University of the Arts. Her research and artistic practice revolves around systems of power in architecture and urban space and decolonial spatial strategies. Her research on the subject has been shown at the Venice and Chicago Biennials, among others, and published in international media.
Since May 2020, Anna Yeboah has been responsible for the overall coordination of the five-year pilot project Dekoloniale Memory Culture in the City on behalf of the Initiative of Black People in Germany e.V.
U.S. Cohort
Vanessa Adams-Harris is Mvskoke (Creek) American Indian with African American/European ancestry. She is an artist, producer, director, documentary filmmaker, theatre arts adjudicator, workshop facilitator, playwright, docent, human rights community activist/peacebuilder and spirit walker. She has presented both nationally and internationally and currently serves as Outreach & Alliances Director for The John Hope Franklin Center for Reconciliation, President-North Tulsa Historical Society, Vice-President of TKWolf, Inc, an American Indian non-profit organization, and is Vice-Chair for the Greater Tulsa Area Indian Affairs Commission. She presents regularly to schools as well as civic organizations on Oklahoma history, race and reconciliation. In 2019 she presented the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre’s history to over 2,500 students in the Enid Public Schools District. Co-presenter with Dr. Ann Dapice for the 2018 Women Are Sacred Conference “Resilience: Walking in Ancestral Footprints, Carrying Our Medicine,” Albuquerque, NM, and has trained among an international coalition for Women as Peacebuilders through the Just Governance Human Security-X Initiatives of Change in Caux, Switzerland on the Six Pillars of Human Security, which was developed from the United Nations 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDG’s). She trained with Father Michael Lapsley, Institute of Healing for Memories-NA Workshop in Ossining, NY.
Her area of study in anthropology and theatre continues to support her interest of the search for meaning with our sense of place giving emphasis on the essential usage of reconciliation in the process of building a lasting peace. She draws on the need to present the historical accuracy of African American and Indigenous peoples’ voices and lived experiences. She edited and directed the documentary by TKWolf, Inc. “Unheard Voices-Stalking in Indian Country” and “Unheard, Unseen” an Interview with Dr. Reid Melloy a leading stalking forensic psychologist.
Federico Cuatlacuatl is an artist born in San Francisco Coapan, Cholula, Puebla, Mexico and currently based in Virginia as an Assistant Professor in Department of Art at the University of Virginia. Federico’s work is invested in disseminating topics of Nahua indigenous immigration, social art practice, and cultural sustainability. Building from his own experience growing up as an undocumented immigrant and previously holding DACA (Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals), Federico’s creative practice centers on the intersectionality of indigeneity and immigration under a pressing Anthropocene. At the core of his most recent research and artistic production is the intersection of transborder indigeneity, migrant indigenous diasporas, and Nahua futurisms. Federico’s independent productions have been screened in various national and international film festivals as well as exhibitions in museums and galleries worldwide. As founder and director of the Rasquache Artist Residency in Puebla, Mexico, he actively stays involved in socially engaged works and binational endeavors.
Joe Eggers is the Acting Director of the Center for Holocaust & Genocide Studies at the University of Minnesota. He has overseen the development of educator resources that examine the role of media in commemorating settler-colonial violence, the impact of truth and reconciliation efforts in the U.S., and the inclusion of Indigenous voices in agency narratives around Dakota sacred sites in the Twin Cities area.
In addition to his responsibilities as Acting Director, Joe coordinates the Center’s outreach efforts, including strengthening the University’s ties with resettled communities impacted by mass violence in Minnesota. His areas of interest include conceptual ideas of genocide and the role of mass violence in public memory. Joe received his master’s degree from the University of Minnesota and has been involved with the Center for Holocaust & Genocide Studies since 2014. Prio to his work with the Center, he was involved with community engagement and social justice non-profit organizations in Minneapolis.
Anne Finger’s most recent book-length publication is a novel, A Woman, in Bed (Cinco Puntos, 2018). Her short story collection, Call Me Ahab (Bison Books, 2009), which won the Prairie Schooner Award, takes iconic disability stories such as Moby Dick and “crips” them, rewriting them from a disabled perspective. Two memoirs, Elegy for a Disease: A Personal and Cultural History of Polio (St. Martin’s Press, 2006) and Past Due: A Story of Disability, Pregnancy and Birth (Seal Press, 1990; British edition, Women’s Press, 1991; German translation, Fischer Verlag, 1992) considered her personal experience of disability, placing it within a broader social context, looking at how narratives of disease are formed and of the tensions and confluences between feminism and disability rights. She is currently working on a collection of personal essays, “Wheeling in Berlin,” as well as on a collection of essays on Gramsci and disability. She has also just completed a novel, Mother of God, about a disabled mother dealing with her adult daughter’s psych disability.
She has taught both creative writing and disability studies in the university setting, most recently as the Kate Welling Distinguished Scholar in Disability Studies at Miami University and as a lecturer at the University of California, Berkeley.
She is the recipient of the Berlin Prize (2019), and has held residencies at MacDowell Colony, Djerassi, Yaddo, Centrum, and Hedgebrook.
Dr. Jajuan Johnson, a scholar of Africana Studies, is the Mellon Foundation Postdoctoral Fellow with the Lemon Project at William & Mary. He earned a Ph.D. in Heritage Studies from Arkansas State University.
As a researcher with William & Mary’s Lemon Project, Dr. Johnson studies the university’s ties to slavery and its afterlives. Using the genealogical research method, oral history, and archival analysis, he works collaboratively with descendant communities to make ancestral connections to persons enslaved by the university or its associates, such as faculty and Board of Visitors members. He also teaches courses on research methodologies in the Africana Studies discipline.
Dr. Johnson’s career in public history spans over a decade. He’s served as an AmeriCorps volunteer in the Lower Mississippi Delta region chronicling the area’s social history and was the lead oral historian for the Butler Center for Arkansas Studies. He served as the director of research and interpretation at Mosaic Templars Cultural Center: A Museum of African American History in Little Rock, Arkansas, and more recently, as the assistant director of the Starr Center for the Study of the American Experience at Washington College.
Dr. Johnson is published in Ethnohistory, the Southern Cultures, and the Arkansas Review: A Journal of Delta Studies. He is a member of the Oral History Association, Association for the Study of African American Life, History, and Culture, and the Association of Critical Heritage Studies.
Jephta U Nguherimo was born in the village of Okanjokomukona, Namibia. He was a political refugee during Namibia’s colonial Apartheid era. In 1987, he was awarded a prestigious scholarship from the Bishop Desmond Tutu Scholarship Fund to study at the University of Rochester, NY, where he earned a B.S. in Philosophy and International Political Economy. In 1997, he received an M.S. in Labor Studies from the University of Massachusetts-Amherst. An accomplished labor negotiator and activist, he is the co-founder of the OvaHerero, Ovambanderu, and Nama Genocide Institute (theongi.org) and the author of a book of poetry unBuried-unMarked: The Untold Namibian Story of the Victims of German Genocide between 1904 -1908. He resides in the USA and recently retired from the Maryland State Education Association, where he worked as a union representative. He is an activist in the reparation movement about the OvaHerero and Nama genocide. He engaged in activities that eventually forced the German government to confront and acknowledge the genocide of 1904-08. He has led conversations and presented talks on the restorative justice struggles and memory culture at numerous international conferences. His work led him to be featured in a documentary film by Al Jazeera titled Namibia: The Price of genocide in 2021.
Henry Sands was born and raised in Arizona to a family of public servants, He is a teacher and an academic leader. Staying in state, he graduated from Arizona State University with a BA in History, certificate of Secondary Education and a MEd in Education Leadership before entering public service. He currently teaches at South Mountain High School as a supervisor of the social studies and law departments with responsibility for teaching world and US history, government, economics, social/cultural exploration, psychology, and law related classes. In this role, he has helped plan, write, and implement new, diverse, and inclusive curriculum. His education philosophy fosters a welcoming and inclusive school environment which prepares every student for college, career, and life. To help strengthen the community he serves, Henry mentors new teachers, helps at health clinics and coaches youth sports. Outside of work and activities, Mr. Sands enjoys reading, hiking, volunteering, and cheering on his Arizona sports teams.
Lisa Valleroy-Djang is a proud New Mexican interested in how imagined communities and memory shape narratives and identities. She has worked extensively with Widen the Circle, an organization that combats prejudice by fostering a shared understanding of the past. Her initiatives helped support the Obermayer Awards, which honors people and organizations in Germany that have worked creatively and selflessly to raise awareness of Jewish history and culture in their communities, and to fight the rise of hate, prejudice, and anti-Semitism. As a graduate student, she organized a forum to unpack the history, symbolism, and impact of Confederate and colonialist statues in New Mexico and the broader United States. Lisa also spent time in Munich learning from the team at Bellevue di Monaco, a residential and cultural center for refugees and other Munich citizens. She holds a Bachelor’s degree in German Literature from Reed College and a Master’s Degree in Communication Studies from New Mexico State University.
2021 Building a Diverse and Inclusive Culture of Remembrance (DAICOR) Program
Participant Bios
German Cohort
Katharina Austilat is a student of American Studies and Cultural Sciences at University of Leipzig. Her work and volunteer experiences have allowed her to explore several forms of promoting commemorative culture and gain experience in transmitting memory in different contexts.
Currently, she serves as an intern at the Network for Democratic Culture in Wurzen where she supports and explores concepts for educational programs for young adults in the county. She hopes to extend her knowledge and range of perspectives of participatory forms and frames of commemorative culture in public spaces throughout the DAICOR program.
Prof. Dr. Jacob Eder teaches Modern and Contemporary History at the Barenboim-Said Akademie. His research as a historian deals with the politics of memory, antisemitism, transatlantic relations, humanitarianism, and migration. In 2007, he received an M.A. in History from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, where he held a Fulbright Scholarship. He received an M.A. as well as a Ph.D. in History from the University of Pennsylvania in 2009 and 2012, respectively. Eder has held fellowships at the Georg-Eckert-Institute for International Textbook Research in Braunschweig, the German Historical Institute in Washington, D.C., and twice at the Mandel Center for Advanced Holocaust Studies of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C. In 2011-12, he was the Mellon Foundation Fellow at the IERES/Elliott School of International Affairs at George Washington University, where he also coordinated the Program on Conducting Archival Research. In 2017 and 2018, he was a Visiting Scholar at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.
His book “Holocaust Angst” was a finalist for several awards and received the Fraenkel Prize in Contemporary History of the Wiener Library, the Marko Feingold Prize (Salzburg), and the Betty M. Unterberger Dissertation Prize of the Society for Historians of American Foreign Relations. In 2018, Eder received Jena University’s teaching award for a seminar on memory in Germany and Israel, which brought together students from Jena and Jerusalem.
Annika Hirsekorn has been part of the curatorial team at the Berlin exhibition space neurotitan since 2014. As a curator, she is dedicated to socio-political issues with a focus on memory cultures, human rights education, and urban development. In 2018, she initiated the group Denk.mal Inklusiv to develop strategies for an inclusive culture of memory together with a group of inclusion consultants and artists with and without disabilities. In 2020, the group was awarded by the Internationales Bildungs- und Begegnungswerk for the development of an inclusive website on places of remembrance. In addition to art and educational programs she created in her focus areas and which she carries out with international partner organizations, she further proposes performative appropriations of sites of memory in the series “Encounter with Monument”.
Nora Hogrefe is head of Aktives Museum’s coordinating office for historical markers in Berlin. The office organizes participative projects and the exchange of information on commemorative plaques, information panels and other memorials. In networking and debating the possibility of a contemporary public culture of remembrance, Nora Hogrefe deals with questions, such as: What is the underlying concept of culture and memory in culture of remembrance? Who defines these concepts and has the sovereignty of interpretation? How can different or opposing understandings of the past and present exist simultaneously in a diverse city like Berlin?
Studying European Ethnology (Social and Cultural Anthropology) at Humboldt University Berlin, Nora Hogrefe focused on history of epistemology and culture, postcolonial theory, gender and queer studies, and migration. As a member of the mediation team of the 10th Berlin Biennale (2018), Nora Hogrefe conceptualized guided tours debating current socio-political situations through an engagement with contemporary art. In the emerging area of Education and Outreach of Berlin’s Brücke-Museum, Nora Hogrefe worked as assistant curator on a new orientation of the museum’s program (2018–2020). The concept of outreach intends to challenge museum collections in terms of their political relevance and social impact through innovative formats and diverse audiences, including the museums’ neighborhoods.
Suy Lan Hopmann is currently Curator for Special Projects and Diversity at the Museum am Rothenbaum – Arts and Cultures of the World, Hamburg, Germany. She has previously worked as Research Associate at the Chair of Politics and Economics of China at Freie Universität Berlin and the Collaborative Research Center 700 – Governance in Areas of Limited Statehood. She studied China Studies, Gender Studies and Sociology at Hamburg University and has lived, worked and researched in various countries in East and South Asia and Bristol.
Prof. Dr. Meike Hopp studied art history, theater studies, and classical archaeology at Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität in Munich, where she received her doctorate in 2012 on the topic of “Art Trade under National Socialism”. Since 2009, she has led various projects in the field of provenance research at the Zentralinstitut für Kunstgeschichte (ZI), Munich, and has worked on several exhibition and catalog projects, such as “Bestandsaufnahme Gurlitt” at the Bundeskunsthalle in Bonn and the Kunstmuseum Bern (2017).
In 2018, she was awarded a research fellowship in the Cluster of Excellence TOPOI at the Technical University of Berlin on “Networks of the German Antiques Trade between 1914 and 1949.” Since November 2018, she has served as chair of the Arbeitskreis Provenienzforschung e.V., a non-profit association that brings together nearly 400 international researchers in the field; in November 2019, Meike Hopp was appointed Professor of Digital Provenance at the Technical University of Berlin. She is an associate member of the Einstein Center Digital Future (ECDF) and one of the PIs in the Grand Challenge Project of the Berlin University Alliance “Museums and Society. Mapping the Social” (https://museumsandsociety.net/). Most recently, she has been appointed as a member of the Board of Trustees of the Deutsches Zentrum Kulturgutverluste (German Lost Art Foundation).
Dr. Tania Mancheno has lived in Hamburg since 2003 and has taught at the University of Hamburg in the field of social sciences and geography on postcolonial theory and decolonial thought since 2009.
She studied sociology, political sciences and social anthropology in Quito, Hamburg and Paris. Her research is focused on urban space and violence, colonial history and the analysis of its local and transnational consequences from a feminist perspective from the Global South, with an special focus on Black Caribbean political thinking. In 2019, she obtained her PhD with a dissertation on the politics of translation and the debate on multiculturalism. Currently, Dr. Mancheno is an associate scholar at the research centre “Hamburg’s (post)colonial heritage Hamburg and the early globalization” and is involved in several interdisciplinary projects on decolonial memory in the city. Her coming publications are two essays in edited volumes entitled: “Beyond coloniality in world heritage: Countermapping the colonial amnesia in Parisian landscapes” and “Die Stadt spielt Hafen. Über das koloniale Erbe der Hafencity”.
Bonka von Bredow, born in Sofia/ Bulgaria has studied Near Eastern Archaeology, Assyriology and Classical Archaeology at the Ruprecht- Karls University in Heidelberg. During her studies, she worked as an archaeologist in Kültepe-Kanish in Central Turkey. Currently she is working in a project “Documentation of Migrant History in Mannheim”, which is initiated by the MARCHIVUM, the city archive of Mannheim. The aim of this project is to collect materials and documents from migrants, their clubs and associations, cultural and religious places, in order to represent the whole diverse society of Mannheim in the city archive as a collective heritage. Due to her project, she is participating in a work group of the city of Mannheim, which is planning to establish a “remembrance place” for the so called “Gastarbeiter” of the first generation, who moved to the city due to the recruitment agreements for “guest workers” made by the Federal Republic of Germany. (1955-1968). Her main interest lies on the awakening processes within the city of Mannheim to remember, to remain migrant histories, to shape new remembrance places for migrants and to build a stronger and more open society.
U.S. Cohort
Clarice Abdul-Bey is a native Arkansan, who loves her hometown and wants to see all neighborhoods and communities in Arkansas flourish. As a lifelong youth mentor and youth advocate, Clarice is ardent about coaching students in the areas of solutions-based journalism, interviewing skills, and what she likes to call active-empathetic listening techniques. Co-Director of the Washitaw Foothills Youth Media Arts & Literacy Collective (WFYMALC.org), and Co-Convener of the Arkansas Peace and Justice Memorial Movement (APJMM.org). She is a Racial Justice Facilitator, Mental Health First Aider, Mindfulness Relationships Practitioner, and a proud AmeriCorps Alum, passionate about wellness integration in workspaces, advocacy, and social justice issues.
Kenny Fries is the author of In the Province of the Gods (Creative Capital Literature Award); The History of My Shoes and the Evolution of Darwin’s Theory (Outstanding Book Award, Gustavus Myers Center for the Study of Bigotry and Human Rights); and Body, Remember: A Memoir. He edited Staring Back: The Disability Experience from the Inside Out and was commissioned by Houston Grand Opera to write the libretto for The Memory Stone. His books of poems include In the Gardens of Japan, Desert Walking, and Anesthesia. Kenny’s work has appeared in The New York Times, Washington Post, Granta, The Believer, Kyoto Journal, LiteraryHub, Electric Literature, The Progressive, Catapult, Los Angeles Review of Books, and in many other publications and anthologies. He wrote the Disability Beat column for How We Get To Next, and developed the Fries Test for disability representation in our culture. His work has been translated into Spanish, German, French, and Japanese.
Kenny is recipient of a Rockefeller Foundation Bellagio Center Arts and Literary Arts Fellowship, and was a Creative Arts Fellow of the Japan-U.S. Friendship Commission and the National Endowment for the Arts. He has twice been a Fulbright Scholar (Japan and Germany), and has received grants from the DAAD, Canada Council for the Arts, Ontario Arts Council, and Toronto Arts Council. He was an honoree on Diversability’s inaugural Disability Impact List.
His work-in-progress is Stumbling over History: Disability and the Holocaust, excerpts from which are featured in his video series What Happened Here in the Summer of 1940?
He teaches in the MFA in Creative Writing Program at Goddard College.
Candace Bacchus Hollingsworth has a passion for service and improving the effectiveness of public sector organizations to advance their missions. She has 15 years’ experience in the nonprofit sector having assumed roles ranging from grants manager to virtual CFO and has managed projects of all sizes. Candace serves as the Director of AmeriCorps Programs at The Corps Network, where she oversees an AmeriCorps program that engages over 900 opportunity youth in national service through conservation and environmental stewardship.
She most recently served as mayor of Hyattsville, Maryland where she was the youngest, and first African American mayor in the city’s history. As mayor, Candace championed policies and programs that improved outcomes for young people, expanded opportunities for marginalized communities, and charted a path toward shared prosperity. Candace stepped down as mayor in December 2020 to grow Our Black Party, a political organization established to help lead a national agenda to create lasting change in the everyday lives of Black people nationwide as its national co-chair.
Candace is a graduate of Phillips Exeter Academy and received a Bachelor of Arts from Emory University and a Master of Public Policy (MPP) from Georgetown University. She is a board member for the Prince George’s County African American Museum and Cultural Center, a Sisters on the Planet Ambassador for OxFam America, and a proud member of Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority, Inc.
Dr. Earl S. Mowatt earned his Ph.D. in Sociology from the University of Central Florida. He is a published author on race relations and has presented research at conferences throughout the United States. He has also developed effective HIV prevention strategies to reduce the adverse effects of social isolation and stigma for marginalized populations. His area of expertise is the intersection of social inequality and social psychology.
Neysa Page-Lieberman is a curator, lecturer, writer, and educator with a focus on feminism, African diaspora, social practice and public art. Based in Kansas City since 2020, she curates, produces and consults on public art, street art and monuments. With collaborator, Jane M. Saks, Neysa co-founded the project Monuments to Movements – In the House of Radical Feminist Practices, and currently serves as the M2M Co-Artistic Director. Prior to relocating to Kansas City, Neysa was the executive director of the Department of Exhibitions and Performance Spaces at Columbia College Chicago, the director and chief curator of the Wabash Arts Corridor and a lecturer at the Art Institute of Chicago.
Neysa has produced over 300 exhibitions and public art projects nationally and internationally, including: Inequality in Bronze: Monumental Plantation Legacies, a monument to Dinah, a formerly enslaved woman in Philadelphia; international mural exchanges with Sister Cities International in Casablanca, Morocco and Toronto, Canada; Street Level: Wabash Arts Corridor Public Arts Festival; Revolution at Point Zero: Feminist Social Practice; Vacancy: Urban Interruption and (Re)generation, with the Chicago Architecture Biennial; Not Ready to Make Nice: Guerrilla Girls in the Artworld and Beyond touring for 7 years to 9 museums; Vodou Riche: Contemporary Haitian Art and a recently launched a mural and monument project to Illinois Women’s Suffrage. Neysa has lectured and written extensively on public art & monuments, feminist art, African disapora and socially-engaged practices. Recently she co-authored with Melissa Potter the Feminist Social Practice Manifesto (John Hopkins University Press) and published Feminism in Your Face: Public Art Resistance in Where the Future Came From, edited by Meg Duguid (Soberscove Press).
Jumana Salamey, Au.D, is the Deputy Director, Manager of Operations at AANM. Jumana has dedicated over a decade of her professional career as a cultural administrator- holding space for artists and co creating space for communities of color. She is as fellow of the Intercultural Leadership Institute and the chair of the Diversity Equity and Inclusion at her organization, which has nearly 300 staff. She is also a founding member if the International Sites of Conscience and an active member of her community. Dr. Salamey also leads initiatives related to accessibility and inclusion. She has a B.A. in Psychology and Women’s Studies from the University of Michigan-Dearborn and an Au.D. in Audiology from Wayne State University. Dr. Salamey manages the day-to-day business operations of the museum and ensures program goals are completed.
Tsoleen Sarian is Executive Director of Project SAVE Armenian Photograph Archives. Currently she serves leadership roles in the Armenian Memorial Church and the Friends of Armenian Heritage Park.
Since 2002, Tsoleen has managed Peter Koutoujian’s election campaigns. Previous leadership roles include ANCA Eastern Region, Homenetmen Boston, and AGBU YP Boston. She holds a Batchelor’s degree in History from Merrimack College and a Master’s Degree in Nonprofit Management from Northeastern University.
Nicholas Suárez Pástor is a documentary filmmaker and lawyer based in Berlin. He has been involved in human rights projects with local governments, civil society and international organizations in Ecuador, Bolivia, USA and Germany. After working as a video producer for an international news organization in Washington D.C., he moved to Berlin for pursuing a Master in Arts in Documentary Filmmaking. His work focuses on access to truth as a means for achieving justice, especially after gross human rights violations. In this sense, he is convinced that documentary filmmaking can contribute to the construction of historical memory, justice and long-lasting peace.