Equity and Inclusion Virtual Speaker Series

Learn With Us!

POCIS Northwest’s Equity and Inclusion Virtual Speaker Series offers our communities and beyond the opportunity to connect, learn, and engage in topics about equity, inclusion, and antiracist education and action.

The purpose of this series is to raise awareness, challenge ourselves, deepen understanding, and empower our communities to advance their efforts to actively recreate systems into equitable, inclusive, and antiracist institutions. The program invites 4-5 speakers throughout the academic year, providing access to recognized authors and speakers who engage participants in complex topics through dialogue and cross-cultural communication.

The virtual speaker series is intended to lead to a deeper understanding of the impact racism and oppression have in our institutions and the greater society. These virtual events are free and accessible to all regardless of POCIS Northwest membership.

This Year’s Speakers

In this keynote, Dr. Gholdy Muhammad offers a unique, culturally, and historically responsive approach to cultivating genius and joy in education. This approach is essential for accelerating the growth of all students and uniquely youth of color, who have been traditionally underserved in learning standards, policies, and school practices. She will present her equity framework, called the HILL Model, to help educators develop students’ histories, identities, literacies, and liberation. Participants will learn and understand history and policy and personal and instructional factors that justify the need and purpose for culturally and historically responsive education. Additionally, participants will see sample lesson/unit plans across grade levels, moving theory into action.

Dr. Gholnecsar (Gholdy) Muhammad is an Associate Professor of Literacy, Language, and Culture at the University of Illinois at Chicago. Dr. Muhammad’s scholarship has appeared in leading academic journals and books. She has also received numerous national awards and is the author of the best-selling book, Cultivating Genius: An Equity Model for Culturally and Historically Responsive Literacy. She also co-authored Black girls’ literacies: An Edited Volume. Her Culturally and Historically Responsive Education Model has been adopted across thousands of U.S. schools and districts across Canada. Her newest book, Unearthing Joy, is the sequel to Cultivating Genius and provides a practical guide for putting culturally and historically responsive education into curricular practice. Learn more HERE

In this virtual keynote, participants will learn how to use a number of strategies to cultivate the kind of emotional resilience needed to build equitable schools. Participants will anchor in their values and purpose, explore how to navigate uncomfortable emotions, and learn why emotional resilience is the missing element in most equity endeavors. Participants will recognize and appreciate the connection between cultivating their own resilience and building equitable schools, learn how to use simple strategies to cultivate their emotional resilience when building equitable schools, and understand the critical importance of emotional resilience when building equitable schools.

Elena Aguilar is an author, coach, and CEO. Elena Aguilar has worked in education since 1994. Her years of teaching, coaching, and leading teams in the Oakland, CA public schools deeply inform the eight books she’s written and the trainings she designs and facilitates. Elena is committed to creating equitable schools and organizations where everyone thrives. She founded Bright Morning in 2017 to advance this vision. See Elena’s Bio HERE and learn more about Bright Morning HERE.

Past Presenters

Ruha Benjamin

Race to the Future? Reimagining the Default Setting of Technology and Society

From automated decision systems in healthcare, policing, education and more, technologies have the potential to deepen discrimination while appearing neutral and even benevolent when compared to harmful practices of a previous era. In this talk, Ruha Benjamin takes us into the world of biased bots, altruistic algorithms, and their many entanglements, and provides conceptual tools to decode tech predictions with historical and sociological insight. When it comes to AI, Ruha shifts our focus from the dystopian and utopian narratives we are sold, to a sober reckoning with the way these tools are already a part of our lives. Whereas dystopias are the stuff of nightmares, and utopias the stuff of dreams… utopias are what we create together when we are wide awake.

Dr. Megan Asaka

Beyond the Model Minority: Asian American Histories of Resistance and Renewal in the Pacific Northwest and Beyond

In this talk, Dr. Megan Asaka will examine how Asian Americans have responded to, challenged, and resisted anti-Asian racism and injustice. Though often portrayed as passive “model minorities,” Asian Americans have a rich legacy of resistance and militant action that has long been overlooked. Focusing on historical accounts from in and beyond the Pacific Northwest, Dr. Asaka will offer a new understanding of the Asian American past as a pathway for future action.

Dr. Bernice A. King

A Conversation with Dr. Bernice A. King

Dr. Bernice A. King is a global thought leader, strategist, solutionist, orator, peace advocate, and CEO of the Martin Luther King, Jr. Center For Nonviolent Social Change (The King Center), which was founded by her mother as the official living memorial to the life, work, and legacy of her father. In this position, Bernice continues to advance her parents’ legacy of nonviolent social change through policy, advocacy, research, as well as education & training through the Kingian philosophy of nonviolence, which she re-branded Nonviolence365TM️ (NV365).

Prisca Dorcas Mojica Rodríguez

Storytelling as Resistance: Experience at Predominantly White Institutions and Generational Trauma

In this talk Prisca Dorcas will name what it means to attend a predominantly white institution, PWI, as a non-white person. She will also address generational trauma telling stories about her own experiences with therapy, the stigmas around therapy, being 1st generation, and the experiences with being from a war-torn country has meant for her and her family. She will also explore ways to reclaim traditions while healing from generational trauma.

Kimberlee Williams

Dear White Woman, Please Come Home: Showing Up as a Safe Space in Our Schools

Kimberlee Williams, Author of Dear White Woman, Please Come Home, is a humanist first and believes that racism can be dismantled through authentic relationship building where a mirror is held up to interrogate one’s assumptions, beliefs, behaviors, and patterns of interactions. With a shift in any and all of the above as authentic relationships dive beneath the surface, the power and harm caused by the legacy of racism can be dismantled.

LeDerick Horne

Disability, Race, and Identity

Within this presentation LeDerick Horne will draw from the book “Empowering. Students with Hidden Disabilities: A Path to Pride and Success.” LeDerick will share his own experience navigating special education classes and will give advice to help all students develop positive identities as people with disabilities. Strategies to help students reach their transition goals will be provided. The audience will also explore the intersectionality of disability, race, and identity to help them create more inclusive schools and communities. LeDerick’s personal story and poetry will also be shared during this talk

Dr. Yuria Celidwen

Healing & Wholeness as Love, Power, and Resistance

In community, we pause, we open, we nourish, and we become.

We pay attention, and all we hear is urgency. The challenges are innumerable, but also infinite are the opportunities. Our grief is daunting, but also heartening is our compassion. This historical moment encourages us to reflect, make sense, and participate in the collective transformation expected from the human world today. Contemplative living reminds us that intentional action requires mindful assessment of the causes and conditions that have shaped who and where we are today.

Tiffany Jewell

The Anti-Racist Kid: Identity, Justice, and Activism

Grow your antiracist consciousness! Using a framework similar to This Book Is Anti-Racist, learn how to take action and work towards creating anti-bias anti-racist classrooms, libraries, schools, and community spaces. Listeners will grow into their awareness and start to make a plan on how to support their own growth and that of those they are working with. Learn how to authentically center the voices of those who are too often silenced, ignored, and left out of history in our own spaces! Build an inclusive anti-bias antiracist community that empowers all who enter!

Dr. Eddie Moore, Jr.

NWord: Is There a Message in the Madness

Who is allowed to say the N!word? What do we do or say when the N!word is said in our classrooms, hallways, practices, cafeterias and resident halls? Ignoring the N!Word is not an option anymore – You can hear N!Word everywhere nowadays. Participants are challenged to examine their personal/professional histories with N!Word when and/or how they first heard N!Word and pictures/feelings associated with the word. The workshop encourages all people, but specifically future leaders, educators and parents, to consider the ramifications of casual or uniformed usage of a powerful and troublesome word.

Gyasi Ross

Indigenous People, Race, and Education

Native American voices work to raise awareness about the unique challenges that Indigenous people face, and to acknowledge the important contributions they’ve made to the diverse traditions and cultures of America. Ross is the author of Don’t Know Much About Indians (but I wrote a book about us anyways) (2011) and How to Say I Love You in Indian (2014). He is a speaker on race, social justice, and white privilege as well as issues specifically affecting contemporary Native Americans.

Dr. Erika Lee

Asian Americans in America’s History: A Look to Xenophobia and Racism

Asian Americans are the fastest-growing group in the US and have long and complicated histories in the country. Still, most Americans may only know Asian Americans through the stereotype of America’s “model minorities.” Award-winning author and historian Erika Lee joins us to dive deep into the history of Asian Americans in the United States, with a specific focus on anti-Asian xenophobia and racism. This lecture and discussion will offer new insights into the Asian American experience and what it means to be American today.

Dr. Beverly Tatum

A Conversation with Dr. Beverly Tatum about Race and Racism

The ongoing senseless killing of Black men and women has prompted much-needed and long-overdue conversations about race and racism. Many of us wonder, how do we talk about this with our kids? How do we teach them about racial identity and equality? Dr. Beverly Daniel Tatum, president emerita of Spelman College, an award-winning clinical psychologist, a national authority on racial issues in America, and a thought leader in higher education, joins us to look at why these conversations are so difficult and share her insights on how to talk with kids and each other about race and racism and how to be actively anti-racist.

Jason Reynolds

Racism and Young People’s Literature

Jason Reynolds is a #1 New York Times bestselling author who writes novels and poetry for young adult and middle-grade audiences. His award-winning book, Look Both Ways: A Tale Told in Ten Blocks, was a National Book Award finalist, Carnegie Medal winner, and was named one of the best books of 2019 by NPR, The New York Times, School Library Journal, and more. Look Both Ways is composed of interconnected stories, each centering on a different student from the same school and tells what happens after the dismissal bell rings, brilliantly reminding readers to look at our surroundings more closely and notice all the things that connect us to our communities.

Dr. Bettina L. Love

We Gon’ Be Alright, But That Ain’t Alright: Abolitionist Teaching and the Pursuit of Educational Freedom

Dr. Love discusses how Hip Hop Civics Ed, when linked to the framework of intersectionality and Abolitionist Teaching, creates a space where Black lives matter and analytic sensibilities are nurtured to engage youth in the work of fighting for visibility, inclusion, and justice. Her talk will end by calling for us all not only to teach students about racial violence, oppression, and how to make sustainable change in their communities through innovative and radical civic curriculum, but also to expose youth to the possibilities that come with envisioning a world built on Black joy, creativity, imagination, boldness, ingenuity, and the rebellious spirit and methods of abolitionists.