The Advisory Council

The Advisory Council is made up of professionals in the field of educational justice, and is predominantly people of color. This board provides strategic direction, acts as a thought partner helping to advance our mission, calls out places where our members/programs/language reproduce White supremacy and helps build relationships in the field of integration and educational justice. 

Andrew

(Amherst, MA)

Embrace Race

Bio

Andrew is a dad to Lola and Lena, a partner to Melissa, a son, a friend, a social justice worker and long-time racial justice guy, a Black man of Jamaican origins in the United States, born on the 4th of July. He has good friends, decent health, two lovely, healthy girls, a wonderful partner, and nice degrees from elite institutions. Most members of his immediate and extended families live solidly middle-class lives at a time when fewer and fewer people can claim that. He’s been able to do work meaningful to him for a long time alongside good people whose examples inspire him. With the examples of people everywhere doing heroic work to push back against injustice, racial and otherwise, he feels it would be obscene not to lend his efforts to that struggle.

Eileen

(Springfield, VA)
Embrace Diverse Schools

Bio

Eileen’s commitment to the strengths of diversity was inspired by the education of her children at one of the most diverse high schools in the United States, with students from wide-ranging races, ethnicities and economic backgrounds, hailing from nearly 90 nations. Eileen’s award-winning book, Debunking the Middle-Class Myth: Why Diverse Schools are Good for All Kids, inspires honest dialogue on how diversity enriches education for every student. Her latest book, Innovative Voices in Education: Engaging Diverse Communities shares strategies from 17 ground-breaking educators and community leaders around the world in passionate first-person accounts.

Noliwe

(Providence, RI)

Brown University

Bio

An interdisciplinary scholar, Dr. Noliwe Rooks, is the Chair of, and a professor in Africana Studies at Brown University and the founding director of the Segrenomics Lab at the school. Her work explores how race and gender both impact and are impacted by popular culture, social history and political life in the United States. She works on the cultural and racial implications of beauty, fashion and adornment; race, capitalism and education, and the urban politics of food and cannabis production.

The author of four books and numerous articles, essays and op-ed pieces, Rooks has received research funding from the Ford Foundation, the Mellon Foundation and the Woodrow Wilson School among others. She lectures frequently at colleges and universities around the country and is a regular contributor to popular outlets such as The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Chronicle of Higher Education, Time Magazine and NPR.

Rooks’ current book, in which she coined the term “segrenomics,” is Cutting School: Privatization, Segregation, and the End of Public Education which won an award for non-fiction from the Hurston/Wright Foundation.

matt

(NYC,NY)
(i3) at the NYU Metro Center

Bio

matt gonzales is an educator, organizer, facilitator, and a policy expert. He is founding director of the Integration and Innovation Initiative (i3) at the NYU Metro Center. He has been influential in the policy and advocacy for school integration and racial equity in New York City and across the country. Through his work on the NYC School Diversity Advisory Group, matt helped craft New York City policy on school integration. He has also contributed to the Culturally Responsive and Sustaining Education (CRSE) framework adopted by the NYCDOE. He is coordinator for New Yorkers for Racially Just Public Schools (RJPS), an education justice coalition, and serves on the Steering Committee for the National Coalition on School Diversity (NCSD). He is a former special education teacher at Bancroft Middle School in Los Angeles, and earned his Masters in Education Policy from Teachers College, Columbia University in 2016. He earned his Bachelor’s in Urban Education and a Special Education Teaching Credential from California State University, Los Angeles, and began his higher education journey at Santa Monica Community College.