Seed Grant Recipients

Assistant Professor in the University Writing Program
Project Name: writehealing, policy and praxis project (WHPP)

Biography

Jameta Nicole Barlow, PhD, MPH, RYT® 200, a Charlottesville, Virginia native, is a community health psychologist, women’s health scholar and an assistant professor of writing in GW's University Writing and Women's Leadership Programs. She holds secondary appointments in the Milken Institute of Public Health’s Department of Health Policy and Management and the Columbian College of Arts and Sciences’ Women's, Gender & Sexuality Studies Program, where she is the Director of Undergraduate Studies. An affiliate faculty member in the Global Women's Institute, Africana Studies Program and the Jacobs Institute of Women's Health, Dr. Barlow’s research utilizes decolonizing methodologies to disrupt cardiometabolic syndrome and structural policies adversely affecting Black girls' and women's health,  intergenerational trauma and perinatal mental health, focusing on her evidence-based curriculum, "writehealing," to uncover trauma and healing. She has spent 24 years in transdisciplinary collaborations with physicians, public health practitioners, researchers, policy administrators, activists, political appointees, and community members in diverse settings throughout the world. Dr. Barlow’s work has been quoted in The New York Times, The Washington Post, Essence, Shape, Insider, NBC News, OZY, mashable, the Skimm, Medical News Today, Psych Central, and Healthline. She is currently curating an edited collection on Black girls' and women's health.

Associate Professor of Emergency Medicine and Health Policy and Management, School of Medicine & Health Sciences
Project Name: Association of the COVID-19 Pandemic With Medical School Diversity Pathway Programs

Biography

Sonal Batra, MD, MST, FACEP is a practicing emergency medicine physicia, an Associate Professor of Emergency Medicine and of Health Policy and Management at the George Washington University, and serves as co-chief of the Department of Emergency Medicine’s Health Equity Section. 

 Dr. Batra was a founding board member of the Beyond Flexner Alliance and serves as Principal Investigator of the Social Mission Metrics Initiative, a project aimed at developing a framework to measure the social mission of health professions schools.  She is particularly interested in diversifying the healthcare workforce and has worked on several diversity pathway programs for high school students across Washington, DC. Dr. Batra spent six years as Associate Director of the Emergency Medicine Residency Program at GW and teaches several Clinical Public Health courses for medical students. She also has experience in global health, developing web-based curriculum for post-graduate training programs across India and volunteering with the Physicians for Human Rights Asylum Network.

Dr. Batra received her bachelor of arts in psychology and her medical degree from Northwestern University. She completed residency in emergency medicine at the George Washington University, serving as chief resident in her final year. Between undergraduate and medical school, Dr. Batra spent two years teaching middle school science with Teach for America. During that time, she earned a Master’s of Science in Teaching (MST) from Pace University in New York City.

Senior Research Associate, Global Mental Health Equity Lab
Project Name: Restoring Mental Health After COVID-19 Through Community-Based Psychological services in New York City (RECOUP-NY)

Biography

Chynere Best, PhD is a Senior Research Associate in the Global Mental Health Equity Lab at the George Washington University. She received her doctorate in Developmental Psychology from Howard University. Chynere has experience in curriculum development for an NIDDK funded program for minority researchers and translating research into practical fact sheets, tip tools and other resources for public consumption as part of the American Psychological Association's racial and ethnic socialization (RESilience) Initiative. She has also edited, transcribed, and crafted continuing education materials based on clinically relevant content produced in various forms of media for professional and public consumption. Immediately prior to joining GWU, Chynere taught various undergraduate psychology courses at several universities in the DC area. Chynere's research interests focus on the impact of family dynamics on various health risk behaviors and coping strategies displayed by emerging adults in the Caribbean diaspora.

Associate Professor of Law, GW Law
Project Name: Avoiding The Prosecutor’s Paradox: How Race-Neutral Charging Drives Racial Disparities and How Race-Neutral Reforms Can Help

Biography

Don teaches courses on criminal law, evidence, policing, evidence-based policymaking, data-driven criminal justice reform, and data science and law. Through his work with The Justice Innovation Lab, he assists jurisdictions seeking to reduce inequality through criminal justice reform. He also serves as Board Chair of the DC Justice Lab, and assists The Lab @ DC, in providing assistance and support to DC Agencies seeking to increase equitable outcomes, particularly in the areas of public safety and reentry.

Don is a graduate of Yale Law School and the Yale Graduate School (Anthropology), where he worked with families of prisoners and authored Doing Time on the Outside, a study of the impact of mass incarceration on families and communities in the District of Columbia.  He has written extensively about the role the criminal justice system plays in disassembling families and communities, contributing to the conditions that give rise to the forms of social disorder that the criminal justice system purports to reduce.

Associate Professor of Philosophy; Affiliated Faculty, Trachtenberg School of Public Policy and Public Administration, Columbian College of Arts and Sciences
Project Name: Moral Psychology and Antiracist Obligations

Biography

Jeffrey Brand is Associate Professor of Philosophy at the George Washington University and also affiliated with the Trachtenberg School of Public Policy and Public Administration. As of 2022, Professor Brand serves as Associate Provost for Undergraduate Affairs and Special Programs. He served as Associate Dean for Graduate Studies in the Columbian College of Arts and Sciences from 2014-2019. Professor Brand has published on criminal sentencing theory, the ethics of adjudication, and social contract theory, among other topics. His current research addresses theoretical questions concerning the scope and stringency of social justice obligations.  His work has appeared in such journals as Ethics, Legal Theory, and the Canadian Journal of Law & Jurisprudence.  His monograph, Limits of Legality: The Ethics of Lawless Judging (Oxford University Press, 2010) appeared in Chinese translation with China Renmin University Press in 2017. In 2010 he received the Morton A. Bender Award for General Teaching Excellence from the University.  He was a full-time visiting scholar in the Department of Bioethics at the National Institutes of Health in 2012-13. A graduate of Vassar College, he holds a JD and a PhD in philosophy from the University of Michigan - Ann Arbor.

Professor of International Affairs, International Business, and Public Policy & Public Administration, Elliott School of International Affairs
Project Name: The Generations Dialogue Project: Towards a More Representative American Foreign Policy

Biography

Jennifer M. Brinkerhoff is Professor of Public Administration and International Affairs at George Washington University. She has published eight books, including: Institutional Reform and Diaspora Entrepreneurs: The In-Between Advantage (Oxford University Press, 2016), Digital Diasporas: Identity and Transnational Engagement (Cambridge University Press, 2009), and, most recently, The Young Black Leader’s Guide to a Successful Career in International Affairs: What the Giants Want You to Know (Lynne Rienner Publishers, 2022), coauthored with Aaron Williams and Taylor Jack. She won the 2021 Distinguished Scholar Award from the Ethnicity, Nationalism and Migration Studies Section of the International Studies Association for her research on diasporas; and the 2016 Fred Riggs Award for Lifetime Achievement in International and Comparative Public Administration from the American Society for Public Administration. She is an elected Fellow of the National Academy for Public Administration. Dr. Brinkerhoff has consulted for multilateral development banks, bilateral assistance agencies, NGOs, and foundations.

Theodore Rinehart Professor Business Law, GW Law
Project Name: Repairing International Tax Reform

Biography

Before joining the law school faculty, Karen B. Brown was a Professor of Law at the Brooklyn Law School and at the University of Minnesota where she was the Julius E. Davis Professor of Law for 1995–96 and received the Stanley V. Kinyon Award for excellence in teaching in 1997. At the University of Minnesota she also served as Associate Dean for Academic Affairs from 1995 to 1997. Before beginning her teaching career, Professor Brown was a Trial Attorney for the U.S. Department of Justice, Tax Division, and an associate at Steptoe & Johnson in Washington, DC. 

Professor Brown’s teaching and scholarship interests are in the areas of income, corporate, and international taxation. She has co-written a book on international tax transactions and co-edited a book on tax reform. She has written numerous articles and book chapters and delivered many presentations on federal taxation. Professor Brown is a member of the American Law Institute and the International Fiscal Association.

Professor of Economics, Columbian College of Arts and Sciences
Project Name: The Economic Demography of Gender Egalitarianism

Biography

Professor Carmel Chiswick is a Development Economist and a Labor Economist. She holds a PhD from Columbia University in the City of New York, where she studied economic development and economic history. She worked as an Economist at USAID, the United Nations, and The World Bank. She frequently presents her research to academic conferences and community groups and has held several visiting appointments at universities in the U.S. and in Israel. She is currently Professor Emerita from the University of Illinois at Chicago and Research Fellow at the Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA) in Bonn, Germany. Professor Chiswick joined The GWU Department of Economics as Research Professor in 2011.

Professor Chiswick's research in labor and economic demography includes studies of household work, family formation, and immigration (impacts). Her research on economic development deals with problems related to employment and education, especially in Thailand, and with systems of household and labor force statistics. Her recent work focuses on the economics of religion, especially as it applies to the American Jewish family, to Jewish religious observance and to American Jewish communal institutions.

Associate Professor, Educational Administration, Graduate School of Education and Human Development
Project Name: Leading for Equity: How Principals Experience Professional Learning

Biography

Jennifer K. Clayton, PhD is an Associate Professor in the Department of Educational Leadership at the George Washington University. Prior to joining The George Washington University in 2010, she served as a Visiting Assistant Professor at Old Dominion University. Dr. Clayton is a career educator who has taught and led at the middle and high school levels.

Dr. Clayton earned her PhD in Educational Leadership at Old Dominion University, Master’s of Education in Educational Administration at Rutgers University, and Bachelor of Arts at James Madison University. Her research interests include leadership development and professional learning for school leaders especially in the area of leading for equity. These efforts have resulted in more than 40 publications, in addition to national and international presentations. She currently works on the leadership team for the Leadership for Equity Institute with 15 school divisions in Virginia. Dr. Clayton was Reviewer of the Year for Mentoring and Tutoring in 2014, Leadership for School Improvement SIG in AERA Dissertation of the Year in 2010, and has been nominated for her teaching at GW through the Bender Teaching Award in 2018 and the Honey Nashman Spark-a-Life Faculty of the Year Award in 2016.

Associate Dean, School of Nursing
Project Name: Building Covid-19 Confidence

Biography

Dr. Karen Drenkard is Associate Dean and Professor, Clinical Practice and Community Engagement at George Washington University School of Nursing in Washington DC. She is responsible for community partnerships within the school of nursing, including global initiatives and clinical practice partnerships. Drenkard’s has past experience as chief nurse executive of Inova Health System for 10 years, served as chief nurse of a technology company, and was the Executive Director of the American Nurses Credentialing Center and Magnet Recognition Program®. 

She is an elected executive board member (Secretary) of the American Academy of Nursing and board liaison to the Academy’s Institute for Nursing Leadership.  She is a past-President of the Friends of the National Institute for Nursing Research (FNINR); an editorial advisor to Journal of Nursing Administration (JONA) and Nursing Administration Quarterly (NAQ). She serves as a volunteer Board of Trustee member and chair of the Quality and Safety Committee for Luminis Health System in Annapolis, Maryland, and is a volunteer member of the Inova Alexandria Hospital Quality and Safety Committee.  She is a fellow in the American Academy of Nursing and the National Academies of Practice.

Drenkard received her PhD in nursing administration, policy and ethics from George Mason University, is a Wharton Nurse Executive Fellow, and a Robert Wood Johnson Executive Nurse Fellow. 

Professor of Medicine; Founding Director, Rodham Institute, School of Medicine & Health Sciences
Project Name: Medical Legal Partnership Pilot

Biography

Dr. El-Bayoumi was born in Florida, raised in East Lansing, Michigan and attended the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor for both undergraduate and medical school. She then moved to Washington, D.C. in 1985 to complete her internship, residency and chief residency in internal medicine at the George Washington University School of Medicine and Health Sciences (SMHS). After completion of her training, she joined the Division of General Internal Medicine at GW.  Dr. El-Bayoumi served as clerkship director for many years prior to becoming the Internal Medicine Residency Program director in 1998, and remained in that role for 15 years. Dr. El-Bayoumi is a professor of medicine and she has a very active clinical practice.

Learning how to better educate and evaluate learners, from all levels has been a long-standing interest of hers. She has lectured and taught in the GW Milken Institute School of Public Health, the School of Medicine and Health Sciences (SMHS), and the SMHS residency program, as well as in the community about topics such as women and minority health. She has served on the boards of Center for Women Policy Studies, National Women’s Health Network, and Arts for the Aging. She is currently serving as a board member for Whitman Walker Health.

Dr. El-Bayoumi founded the Rodham Institute to honor her patient, Mrs. Dorothy E. Rodham. She was not only a patient, but she also became her cherished friend. Mrs. Rodham was a wonderful human being who was committed to social justice and this Institute was created to honor her legacy.

Assistant Professor, Global Health; Director of the Center for Community Resilience, Milken Institute School of Public Health
Project Name: Truth and Equity: DC Initiative to Dismantle Systemic Racism, Foster Repair, and Transform Policy and Practice

Biography

Wendy Ellis is an Assistant Professor in Global Health and the Founding Director of the Center for Community Resilience at the Milken Institute School of Public Health at George Washington University. Dr. Ellis has spent the last fifteen years developing and working to grow a 'resilience movement' to address systemic inequities that contribute to social and health disparities that are often transmitted in families and communities from generation to generation. 

The Building Community Resilience (BCR) collaborative and Resilience Catalysts networks are implementing Dr. Ellis’ BCR process and the Community Resilience framework she developed during her doctoral studies at The George Washington University. Ellis’ innovations provide a platform for cross-sector partners to align resources, programs and initiatives with community-based efforts to address adverse childhood experiences and adverse community environments-- or as Ellis has coined it "The Pair of ACEs". The strengths-based approach is aimed at building the infrastructure to disrupt cycles of structural racism, foster equity and promote resilience in communities by improving access to supports and buffers that help individuals 'bounce back' and communities thrive. The BCR process and Community Resilience framework are being used in more than 20 cities and states across the country. Dr. Ellis’ Community Resilience framework is featured in a special issue of the Journal of Public Health Management and Practice focused on addressing structural racism as a public health initiative.

 Leveraging her extensive background in communications, in 2022 Dr. Ellis produced a documentary, “America’s Truth: Cincinnati” that follows her team’s innovative approach to centering conversations on structural racism that galvanized a resilience movement to foster equity through systems and policy change. On the heels of that success, Dr. Ellis and her team have launched a Truth & Equity movement in Washington, DC. Dr. Ellis holds several leadership positions in public health including Chair of the National Academy of Science’s, Enhancing Community Resilience in the Gulf States Committee, Scientific Advisor to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Prevention and Injury Center and the National Academy’s Culture of Health Advisory Board. In 2018 Dr. Ellis was selected as an Aspen Institute Ascend Fellow to support her leadership in developing cross-sector strategies to address childhood trauma, foster equity and build community resilience.  

Associate Professor of American & African American History and Co-Coordinator of Women's and Gender Studies, Albright College; Community Partner
Project Name: Culture Keepers: African American Funeral Directors in the Era of COVID

Biography

Dr. Kami Fletcher is an Associate Professor of American & African American History and Co-Coordinator of Women’s and Gender Studies at Albright College. She teaches courses that explores the African experience in America and unpacks social and cultural U.S. history at the intersection of race, gender, class, and sexuality. She is also co-founder and President of the Collective for Radical Death Studies, a non-profit organization dedicated to decolonizing Death Studies and centering the death practices of marginalized communities.

Her research centers on African American burial grounds, late 19^th/early 20^th century Black female and male undertakers, and contemporary Black grief and mourning. She is the co-editor of Till Death Do Us Part: American Ethnic Cemeteries as Borders Uncrossed (University Press of Mississippi, 2020) and Grave History: Death, Race & Gender in Southern Cemeteries from Antebellum to the Post-Civil Rights Era (University of Georgia Press, forthcoming 2023). 

Currently, Dr. Fletcher is working on a manuscript that historicizes Mount Auburn Cemetery in Baltimore, the first Black owned and operated cemetery in Maryland.  The book positions African American cemeteries as the point where life and death meet arguing that this meeting point is a symbol of Black freedom from White control. 

Associate Professor of Law, GW Law; Community Partner
Project Name: Justice Innovation Lab

Biography

Jared Fishman is a former federal prosecutor and the Founder and Executive Director of Justice Innovation Lab, an organization that designs data-informed, community-rooted solutions for a more equitable and effective justice system.  Jared leads a team that includes data scientists, former prosecutors, policy experts, visualizers, and design-thinkers, to help justice system decision makers identify and fix inequitable outcomes in their jurisdictions.

Prior to founding Justice Innovation Lab, Jared served for 14 years as a prosecutor in the Department of Justice’s Civil Rights Division.  He led some of the most complex civil rights prosecutions in the country, securing convictions in high-profile cases involving police misconduct, hate crimes and human trafficking.  Jared received multiple awards from the Department of Justice for distinguished service, including the Civil Rights Division’s highest award for excellence in legal advocacy.

His new book, Fire On the Levee: the Murder of Henry Glover and the Search for Justice After Hurricane Katrina, is set for publication in April 2023.

Jared serves as a professorial lecture of law at the George Washington University Law School. He earned his law degree from the George Washington University Law School, and his bachelor’s degree from the University of Pennsylvania.

Founder & CEO; Truth Teller; Thought Leadership; Creator /Board of Directors/Bringing Equity to a SMART Future; Community Partner
Project Name: Power Reimaged: Gender and Racial Equity Center Pilot

Biography

Monica Poulard Hawkins is the Founder &CEO of Professional Pipeline Development Group (PPDG), a management consulting firm that houses world-class thought leaders & creators.  In serving its client base of Fortune & Global 1000 Corporations and emerging businesses we help business leaders reimagine their organization for the future and build capacity for growth in new ways.   A sample list of clients includes the NFL, AARP, Johns Hopkins University & Medical, Johnson & Johnson, Georgetown University, Verizon, Diageo, Mars Chocolate North America,  United HealthGroup, The Executive Leadership Council – Designing and Facilitating the Annual CEO Summit.

Established in 2004, PPDG provides curated solutions that work. From Cause Related Marketing campaigns to Diplomatic Engagements with Global Leaders, her work has resulted in growth for her clients and a positive reputation for  advising leaders through difficult change.  Currently, in the context of corporate cultural/workplace shifts,  and digital transformation, PPDG understands the heart and mind of leaders in The Academy and Industry – The Connected Student/The Connected Campus- in a SMART Future, specifically  and the need to make decisions in real-time as organizations need to build capacity in unexpected ways to address ESG, Future-Ready Talent, and Growth. 

Ms. Hawkins is on the Board of CCI Wellness,  a Federally Qualified Health Center in Maryland.   She is also an External Advisory Board Member with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) – Institute for Data, Systems & Society.

Associate Professor of Sociology, Africana Studies, and Epidemiology, Columbian College of Arts and Sciences
Project Name: Parental Incarceration and Child’s Depression: Uncovering Racial/Ethnic Variation

Biography

Dr. Jones is Professor with appointments in Sociology, Epidemiology, and Africana Studies at the George Washington University, where is also Co-Director of the Law and Society Minor. Receiving degrees from Duke University and Bowling Green State University, he has published research on various health outcomes. However, he focuses his research on the residential and neighborhood context in which individuals live to understand health disparities among marginalized populations. With a team of researchers from the Department of Sociology, he is currently working on a project that explores how parental incarceration during adolescence could shape depression risk in young adulthood. Jones is a former board member of the Capital City Area Health Education Center, the Society for the Study of Social Problems, and the American Sociological Association. He is also a former city representative on the Washington DC Commission on African-American Affairs, where he co-authored the resource guide, A Fair Shot: A Toolkit for African American Prosperity. Currently, Dr. Jones serves on the National Advisory Committee for The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation’s Evidence for Action Program and the DC Policy Center’s Advisory Board.

Associate Professor of Sociology, Columbian College of Arts and Sciences
Project Name: Race, Immigration, and Confinement in Rural Meatpacking: Decentering Whiteness and Mapping Injustices

Biography

Prof. Ivy Ken is Associate Professor of Sociology, Public Policy, and Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies. She studies race, class, and gender inequality, both empirically and theoretically, with a social policy bent.  The quest in this work is to identify the dynamics through which structural inequalities are produced and maintained.  Complementing this focus on intersectionality is Ken's work on state-corporate harm in the meatpacking industry, with Kenneth Sebastian León.  In this work, Ken and León focus on the practices of coercion, confinement, and racialization that render the industry’s workforce disposable.  In the moment of COVID-19, these are literally necropolitical practices in which violence against workers is legitimized and their deaths are foreseen.  Further, Ken and León are studying whether meatpacking companies’ state-facilitated move from cities to rural areas constitutes a form of internal settler-colonialism in terms of land and labor.  Ken is a recipient of The George Washington University's Bender Teaching Award and the Robert W. Kenny Prize for Excellence in Teaching. Along with Allison Suppan Helmuth, Ken was awarded the 2022 Distinguished Contribution to Scholarship Article Award from the American Sociological Association, Race, Gender, and Class Section for their article on mutual constitution in feminist intersectional studies.

Research Scientist, Department of Environmental and Occupational Health, Milken Institute School of Public Health
Project Name: Disparities in air pollution and associated health burdens in the United States: Who, Why, and What to Do?

Biography

Dr. Gaige Kerr is a research scientist in the Department of Environmental and Occupational Health in the Milken Institute School of Public Health at George Washington University. He received his BSc with honors in Atmospheric Science from Cornell University and his MA and PhD in Earth and Planetary Sciences from Johns Hopkins University. Dr. Kerr researches ambient air pollution, and projects he has led span topics ranging from understanding the emission sources of pollution to assessing the health impacts experienced by the populations pollution impacts, with a special emphasis on understanding associated ethnoracial and socioeconomic disparities. His research uses a wide variety of tools and methods, including remote sensing, atmospheric chemistry models and other numerical models, exposure assessment, and spatial statistical techniques. He currently serves on several boards and committees for the American Meteorological Society, including their Board on Representation, Accessibility, Inclusion, and Diversity; Task Force on Professional Conduct; and Annual Meeting Oversight Committee. He previously was an Air Quality Fellow for the U.S Department of State’s Greening Diplomacy Initiative.

Associate Professor, School of Engineering & Applied Science
Project Name: Accessing Community Healthcare with Innovations in Electric Vehicles for Equity (ACHIEVE)

Biography

Dr. Saniya LeBlanc is an associate professor in the Department of Mechanical & Aerospace Engineering and Director of the Energy Innovation Initiative at The George Washington University. The Energy Innovation Initiative builds research and engagement capacity in three themes: energy as an equity enabler, the next generation energy network, and multiscale materials for energy. In leading the initiative, Dr. LeBlanc brings industry and academic research experience in creating energy conversion technologies using advanced materials and manufacturing techniques. Prior to joining GWU, she was a research scientist at a startup company where she created research, development, and manufacturing characterization solutions for new power generation materials. Previously, she was a math and physics teacher at a multicultural high school in the DC public school system. 

Dr. LeBlanc obtained a PhD in mechanical engineering with a minor in materials science at Stanford University. She was a Churchill Scholar at University of Cambridge where she received an MPhil in engineering, and she has a BS in mechanical engineering with a minor in French from Georgia Institute of Technology. 

Visiting Assistant Professor, Columbian College of Arts and Sciences
Project Name: Race, Immigration, and Confinement in Rural Meatpacking: Decentering Whiteness and Mapping Injustices

Biography

Prof. Kenneth Sebastian León, who is currently Assistant Professor of Latino and Caribbean Studies and Criminal Justice at Rutgers University, received his master’s degree from GWU’s Department of Sociology in 2013. He specializes in crimes of the powerful and racialized social control. His training in criminology and sociology of law provides him with the tools to show how criminology and criminal justice (CJ) systems (e.g., police, courts, corrections) reflect broader political economic forces and asymmetries of power that permeate modern society. His work spans the gamut of police, courts, and corrections, and he has taken on politically sensitive topics like MS-13, the federal death penalty, and COVID-19 mitigation practices in large metro jails and detention facilities. León is a former research contractor at U.S. Department of Justice – National Institute of Justice, and has extensive experience studying localized public safety challenges. He also studies the conceptual and empirical bridges between Latino studies and critical criminal justice. Taken together, León’s interdisciplinary works are about understanding race, class, and crimes of the powerful both in and beyond the formal disciplinary and material boundaries of criminal justice. León is the recipient of the 2021 American Society of Criminology’s Young Career Award from the Division on White Collar and Corporate Crime.

National Family Violence Law Center Professor of Clinical Law; Director, National Family Violence Law Center, GW Law
Project Name:  Teaching about Racial Equity and the (De)Criminalization of Domestic Violence

Biography

Joan Meier is a Professor of Clinical Law and Director of the National Family Violence Law Center at the George Washington University Law School. Professor Meier has been a clinical law professor for 29 years at GW Law, where she founded three pioneering and nationally recognized interdisciplinary domestic violence clinical programs. She has published widely on domestic violence, custody, clinical teaching, criminal procedure, and various Supreme Court decisions. Her major study, “Child Custody Outcomes in Cases Involving Parental Alienation and Abuse Allegations,” funded by the National Institute of Justice, was completed in 2019. Its findings have been written about in scholarship and multiple media outlets including the Washington Post and the New Yorker. 

In August 2019, Professor Meier stepped down from the Domestic Violence Legal Empowerment and Appeals Project (DV LEAP), the nonprofit she founded in 2003 to provide pro bono appeals in domestic violence cases. While at DV LEAP, she was the co-author of eleven amicus briefs and three party briefs in the U.S. Supreme Court. She also represented domestic violence organizations and survivors of domestic violence in state court appeals all over the country and in Washington, DC. DV LEAP’s cases involved custody and child protection, enforcement of civil protection orders, criminal prosecution of batterers, and other issues.  Professor Meier has provided numerous trainings for judges, psychologists, lawyers, domestic violence coalitions, and others on best practices in adjudication of domestic violence and family court litigation and on her empirical research.

DV LEAP and Professor Meier have received several awards, including among others, the American Bar Association’s first ever Sharon L. Corbitt Award, which recognizes exceptional service and leadership in improving the legal response to domestic violence, dating violence, sexual assault and/or stalking; and the Outstanding Leadership Award from Justice for Children in 2007. Professor Meier received the Cahn Award from the National Equal Justice Library for her article on domestic violence and welfare reform. She was featured as a commentator in “Breaking the Silence: Children’s Voices,” the PBS documentary that aired in October 2005.

She graduated magna cum laude from Harvard University in 1980, cum laude from the University of Chicago Law School in 1983, and clerked on the US Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit.

Assistant Professor of Educational Leadership, Graduate School of Education and Human Development; Community Partner
Project Name: Leading for Equity: How Principals Experience Professional Learning

Biography

Christine Nganga, EdD, is an Assistant Professor of Educational Leadership at the George Washington University. Her teaching and research interests include leadership practice with a social justice and equity focus, narrative inquiry and mentoring theory and practice. Her work has been published in journals such as Educational Leadership Review, the Educational Forum, Journal of Early Childhood Teacher Education, Mentoring & Tutoring: Partnership in Learning, and the Urban Review. She has also co-authored and authored several book chapters and presented her work at numerous national conferences.

Professor of Strategic Management and Public Policy, School of Business
Project Name: To Err Is Automated: The Effects of Historical Redlining on Automated Home

Biography

Vanessa Gail Perry, MBA, PhD is Professor of Strategic Management and Public Policy and Vice Dean for Strategic Initiatives at the George Washington University School of Business, and a Non-Resident Fellow at the Urban Institute's Housing Finance Policy Center. Her research is focused on consumers in housing and financial markets, marketplace discrimination, and public policy interventions.  Professor Perry previously served as a Senior Advisor to the Secretary of the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, as an expert at the U.S. Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, and as a Senior Economist at Freddie Mac. She is a graduate of the American University, Washington University in St. Louis, and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Associate Dean for Trial Advocacy Co-Director, Litigation and Dispute Resolution Program, GW Law
Project Name: Power Reimaged: Gender and Racial Equity Center Pilot

Biography

Alfreda Robinson is Associate Dean for Trial Advocacy and Co-Director of the Litigation and Dispute Resolution Program at George Washington University Law School. She is a Faculty Co-Lead of the GW Equity Institute Showcase. 

Robinson earned BA and MA degrees from the University of Chicago, and a JD degree from GW Law.

She served as the 77^th President of the National Bar Association (NBA), the oldest and largest national organization of primarily Black lawyers, judges, professors, and students. Alfreda is a member of the National Bar Institute (NBI) and NBA boards.

In July, Dean was inducted into the prestigious NBA Hall of Fame. She has received the NBA’s highest honor, the C. Frances Strafford Award, and 15 other marks of distinction. Alfreda has held over 50 NBA leadership posts, including chair of the influential Judicial Selection Standing Committee. 

In April, GW BLSA established the Dean Robinson Oral Advocacy Award in her honor.

She teaches Pretrial Practice and Professional Responsibility. Her scholarship/research projects focus on gender/race equity, judicial selection, reparations, and litigation. 

Robinson obtained a $500,000 Amazon donation for a Global Women’s Institute - the largest, single donation in NBA and NBI history.

Clinical Professor of Neurological Surgery, School of Medicine and Health Sciences
Project Name: The Impact of Neo-colonialism on Surgical Training Programs in Africa

Biography

Gail Rosseau attended George Washington University School of Medicine and Health Sciences and did her residency in neurosurgery at George Washington. Following a fellowship in Cranial Base and Microvascular Surgery at the University of Pittsburgh, she returned to her native Midwest, practicing in Chicago for 25 years with the CINN Medical Group, with faculty appointments at Rush University and the University of Chicago. She returned to Washington and was named Clinical Professor of Neurosurgery at GW in 2018.

She has published has over 100 scientific articles, 12 book chapters and 4 monographs. She has been an invited Visiting Professor at nearly 20 universities. She has given hundreds of invited national and international presentations. She is on the editorial boards of multiple neurosurgical academic peer-reviewed journal. Her NIH funding is focused on projects in Global Surgery.

Dr. Rosseau has been a leader in international neurosurgical organizations, including the World Federation of Neurosurgical Societies (WFNS), the WFNS Foundation and the WHO Liaison Committee. She has served in the leadership of the American Association of Neurological Surgeons(AANS), as a member of the BOD and Vice President. Training in Paris, London, Scotland and Sydney set the stage for her long-term interest in global neurosurgery. She has served as Chairman of the Congress of Neurological Surgeons (CNS) International Committee, awarding fellowships to young international neurosurgeons who have become leaders in their nations and regions. For nearly 2 decades, she has been a member of the Board of Directors of the Foundation for International Education in Neurosurgery (FIENS). She was elected to the governing board of the Société de Neurochirurgie de Langue Française (SNCLF), the French-speaking Neurosurgical Association.

In 2021, Dr. Rosseau was awarded the Humanitarian Award of the AANS. She was invited to deliver the J. Douglas Miller Lecture in Trauma at the CNS Annual Meeting.

In 2018, Dr. Rosseau was elected to the Board of Directors and Executive Committee of the G4 Alliance, where she works with leaders of other surgical organizations toward increased access to quality surgery for patients everywhere. In this role, she has worked with other stakeholders in global surgical care to develop a strategic plan for this large global federation, recruiting additional member organizations and diplomats to enhance the unity and visibility of global surgery. She helped to create highly regarded virtual programs in 2020 for surgeons and diplomats at both the World Health Assembly and the United Nations General Assembly. Dr. Rosseau has participated in many international neurosurgical and educational missions in developing countries, including Libya, Somaliland, Honduras, El Salvador and Sudan.

Dr. Rosseau is Past -President and a co-founder of Women in Neurosurgery(WINS) in the U.S. and has been instrumental in the development of WINS organizations around the world. During the pandemic, she launched writing groups on every continent, resulting in nearly a dozen recent publications that form a comprehensive history of international women neurosurgeons. She is on the Board of Directors of ThinkFirst Head and Spine Injury Prevention Association and has long served that organization as liaison for international programs.

One of her favorite activities is being the sponsor of the Neurosurgery Student Interest Group at GW, where she is encouraged by the generous and brilliant students who are starting careers in neurosurgery.

Dr. Rosseau and her husband, orthopedic surgeon Rick Rosseau, have two adult children. The family enjoys sports, history and travel.

Associate Professor, Educational Leadership and Administration, Graduate School of Education and Human Development
Project Name: The Effects of Student-Teacher Ethnoracial Matching on Exclusionary Discipline for Asian American, Black, and Latinx Students: Evidence From New York City

Biography

Matthew Shirrell is an Associate Professor of Educational Leadership and Administration in the Graduate School of Education and Human Development at the George Washington University. His research explores the relationships between policy, the social and organizational characteristics of schools and school systems, and learning, improvement, and teacher retention. In 2020-21, Dr. Shirrell was awarded a National Academy of Education/Spencer Foundation Postdoctoral Fellowship for his study of National Board-certified teachers’ roles in their colleagues’ learning and improvement. His research has appeared in scholarly journals such as American Educational Research Journal, Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis, and Sociology of Education, and received funding from the William T. Grant Foundation, the Walton Family Foundation, the Chan/Zuckerberg Initiative, and the American Educational Research Association. Dr. Shirrell’s research has been covered by Education Week, KQED, and the New York Daily News, among other outlets. Dr. Shirrell earned a PhD in Human Development and Social Policy from Northwestern University. Prior to joining the faculty of George Washington University, Dr. Shirrell was a post-doctoral fellow with the Distributed Leadership Study at the School of Education and Social Policy at Northwestern University.

President, My Dr's Pharmacy; Community Partner
Project Name: Building Covid-19 Confidence

Biography

Omar is a clinical pharmacist who started his career as a hospital pharmacist at Alexandria Hospital in Virginia.  Omar completed a residency in clinical pharmacy practice at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia and fellowship in health outcomes at Thomas Jefferson University Hospital in Philadelphia.  Omar also obtain his MBA from Seton Hall University in NJ. 

Omar’s career included working for the pharmaceutical industry where he supported a number of disease management initiatives.  As a managing partner of one of the most successful medical education agencies, Omar had the opportunity to participate in the development and the launch of numerous education campaigns in support of pharmaceutical products and various healthcare initiatives.

As a team leader, Omar brings to bear his passion for adult education, extensive experience in organizing teams, and his ability to develop high quality services and offerings.  

Director, Women’s, Gender and Sexuality Studies, Columbian College of Arts and Sciences
Project Name: #MeToo in Retrospect: A Transnational Reflection

Biography

Ashwini Tambe is Director of Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies and Professor of History at the George Washington University. Dr. Tambe is a scholar of transnational South Asian history who focuses on the relationship between law, gender, and sexuality. She is also the Editorial Director of Feminist Studies, the oldest journal of interdisciplinary feminist scholarship in the United States. Over the past two decades, she has written about how South Asian societies regulate sexual practices. Her 2009 book Codes of Misconduct: Regulating Prostitution in Late Colonial Bombay (University of Minnesota Press) traces how law-making and law-enforcement practices shaped the rise of the city's red-light district. Her 2019 book Defining Girlhood in India: A Transnational Approach to Sexual Maturity Laws (University of Illinois Press), supported by SSHRC and NEH grants, examines the legal paradoxes in age standards for girls’ sexual consent in India. Both books examine the direction and flow of transnational influences. Her new book Transnational Feminist Itineraries (Duke University Press 2021, co-edited with Millie Thayer), features essays by leading gender studies scholars confronting authoritarianism and religious and economic fundamentalism. Her most recent journal publications are in Women’s Studies Quarterly (2022 forthcoming), Feminist Formations (2021), American Historical Review (2020), South Asia (2020), and Feminist Studies (2018). 

Health Equity Organizer with SPACEs in Action; Community Partner
Project Name: writehealing, policy and praxis project (WHPP)

Biography

Deja is a Health Equity Organizer with SPACEs In Action, a DC and MD- organizing group. SIA issues include childcare access, economic justice, and healthcare equity. Deja is making healthcare accessible and expanding mental health support for families raising babies and toddlers. Deja builds and manages a base of families raising children from prenatal to three. She provides the families with leadership development skills to enhance their ability to advocate for their family and community. Deja’s work has led to a $1m + win to expand DC health services for families. Deja is a native Washingtonian who is passionate about developing her community. She uses her knowledge and skills to bring positive change to the youth in DC. Deja graduated from Trinity Washington University with BA in Human Relations in 2021. Her studies concentrated on Child and Family Studies and Business Administration.

Professor of Anthropology, Columbian College of Arts and Sciences
Project Name: Culture Keepers: African American Funeral Directors in the Era of COVID

Biography

Sarah Wagner is a Professor of Anthropology at George Washington University. She is the author of To Know Where He Lies: DNA Technology and the Search for Srebrenica’s Missing (2008) and What Remains: Bringing America’s Missing Home from the Vietnam War (2019), winner of the 2020 Victor Turner Prize for Ethnographic Writing. She is also co-author of Srebrenica in the Aftermath of Genocide (2014) and co-editor of the Cambridge Handbook of the Anthropology of Death (forthcoming). Funded by the National Science Foundation, National Endowment of the Humanities, and the Wenner-Gren Foundation and awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship, her research focuses on post-conflict societies, memory, forensic science applied in the wake of war, and, most recently, on COVID-19 death and mourning. In addition to her scholarly publications, she has written opinion editorials and blog posts for the Washington Post, The Hill, Baltimore Sun, and LA Times.

Assistant Professor of Anthropology and International Affairs
Project Name: The Limits of Community Policing in Ending Violence and Providing Justice - Trinidad

Biography

Leniqueca Welcome is a multimodal anthropologist and designer from Trinidad and Tobago. Her research and teaching interests are postcolonial statecraft, racialization, gendering, securitization, visuality, and affect. Her work combines more traditional ethnographic methods with photography and collage. She is currently working on her first book manuscript tentatively titled Come Out of This World: Beyond Terrains of Criminalization to Where Life is Precious which explores the production and mobilization of the figure of “the violent criminal” in Trinidad. Her writing could also be found in venues such as Small Axe: A Journal for Caribbean Criticism, Multimodality and Society, American Anthropologist (Public Anthropologies Section), and an upcoming edited volume with Duke Press, Sovereignty Unhinged.

Leniqueca Welcome received her PhD in cultural anthropology with certificates in urban studies and experimental ethnography from the University of Pennsylvania. Prior to starting her PhD program, she was trained as an architect at the Fay Jones School of Architecture at the University of Arkansas, Fayetteville, and worked at ACLA architecture, a design firm in Trinidad, where she continues to consult.