Bernice Johnson Reagon is a song leader, composer, scholar, and social activist, who in the early 1960s was a founding member of the Student Non-violent Coordinating Committee's (SNCC) Freedom Singers in the Albany Movement in Georgia. In 1973, she founded the all-black female a cappella ensemble Sweet Honey in the Rock, based in Washington, D.C. Reagon, along with other members of the SNCC Freedom Singers, realized the power of collective singing to unify the disparate groups who began to work together in the 1964 Freedom Summer protests in the South.
"After a song", Reagon recalled, "the differences between us were not so great. Somehow, making a song required an expression of that which was common to us all.... This music was like an instrument, like holding a tool in your hand."
The University of California, Riverside is a public land-grant research university in Riverside, California. It is one of the ten campuses of the University of California system.
Jade Snow Wong was a Chinese American ceramic artist and author of two memoirs. She was given the English name of Constance, also being known as Connie Wong Ong.
Thai Americans are Americans of Thai ancestry. The Thai American population is racially and ethnically diverse, consisting of many Thais who identify as mixed race and as Thai Chinese.
France Anne-Dominic Córdova is an American astrophysicist and administrator who was the fourteenth director of the National Science Foundation. Previously, she was the eleventh President of Purdue University from 2007 to 2012. She now serves as President of the Science Philanthropy Alliance.
Grace Nono is a Filipino singer, known for her musical style based on traditional Filipino rhythms. She is also an ethnomusicologist, scholar of Philippine shamanism, and cultural worker.
Wakako Yamauchi was a Japanese American writer. Her plays are considered pioneering works in Asian-American theater.
Katherine Siva Saubel was a Native American scholar, educator, tribal leader, author, and activist committed to preserving her Cahuilla history, culture and language. Her efforts focused on preserving the language of the Cahuilla. Saubel is acknowledged nationally and internationally as one of California's most respected Native American leaders. She received an honorary PhD in philosophy from La Sierra University, Riverside, California, and was awarded the Chancellor's Medal, the highest honor bestowed by the University of California at the University of California, Riverside.
Irene Hirano Inouye was the founding President of the U.S.-Japan Council, a position she held ever since she helped create the organization in 2009 until her death. Hirano Inouye focused on building positive relations between the United States and Japan, and was also a leader in philanthropy, community engagement, and advancing social causes. She served on a number of prominent non-profit boards, and was chair of the Ford Foundation's board of trustees. She previously served as president and founding chief executive officer of the Japanese American National Museum in Los Angeles from 1988 to 2008, which is affiliated with the Smithsonian Institution.
Nicole A. Wong is an American attorney, specializing in Internet, media and intellectual property law. In May 2013, she was selected by the Barack Obama administration to be the White House deputy chief technology officer (CTO) of the United States. She earned the nickname "the Decider" while she was vice president and deputy general counsel at Google, where she was responsible for arbitrating issues of censorship for Google. Wong stepped down as Deputy US CTO on August 16, 2014, to return with her family to California. She currently serves as a Senior Advisor to Albright Stonebridge Group, a global business strategy firm, and is a member of the Mozilla Foundation's Board of Directors
Stanford University has many centers and institutes dedicated to the study of various specific topics. These centers and institutes may be within a department, within a school but across departments, an independent laboratory, institute or center reporting directly to the dean of research and outside any school, or semi-independent of the university itself.
Gilah Yelin Hirsch is a multidisciplinary artist who works as a painter, writer, curator, and filmmaker. Her work explores the connections between science, art, and spirituality. She has been a leader in the International Society for the Study of Subtle Energies and Energy Medicine (ISSSEEM). Hirsch was a founding member of one of the earliest women art organizations, the Los Angeles Council of Women in the Arts (LACWA) and was active in the feminist art movement in Southern California. She was a professor of art at California State University, Dominguez Hills in Los Angeles since 1973 and became Professor Emerita in 2020. Presently, Hirsch continues painting, writing, theorizing, filmmaking, and is often invited to present her work in conferences and webinars world-wide.
Carolyn L. Mazloomi is an American curator, quilter, author, art historian, and aerospace engineer. She is a strong advocate for presenting and documenting African-American-made quilts. Her own quilts are designed to tell complex stories around African-American heritage and contemporary experiences.
Margaret Wai Wong is a naturalized American immigration lawyer who created an immigration and nationality law practice in 1978, of which she is senior and managing partner.
Chanchanit Martorell, is an activist, educator, urban planner, and a community development practitioner. She is the Founder and Executive Director of the Thai Community Development Center.
Clement Alexander Price was an American historian. As the Board of Governors Distinguished Service Professor of History at Rutgers University-Newark, Price brought his study of the past to bear on contemporary social issues in his adopted hometown of Newark, New Jersey, and across the nation. He was the founding director of the Institute on Ethnicity, Culture, and the Modern Experience at Rutgers; the vice chair of President Barack Obama's Advisory Council on Historic Preservation; the chair of Obama's transition team for the National Endowment for the Humanities; a member of the Scholarly Advisory Committee of the Smithsonian's National Museum of African American History and Culture; and a trustee of the National Trust for Historic Preservation. He was appointed City of Newark Historian in early 2014. His service to New Jersey included appointments by Governors Brendan Byrne and Thomas H. Kean to the New Jersey State Council on the Arts, which he served as chair for two terms, and by Governor Christine Todd Whitman to the board of the Save Ellis Island Foundation, which he also chaired.
Created in 2011, Women Who Rock was established to open dialogue about the portrayal of women in popular music. This community is mostly in the local Seattle area, and its members are from University of Washington and Seattle University. They are faculty members, students, community members, activists and academics in music history, gender, race and the cultural social justice movements. The wide variety of individuals from this community are able to introduce and collaborate with artists, musicians, media channels, activists, scholars and students in order to research, discuss and understand the role of women and popular music throughout social scenes and movements.
Alice Wong is a disability rights activist based in San Francisco, California.
Vicki Lynn Ruiz is an American historian who has written or edited 14 books and published over 60 essays. Her work focuses on Mexican-American women in the twentieth century. She is a recipient of the National Humanities Medal.
Patricia "Patty" Wong is the city librarian of Santa Clara, California. Wong was the president of the American Library Association (ALA) for the 2021-2022 term and is the first Asian American president of the ALA. She has been on the faculty at the San Jose State University iSchool since 2006, teaching subjects such as equitable access to library services, library management, and library services to young people.
