Traci Sorell

Digohwelisgi LLC
she/her/hers

Cherokee Nation citizen and award-winning author Traci Sorell writes fiction and nonfiction books, short stories and poems for young people. A former federal Indian law attorney, university lecturer and advocate, she lives with her family on the Cherokee Nation reservation in northeastern Oklahoma. She earned her undergraduate degree in Native American Studies from the University of California at Berkeley, her graduate degree in American Indian Studies from the University of Arizona and her law degree from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Find out more about her work at www.tracisorell.com or @tracisorell via Twitter and Instagram.

Zineb Mouhyi

The Weaving Lab
she/her

Zineb is one of the co-founders of the Weaving Lab, an international NGO and network of weavers, i.e. social change makers pioneering new approaches to collaboration and ecosystemic transformation. Prior to that, she was the Policy & Partnership Development Officer at WISE (World Innovation Summit for Education), at the Qatar Foundation in Doha, where she mainly worked on education development policy research and on bringing different education stakeholders together to bring forth collaborations in education. Zineb has also worked in the private sector in medium business restructuration and consulting. Zineb holds a Bachelors of Commerce from McGill University, Canada, and a Dual Master of International Affairs from Sciences Po Paris, and Columbia University, New York.

Miriam Mirza

Peel District School Board
she/her/they

Miriam is a secondary school teacher with a passion for equity and social justice. She has run a social justice and human rights club for 15 years in a variety of secondary settings. They have organized Gender and Sexual Equity events, annual Pride Weeks and a variety of other social justice campaigns through these clubs. For this work, Miriam received the Peel District School Board Award of Excellence in 2009, and the Teacher Recognition Award from OSSTF D19 in 2011. For the past 10 years, she has worked at the Board level, working with a team of educators with the Make Peel Proud committee to organize our annual You Are Not Alone event for LGBTQ+ students to attend. In 2017, she received the OSSTF D19 Human Rights Award for my ongoing work equity and human rights. In addition, Miriam was a member of the Peel Strategic Action Plan for FNMI education in the Peel Board.

Justin Tindall

It Gets Better Project

Justin began his career as an employment specialist helping young people in Nicaragua before working as an educational specialist at the DREAM Project, a nonprofit school in the Dominican Republic. In 2012, Justin was recruited by Teach For America (TFA) and became a bilingual (English-Spanish) teacher in an elementary school in San Antonio, Texas. With the help of an It Gets Better video shared by a group at his graduate alma mater, Justin came out that same year and has since built a career around empowering LGBTQ+ youth. He began working for the It Gets Better Project in 2014 where he has expanded the organization’s Global Affiliate Network to 18 countries and created It Gets Better EDU, the arm of the organization that helps facilitate the introduction of LGBTQ+ stories into educational settings. Justin has a Master’s of Public Health (MPH) in Global Health Promotion and a Bachelor's degree in International Area Studies (Latin America) with a minor in Political Science.

Nogah Kornberg

I-Think
she/her

Nogah Kornberg is a social entrepreneur reimagining teaching and learning as Associate Director at I-Think. Here, she works with school board leaders and educators to bridge the gap between academic research and practical application that enables metacongition and real-world problem solving. Through her mentorship, Nogah focuses on shifting mindsets that help educators reimagine what is possible.

Nogah received her B.Ed and M.Ed. from University of Toronto. She holds a Honours Bachelor of Arts from Trent University in History and Indigenous Studies. Prior to I-Think, Nogah was a high school teacher and a co-Founder of the Young Social Entrepreneurs of Canada.

Dr. Y. Joy Harris-Smith

Princeton Theological Seminary/CUNY-BMCC
she/her

Dr. Y. Joy Harris-Smith is adept in dealing with issues of communication and culture. She is a trained teacher with over 17 years of experience teaching junior high school through graduate school. Her wealth of experience, excellence in teaching and scholarship has been demonstrated in the classroom and in written publications. Dr. Harris-Smith is a proud graduate of Howard University where she received her Ph.D. in Communication & Culture.