Albert is a strong advocate for diversity and demonstrates his understanding by not only listening to lived experiences in the Asian-American community but how it correlates to other diverse spaces. He believes that it takes a village to create change and will lay the foundation for research to promote policy reform, community engagement, and advocacy.
Albert enjoys serving the Asian-American community through workshops, presenting at conferences, and educating allies on the pulse of the community. He believes that as generations enter higher education, we as a community have the obligation to continue to push the wheel of education, adjust, and advocate for the students. As a Chicago native, he is excited to travel to the east coast and join Northeastern University and continue his journey in higher education.

Alex is a Quaker, ecumenical and interfaith leader, widely-published poet and writer, educator, and chaplain. Alex serves as the first Executive Director of the Center for Spirituality, Dialogue and Service (CSDS) at Northeastern University in Boston, leading the school’s campus ministries and developing new models of campus dialogue and global citizenship formation. Northeastern’s pioneering work has been recognized by the Interfaith Youth Core (IFYC), President Obama's White House Interfaith and Community Service Challenge, and others.
Prior to coming to Northeastern in 2012, Alex served as Executive Director of Cooperative Metropolitan Ministries (CMM), greater Boston’s oldest interfaith social justice network, and as Protestant Christian chaplain at Brandeis University. Alex co-founded the Interfaith Youth Initiative (IFYI) – a dynamic peacemaking and leadership program for high school and graduate students. As an educator, Alex has served as an adjunct faculty member, speaker, panelist, or consultant at institutions including Harvard Divinity School and Pluralism Project, Brandeis University, Pendle Hill Quaker Center, Andover Newton Theological School, Hebrew College, Boston University School of Theology, the Interfaith Youth Core (IFYC), and Merrimack College’s Center for Jewish-Christian-Muslim Relations.

Carter Strong is an educator, community organizer, and cultural organizer dedicated to uplifting LGBTQIA2S+ students through community care, direct resource strategies, and the arts. Carter oversees the Center’s signature events and programs, day-to-day operations, and direct resource strategies, including the Affirmation Access Project and the Resource Navigation program. Carter moved to the Boston area as a graduate student while studying religion, literature, and the arts and enjoys reading, writing, watching silly TV shows, making music, skating, and weightlifting.

With over a decade of leadership experience across higher education, government, and the nonprofit sector, Cindy brings a compassionate and dynamic approach to fostering equity and belonging. As a Vietnamese immigrant, Cindy's personal journey informs her work, emphasizing the relational and evolving nature of human flourishing.

Cindy’s professional path includes directing educational programs and global initiatives at institutions such as Boston University, Boston College Law School, the University of Michigan, and EVkids, a Dorchester-based nonprofit dedicated to empowering students through mentorship and sustained educational support. At EVkids, she co-advised the Youth Council, ensuring first-generation college students had a voice in organizational decision-making.

Previously, at the Boston Women's Workforce Council - a partnership between Boston University, the Boston Mayor’s Office, and over 250 area employers - Cindy led pay equity initiatives, including advocating for the inclusion of nonbinary workers in wage gap data collection. Cindy’s ability to build partnerships and drive meaningful change across diverse sectors reflects her visionary leadership and ability to embrace the complexities of defining impact.

Cindy holds a Master’s in Philosophy from Boston College and a Bachelor’s in Philosophy and Political Science from the College of the Holy Cross. Grounded in her philosophical training, she is committed to cultivating spaces where students, staff, and faculty feel empowered to reflect critically on their lives, embrace vulnerability, and forge connections that honor both differences and shared humanity.

Erick Yanzon (they/them) is a first-generation queer immigrant from Caloocan City, Philippines. They received their Master of Education in Student Development Administration at Seattle University and their Bachelor of Arts in American Cultural Studies and Sociology at Western Washington University. Their passion as an educator stem from their experiences in student activism, community organizing, and coalition building, with experience in large-scale programming, curriculum development, and facilitation.

Dr. O’Bryant is director of the John D. O’Bryant African-American Institute at Northeastern University – named in remembrance of his dad. At the John D. O’Bryant African American Institute Dr. O’Bryant oversees educational, leadership development and cultural programs, services and activities focused on African American students. The John D. O’Bryant African American Institute has become more engaged with many aspects of Northeastern University including academic components, community outreach efforts, connecting with the NU Black alumni and the enhancement of the breadth and depth of programs and services offered. Dr. O'Bryant also teaches in the College of Professional Studies, the Political Science Department, School of Public Policy and Urban Affairs and is affiliated faculty with the Dukakis Center for Urban and Regional Policy. Dr. O’Bryant has connected the Institute nationally as President of the John D. O’Bryant National Think Tank (JDOTT) and an organizational membership with the Association for Black Cultural Centers (ABCC). Dr. O’Bryant joined Northeastern in 2003 and came to Student Affairs in 2007. Dr. O’Bryant received his Ph.D. in urban and regional studies from MIT in 2004 and is a longtime member of the Concerned Black Men of Massachusetts (CBMM).

Sara Rivera (she/her) has been a dedicated staff member at the Latinx Student Cultural Center since 1997, playing a key role in developing programs and events to engage students, faculty, staff, and alumni. As a triple husky, she holds degrees in Business Administration, Leadership, and Higher Education Administration, and was inducted into the Sigma Epsilon Rho Honor Society. As Director, Sara is committed to expanding the center's visibility, growth, and impact within the Northeastern global community.

In addition to being a Associate Teaching Professor in the Psychology Department, Aaron B. Daniels is also a Mindfulness Fellow in Northeastern University’s Center for Spirituality, Dialogue, and Service. He is also the faculty leader of the Northeastern University Psychological Humanities Research Group. His PhD is from Pacifica Graduate Institute in Santa Barbara, California where he focused on Archetypal Psychology with a dissertation on the use of imagination by criminal profilers. His MA is from Duquesne University in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania where he studied existential phenomenology. His BA with honors is from Baldwin-Wallace College in Berea, Ohio. His books are: Imaginal Reality, Volumes 1 & 2 (both in 2011); Jungian Crime Scene Analysis: An Imaginal Investigation (2014); and, most recently, he contributed four chapters and edited Dante and the Other: A Phenomenology of Love (2021). Aaron has been teaching in higher education for over two decades and has received numerous institutional awards for his teaching, advising, research, and collaborations. A psychotherapist in Seattle for 10 years, he worked in community and private practice, achieving LGBT-specialist status. His current research centers on the ‘inscrutably alien’ and spiritual direction, a field in which he completed certification in 2022. Film, science-fiction, and ‘Weird’ literature are frequent additions to his classes and research.

Ahmed Faizul Huq is a Professor of Supply Chain Management at the DMSB. Before arriving at Northeastern University he served as the O’Bleness Research Professor of Operations Management in the Department of Management at the Ohio University College of Business, in Athens, Ohio. He received his DBA from the University of Kentucky in 1990. His research interests are in the areas of Logistics and Supply Chain Management, Location Theory, and Job Shop Scheduling. His articles have appeared in the Journal of Operational Research Society, European Journal of Operational Research, International Journal of Production Economics, Supply Chain Management: An International Journal, OMEGA, International Journal of Production Research ,International Journal of Operations and Production Management, Journal of Manufacturing Systems, Production and Inventory Management Journal, Computers and Industrial Engineering, Production Planning and Control, and numerous other journals. He is a father of four and hails from Dhaka, Bangladesh.

Denise Khor is a media historian and author of Transpacific Convergences: Race, Migration and Japanese American Film Culture before World War II (University of North Carolina Press, 2022), which explores the historical experiences of Japanese Americans at the cinema and traces an alternative network of film production, circulation, and exhibition. Areas of research specialization include film and media history, early cinema, nontheatrical film, critical ethnic studies, and Asian American film and media.
She is jointly appointed in the Department of Cultures, Societies, and Global Studies (CSSH) and the Department of Art + Design (CAMD), with a courtesy appointment in History. She is also affiliated with Communication & Media and Screen Studies and Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies.
In 2019-2020, she was a faculty fellow at Harvard University’s Charles Warren Center for Studies in American History.
She has published work in Film Quarterly, Pacific Historical Review, Southern California Quarterly, and The Rising Tide of Color: Race, State Violence, and Radical Movements Across the Pacific (edited by Moon Ho-Jung, 2014), among other publications. She is working on her next book project “The Invisible Hand: A History of Asian Americans in the Animation Industry.”
Prior to Northeastern, she was an Associate Professor of American Studies at the University of Massachusetts Boston.

As a first-generation college graduate, Avalon’s drive to help others inspired her to continue her education. She pursued a master’s degree in public health at Tufts University School of Medicine, while simultaneously working in the healthcare sector. Her roles ranged from lab technician, to telephone operator in a large medical practice, and even in the field of tissue/organ donation, where she surgically removed tissue and organs to help transform devastating loss into hope and lifesaving treatment for others — an intimidating but meaningful job that deepened her commitment to healthcare, advocacy and education.

During this period, she also worked at Shriners Burn Hospital in the reconstructive unit, providing administrative support on the unit for children undergoing reconstructive surgery. Witnessing the vulnerability of her young patients, Avalon’s empathy and compassion were amplified.

Professor Kim’s work centers critiques of colonialisms and racial capitalism and draws from critical digital studies, translation studies, critical theory and critical race & ethnic studies. She teaches courses on Race & Artificial Intelligence, Technology & Colonialism, Neoliberal Aesthetics, Asian American Literature, Critical Art and Culture Writing, Self-Portraiture and Photography, as well as Contemporary Poetry, and Poetry Workshop. She is the author of gospel of regicide (2017), and, with Sung Gi Kim, she translated Kim Eon Hee’s Have You Been Feeling Blue These Days? (2019). Kim’s writings have appeared in the anthologies American Poets in the 21st Century: Poetics of Social Engagement (Wesleyan University Press, 2018), edited by Claudia Rankine and Michael Dowdy, and Reading Modernism with Machines: Digital Humanities and Modern Literature (Springer, 2016), edited by Shawna Ross and James O’Sullivan. Her forthcoming academic monograph, The Politics of Collecting: Race & the Aestheticization of Property (Duke University Press 2024) materializes the histories of immaterialism by examining the rise of US museums, avant-garde forms, digitization, and neoliberal aesthetics, to consider how race and property become foundational to modern artistic institutions. Kim is the recipient of a Ford Foundation Fellowship, a grant from the Andy Warhol Arts Writers Program, and Yale University’s Poynter Fellowship. In 2021 she cofounded offshootjournal.org, an arts space for transnational activist conversations.

Layla D. Brown is an Assistant Professor of Cultural Anthropology & Africana Studies and affiliate faculty in Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies. Brown’s research focuses on Pan-African, Socialist, and Feminist social movements in Venezuela, the US, and the broader African Diaspora. Layla was a 2020-2021 Research & Writing Fellow at the Johannesburg Institute for Advanced Study and a 2021-2022 Senior Research Fellow at the Käte Hamburger Kolleg / Centre for Global Cooperation Research.

Dr. Villar joined Northeastern University in 2022 and serves as Chair of the Department of Communication Studies with an affiliate appointment in the Department of Health Science in Bouve College of Health Science. She is also faculty affiliate with the Latinx Student Cultural Center, and a founding member of the Public Engagement with Science Hub in CAMD.

Villar’s research is situated at the intersection of strategic communication and health/science communication, focusing on community engagement with under-represented and hyper-vulnerable populations. Many of her projects involve co-creation of content with community members around topics such as mental health stigma, domestic and sexual violence, vaccine hesitancy, and environmental threats to communities. Co-created products include fotonovelas, radio stories, community theater and board games. She has published over fifty peer-reviewed journal articles, book chapters, and articles in conference proceedings, and has been the PI or Co-PI on several multidisciplinary sponsored research projects. She was chair and associate dean at her previous institution, Florida International University, and led efforts in addressing barriers to equity, diversity and belonging in academia.

Dias's research interests involve the design and use of information systems that support group and interorganizational information sharing and collaboration. He has conducted research as a research associate on two NSF-funded efforts – one on interagency collaborations in public safety and the other on ERP implementation. Martin is particularly interested in improving organizational performance and legitimacy through enhancing the design and implementation of interorganizational information architectures. Accordingly, his teaching has covered the use of information systems in business process management and improvement at the MBA level, and both introduction to management information systems and use of emerging information technology at the undergraduate level. Prior to joining the D'Amore-McKim School of Business faculty, Dias served as an instructor at Bentley University and Eastern Nazarene College. Through his teaching and research, Dias has studied and worked with numerous multi-national corporations and inter-agency collaborations using information systems to improve efficiency and effectiveness. In addition to research and teaching, Dias worked for fourteen years at State Street Corporation with 10 years of progressive leadership experience in the area of information technology implementation and use.

Dr. Pierre-Valery Njenji Tchetgen is a Black music scholar and cultural worker at the intersection of Africana studies, literacy studies, digital humanities and drummologie. His scholarship and teaching in CAMD include expertise in Music of the African Diaspora, Hip Hop Poetry, African music theory, Experience Design, Education+XR and serious games. He is the inventor of the Drumball tangible user interface for early literacy acquisition that is inspired by the African talking drums. He is currently working on two main projects: the Urban Griot Playground ecology for early childhood pedagogy, and a book project entitled “Urban Griots: Towards a Theory of Digital Orality” exploring the implications and applications for the Diaspora of drum language innovation in the 21st century. Dr. Njenji Tchetgen (who also goes by Akwerius, or kwe for short) is the Founder and Ambassador of the Music is Healing Collective, where he uses music as a vehicle for social change to break down barriers of bias and motivate youth toward social justice in order to improve the livability and vibrancy of communities worldwide, and bring people from diverse paths together to promote Unity through Music.

Sasha Sabherwal (she/her) is an interdisciplinary scholar of the South Asian diaspora with research interests in critical ethnic studies, the racialization of religion, transnational gender and sexuality studies, and the intersections of caste and race. She holds a PhD from Yale University in the Department of American Studies with a certificate in Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies. Her research examines caste and gender hierarchies in the Sikh diaspora of the Pacific Northwest.

Her book manuscript, Circuits of Faith: Caste, Gender, and Racialized Religion in the Sikh Diaspora of the Transnational Pacific Northwest, is an ethnographic exploration of how caste is reproduced across the U.S. and Canada, and how it becomes a heterogeneous and flexible category. The project demonstrates that as caste travels, it is remade, oscillating between traditional caste hierarchies from the homeland and contemporary diaspora.