Our Team
The Institute on Race Power and Political Economy was founded in 2021 to understand and advance economic inclusion, civic engagement, and equity. The Institute provides the intellectual and physical space to cultivate innovative policies, strategies, and investments that break down restrictive hierarchies, empower people, and move society toward greater social equity by fusing insights from multiple disciplines to improve our understanding of the causes, consequences, and remedies associated with racial, ethnic, gender, and other forms of stratification in a host of domains including education, employment, criminal justice, health, housing, environment, asset accumulation, and other vital sectors across regional, national, and international landscapes.
STAFF
Darrick Hamilton is a university professor, Henry Cohen Professor of Economics and Urban Policy, and founding director of the Institute on Race, Power and Political Economy at The New School. Darrick examines social stratification and political economy in order to move policy and practice in fundamentally new directions that promote economic inclusion, social equity, and civic engagement.
Considered one of the nation’s foremost public intellectuals, Darrick has been profiled in the New York Times, Mother Jones, and the Wall Street Journal. In 2017, he was featured in Politico's50 Ideas Shaping American Politics and the People Behind Them issue. In 2020, Darrick was named a Freedom Scholar by the Marguerite Casey Foundation and the Group Health Foundation.
Darrick has been involved in crafting policy proposals that have garnered media attention and inspired legislative proposals at the federal, state, and local levels, including baby bonds, guaranteed income, and a federal job guarantee. In 2020, Darrick served as a member of the economic committee of the Biden-Sanders Unity Task Force. He has testified before several Senate and House committees, including the Joint Economic Committee and the Senate Banking Committee.
Darrick was born and raised in the Bedford-Stuyvesant section of Brooklyn, New York. He is a graduate of Oberlin College and received a PhD in Economics from the University of North Carolina.
Nellie Afshar, MPH serves as the Chief Operating Officer / Executive Director of Operations at the Institute on Race, Power and Political Economy. Nellie has a strong record of achievement in New York City (NYC) government, with experience in policy, strategic planning, and crisis management, particularly focused on health equity and systems-level change.
Prior to joining the Institute, Nellie served as Chief of Staff at the NYC Department of Health and Mental Hygiene during the COVID-19 pandemic, where she played a critical role in advancing mitigation strategies, expanding treatment access, and implementing the City’s largest vaccination campaign. Her tenure also included key contributions to the launch of the nation’s first Overdose Prevention Center and the passage of a historic resolution declaring racism a public health crisis.
Nellie holds a Master of Public Health from Hunter College. She proudly serves as a member of Queens Community Board 2 and the Board of Trustees for Phipps Neighborhoods, the social services arm of NYC’s largest nonprofit organization dedicated to affordable housing.
Dr. Amara Enyia is a Strategist and Public Policy Expert on city and state policy as well as international affairs with expertise in Africa, Latin America, and Central Asia.
In addition to her role as President of transnational advocacy organization Global Black, she also serves as the Director of Policy & Research for the Movement for Black Lives, and Senior Fellow at the Institute on Race, Power, and Political Economy at The New School. She also serves as a Strategy Advisor for organizations, companies, political campaigns, and public sector institutions globally. Dr. Enyia is a Leader-in-Residence for Policy and Change with the Atlantic Institute and also serves as Chairwoman of the International Working Group for the United Nations Permanent Forum on People of African Descent and Chairwoman of the working group on Global Economic Systems, Institutions and Policy.
Dr. Enyia is member of the 2020-2022 cohort with the London School of Economics Executive Program in Cities. Prior to her current roles, she worked in the Mayor’s Office for the City of Chicago and served as Executive Director of community-based organizations. As a grassroots organizer she worked on issues of education equity, economic justice, and environmental justice.
Amara holds a bachelor’s degree in Journalism and bachelor’s degree in Political Science. She also holds a master’s degree in education, a master’s degree in Cities from the London School of Economics, a law degree where she focused on international law, and a PhD in Education Policy with a specialization in Evaluation. She serves on the Board of the Global Strategists Association, Pakistan Journal of Urban Affairs, the Chicago Community Loan Fund, and Chicago Neighborhood Initiatives Microfinance Group. She also serves on the National Advisory Board of the Public Banking Institute and is a 2022 inductee into the Illini Media Company Hall of Fame. Dr. Enyia maintains proficiency in Igbo, Spanish, French, and Portuguese and was named a Public Policy Global Leadership Fellow with the Global Strategists Association.
Jesse Flores is the Senior Director of Development and Foundation Relations at the Institute on Race, Power and Political Economy at The New School. Jesse has over 25 years of professional experience in fund development and nonprofit management. Before joining the Institute, Jesse spent eight years serving as Director of Development in Corporate and Foundation Relations at The New School, where he worked to raise funding for all five of its colleges as well as its many centers, institutes, labs and various donor circles. Prior work experience includes twelve years serving under two administrations at the Office of the Brooklyn Borough President where he served as a Manager of Strategic Alliances and he managed the official affiliated nonprofits that served as the fundraising arm of the Borough President's Office. Other work experience includes serving as Director of Development and Communications at the Peter F. Drucker Foundation for Nonprofit Management, as well as work in nonprofit housing development and at a community health center. Jesse received his Master’s degree in Public Administration (MPA) from the University of Texas at San Antonio (UTSA), and his Bachelor’s (BA) degree from UTSA with a double major in Political Science and Sociology.
Mara Heneghan is Associate Director of the Health and Political Economy Project at the Institute on Race, Power and Political Economy where she supports the policy, programmatic, and operational work to catalyze action toward an economy that enables health and dignity for all. Prior to this role, Mara served as First Deputy of Policy in the Office of City of Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson, Director of Policy in the Office of Cook County Board President Toni Preckwinkle, and Senior Strategist of Guaranteed Income at Economic Security Project. A devoted Chicagoan, in her personal capacity Mara co-organizes Market Box, a mutual aid project that delivers free, fresh, local produce to families across Chicago’s South Side each month. Mara holds an MA from the University of Chicago Crown Family School of Social Work, Policy, and Practice and a BA in Public Policy from the University of Chicago and is an Obama Foundation Scholar alum and a Fulbright alum.
Bio coming soon...
Lauren Paul is the Senior Director of Strategic Advancement at the Institute on Race, Power and Political Economy where she builds support for power-shifting ideas like baby bonds and guaranteed income that dismantle structural inequalities and advance economic rights, inclusion, equity, and civic engagement. Prior to the Institute, Lauren served as Chief of Staff, Director of Policy, and VP of Strategic Alliances at Common Future where she facilitated alignment between diverse actors at the local, state and federal levels towards bold visions of economic transformation. Lauren has been published in FastCompany, Nonprofit Quarterly, and Inside Philanthropy. She serves on the board of Forward Cities and served on the Leadership Team for the Economic Mobility Alliance. She holds a masters degree in Public Affairs from UC Berkeley and a BA in Peace and Justice from Tufts University.
David Radcliffe grew up in a small factory town in the Appalachian foothills of western Pennsylvania. Today, he lives with his family in Connecticut. Professionally, David is the State and Local Policy Director with the New School’s Institute on Race, Power and Political Economy. Previous work experiences include: policy director for the Office of Connecticut State Treasurer, where he championed implementation of the first-in-the-country “Baby Bonds” wealth building initiative; policy analyst with the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston; and, grassroots community organizer. He has a strong passion for working with people to build places and economies where everyone can lead lives that are fulfilling, prosperous, and productive.
Cortney Sanders is a policy expert focused on advancing racial and economic equity through policy, research, and strategic partnerships. She currently serves as Director of the National Jobs for All Network, where she leads the coalition’s strategy to advance a federal job guarantee and the right to meaningful employment.
Previously, Cortney was appointed Senior Advisor in the Office of the Commissioner at the U.S. Social Security Administration, where she led several agency equity initiatives, coordinated interagency efforts to examine labor market barriers and retirement outcomes, and oversaw the agency’s research portfolio–including the Retirement and Disability Research Consortium.
Before joining SSA, she worked at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities (CBPP), where she led the State Policy Equity Initiative. In her role, she partnered with over 40 state organizations, advised federal and state officials, and helped shape national conversations on economic inclusion, fiscal equity, and public investment. Notably, published reports on youth justice reform, criminal legal fines and fees, and strategic responses to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Cortney also served as a Special Advisor to Poverty Solutions at the University of Michigan and is a former Aspen Institute William Hearst Fellow and Aspen Ideas Fellow.
Cortney serves as Chair of the alumni board for the University of Michigan’s Ford School of Public Policy, where she earned her Master’s in Public Policy. She also holds a Bachelor’s degree in Government from the University of Texas at Austin and proudly serves on the board of the Polichic Engagement Fund.
Outside of work, she enjoys running and is currently training for her second marathon.
Sam Scipio is the Institute’s Creative Lead. A design generalist at her core, she specializes in visual design, design strategy, graphic facilitation, visual notetaking, branding, and infographics. She is so excited to bring her breadth of knowledge to the Institute to create clear and concise visuals to communicate some of the most pressing and groundbreaking ideas of our time.
Ana Teller is the Program Manager in the Director’s Office at the Institute on Race, Power and Political Economy at The New School. She holds a BA in Political Studies and Global and International Studies from Bard College, where her senior project investigated how those historically excluded from citizenries become agents of democratic refoundings. Before joining the Institute, Ana worked with the U.S. Council for International Business (USCIB), supporting international policy initiatives alongside partners at the OECD, IOE, UN and ICC, and taught English to highschoolers in Nîmes, France through the TAPIF program.
Ashley Thomas is a Policy Analyst at the Institute on Race, Power and Political Economy, supporting the Budget Equity Project. She specializes in urban policy at the intersection of economic inequality, housing, and equitable community development. With over a decade of experience in community organizing, coalition building, and program design, Ashley's on-the-ground experience deeply informs her policy praxis, ensuring that community voices shape systemic solutions. Ashley served as the Director of Resident Services at Community Roots Housing in Seattle, where she designed economic empowerment and eviction prevention services. Her advocacy extended to the Fair Chance Housing Ordinance, combating housing discrimination based on criminal history, and championing the allocation of ARPA resources for affordable housing providers in Seattle. Ashley also has a background in youth development, serving on the board of Powerful Voices and as a sexual health community educator for youth in the juvenile justice system. She holds a Bachelor of Arts with an interdisciplinary concentration in Approaches to Social Justice from Western Washington University and a Master of Science in Public and Urban Policy from The New School.
Specializing in urban politics at the intersection of race, gender, and class, Tanishia Lavette Williams obtained a Ph.D. from the Public and Urban Policy program at the Milano School of International Affairs, Management, and Urban Policy at The New School. Based on her experience as a teacher, principal, executive director, and superintendent in school systems undergoing extensive reform, Tanishia’s focus on education aims to connect praxis and theory. Her contributions to school-based pedagogues and contemporary literature leverage the historicity of race relations within the law to modern policy and infrastructures that impact public education. Tanishia’s scholarship examines how racism historically permeates systems via sociocultural norms and laws, resulting in the subordination of minorities through racialized hierarchies. Her current multi-sited research exposes the varied tensions, contradictions, inclusions, and exclusions that co-exist in public education. Tanishia’s broader research goals aim to advance the literature at the intersections of education, racial stratification, and policy. Her public scholarship includes a variety of presentations, talks, documentaries, and workshops that analyze the role of race in disparate outcomes for people of color.
advisors and fellows
David Bering-Porter is Assistant Professor of Culture and Media at the Eugene Lang College of Liberal Arts at The New School. David has lectured, taught, and published on zombie movies and other forms of Black horror, generative media and artificial intelligence, and the intersections of race, culture, and digital theory. David is a founding member of the Digital Theory Lab at New York University and is an ongoing member of the steering committee for the Code as a Liberal Art program at The New School. His current book project, under contract with University of Minnesota Press, is titled Undead Labor and is a study of the ways that race, labor, and value come together in the mediated body of the zombie. His writing has also appeared in journals such as Critical Inquiry, Flow, MIRAJ, Post 45, Culture Machine and the Los Angeles Review of Books.
Dave A. Chokshi, MD, MSc, FACP was the 43rd Commissioner at the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene, one of the leading health agencies in the world. He led the City’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic, including its historic campaign to vaccinate over 6 million New Yorkers, saving tens of thousands of lives. Dr. Chokshi architected treatment strategies, navigated school and economic reopenings, and served as principal public spokesperson. Under his tenure, the Health Department’s budget grew to its highest-ever level, reflecting investment in signature initiatives such as the Public Health Corps, Pandemic Response Institute, and New Family Home Visiting program. In 2021, the Department also stewarded the launch of the nation’s first publicly-authorized overdose prevention centers—as well as a landmark Board of Health resolution on racism as a public health crisis.
From 2014-2020, Dr. Chokshi served in leadership roles at NYC Health + Hospitals (H+H), including as its inaugural Chief Population Health Officer, where he built an award-winning team dedicated to transforming the largest public health care system in the country. He was also Chief Executive Officer of the H+H Accountable Care Organization (ACO), one of the few ACOs in the nation to achieve high quality and cost performance for nine consecutive years. He has been a practicing primary care internist at Bellevue Hospital since 2014. He is also Clinical Professor of Population Health at NYU and a Senior Scholar at the CUNY School of Public Health and Health Policy.
Previously, Dr. Chokshi served as a White House Fellow at the U.S. Dept. of Veterans Affairs, where he was the principal health advisor in the Office of the Secretary. His prior work experience spans the public, private, and nonprofit sectors. Dr. Chokshi has written on medicine and public health in the New England Journal of Medicine, JAMA, Lancet, Health Affairs, Science, the New York Times, Harvard Business Review, and Scientific American. In 2016, President Obama appointed him to the Advisory Group on Prevention, Health Promotion, and Integrative and Public Health.
He trained in internal medicine at Brigham & Women's Hospital, where he received the Dunne Award for Compassionate Care, and was a clinical fellow at Harvard Medical School. During his training, he did clinical work in Guatemala, Peru, Botswana, Ghana, and India. He received his M.D. with Alpha Omega Alpha distinction from Penn. He also earned an MSc in global public health as a Rhodes Scholar at Oxford, and graduated summa cum laude from Duke.
Gary L. Cunningham is a prominent leader in economic and racial justice, renowned for his transformative leadership and commitment to creating equitable opportunities. As the Senior Advisor for the New Schools Institute on Race, Power, and Political Economy, Gary leverages his extensive experience to address economic inequalities.
Gary currently leads as the Chair of the Board at Momentus Capital, a family of organizations dedicated to expanding access for underserved communities. He also plays a pivotal role as a Board Member at ArtSpace, America’s leading nonprofit real estate developer for the arts. Complementing these roles, Gary brings his expertise to the Association for Enterprise Opportunities (AEO), serving as a board member for the largest microenterprise membership organization in the United States.
At Prosperity Now, where he served as President and CEO, Gary led the organization to focus on systemic change, advocating for inclusive solutions that transform the economy. Under his leadership, Prosperity Now expanded its vision to develop and scale systems-change solutions for economic justice.
Following his impactful tenure at Prosperity Now, Gary assumed the role of President and CEO at the Metropolitan Economic Development Association (MEDA). Under his guidance, MEDA was recognized by the US Department of Commerce as the top minority business development centers in the US for four consecutive years, significantly contributing to the growth of some of America’s largest and most profitable businesses of color.
Gary’s career spans over three decades across philanthropy, healthcare, public policy, and education sectors. He is a recognized expert in entrepreneurship, job creation, racial wealth equity, housing, and economic development, making him a sought-after thought leader in building an inclusive economy.
A graduate of Metropolitan State University with a Bachelor of Arts in Public Policy, Gary also holds a Master of Public Administration from Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government. His contributions have been honored with several awards, including the Public Leadership Award from the University of Minnesota’s Hubert H. Humphrey School of Public Affairs and a Distinguished Fellow title at the National Academy of Public Administration.
Gary L. Cunningham’s unwavering commitment and visionary approach continue to be instrumental in the ongoing journey towards a just and equitable society.
Sheryl Evans Davis, EdD is Executive Director of the San Francisco Human Rights Commission, appointed by Mayor Edwin Lee in 2016. Dr. Davis is a passionate advocate for equity, access, and educational opportunity for all.
Davis has led efforts to center community voice and prioritize equity in addressing the impacts of COVID-19 on vulnerable populations, including coordinating the allocations process of $120 million in grant monies to support the Black community in San Francisco. Since 2019, Davis has worked to build out an equity framework with San Francisco community stakeholders and City departments, and worked to launch the citywide Office of Racial Equity, an initiative housed within the SFHRC. Davis also oversees the Equity Studies Task Force, the African American Reparations Advisory Committee, the Dream Keeper Initiative, and the Close Juvenile Hall Working Group, among other programs housed within the Human Rights Commission. Programs and initiatives she established previously include Black to the Future, Everybody Reads, and Opportunities for All, among others.
Davis was founding Director of Mo’MAGIC, a program of the S.F. Public Defender’s office in service of children, youth, and community in San Francisco’s Fillmore District. Davis has also served on the SFPD Fair & Impartial Policing and Community Policing Advisory Committees, the Fillmore Community Benefits District, and the Redevelopment Agency's Western Addition Citizen Advisory Committee. She holds a BA from San Francisco State University, an MPA from the University of San Francisco, and an EdD from the USC Rossier School of Education. Davis was awarded an honorary doctorate by USF in 2019.
Natalie Diaz was born and raised in the Fort Mojave Indian Village in Needles, California, on the banks of the Colorado River. Diaz is Mojave and an enrolled member of the Gila River Indian Tribe. She is the author of When My Brother Was an Aztec (Copper Canyon Press), winner of the American Book Award, and Postcolonial Love Poem (Graywolf Press), winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry and finalist for the National Book Award and Forward Prize. Diaz has been awarded a MacArthur Foundation Fellowship, Lannan Foundation Literary Fellowship, Native Arts and Culture Fellowship, and both Princeton University’s Holmes National Poetry Prize and Hodder Fellowship. She is Professor at Arizona State University where she Directs the Center for Imagination in the Borderlands and is the Maxine and Jonathan Marshall Chair in Modern and Contemporary Poetry. She is the youngest ever elected Chancellor of the Academy of American Poets, a member of the Board of Trustees for the United States Artists, where she is an alumna of the Ford Fellowship and is currently a Mellon Foundation Presidential Fellow.
Chris Hughes is a Senior Fellow at the Institute on Race, Power, and Political Economy at The New School and the co-founder and co-chair of the Economic Security Project. His work focuses on contemporary issues in progressive political economy, including the history of central banking, antitrust policy, guaranteed income studies, and tax policy. A senior advisor to the Macroeconomic Analysis team at the Roosevelt Institute, Chris is currently writing a book chronicling the post-Bretton Woods political transformation of central banking in the United States. His first book, Fair Shot: Rethinking Inequality and How We Earn, was published by St Martin’s Press in 2018.
Chris has a masters in Economics from The New School of Social Research and graduated from Harvard magna cum laude with a bachelors in History and Literature. He was a co-founder of Facebook. A former member of the Council on Foreign Relations, he now serves on the boards of the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center and the Washington Square Park Conservancy. He lives in New York’s Greenwich Village with his husband and their two children.
Sujatha Jesudason, Ph.D., is a Professor of Professional Practice in Management at The New School, where she teaches and practices in the areas of leadership, innovation, inclusion, and social movements. Before joining The New School in 2017, she worked as an organizer, facilitator, and executive director for over 30 years in various social justice movements. A serial entrepreneur in the social sector, Sujatha was the founder and Executive Director of CoreAlign, a reproductive justice organization teaching innovation for social change to frontline activists, and Generations Ahead, a social justice organization addressing ethical concerns related to developing genetic technologies. At The New School, Sujatha founded the Social Movements + Innovation Lab to create space for designing contentious new social movement strategies while centering issues of race and power in the innovation process. She earned her Ph.D. in Sociology at the University of California, Berkeley, and her undergraduate degree in Economics and Latin American Studies from the University of Wisconsin, Madison.
Julie Kohler is a strategist and senior leader with more than two decades of senior leadership experience in philanthropy, advocacy, and higher education. Her writing and social commentary on a range of economic policy, democracy, and gender justice issues has appeared in The Washington Post, Democracy Journal, The Nation, The Daily Beast, CNN, MSNBC, BBC News, and numerous other outlets. She is the co-creator and host of the Wonder Media Network podcast White Picket Fence. The podcast, now in production for its fifth season, interrogates the structures of inequity and unpacks how the idealization of the nuclear family affects our culture and politics in ways that hurt us all. In 2022, it won the Communicator Award for “Best Society and Culture podcast.”
Kohler is the president of BMK Consulting, a philanthropic and nonprofit strategy consulting firm. Previously, she served as Senior Vice President and Managing Director for the Democracy Alliance, a progressive donor network, and as a fellow in residence at the National Women's Law Center. She has a Ph.D. in family social science from the University of Minnesota and lives in Washington, DC with her family.
I am a free-lance writer of non-fiction and fiction, currently a Senior Fellow at The Institute on Race, Power and Political Economy, and a Senior Research Fellow at the Vienna Centre for Societal Security. I studied at Oxford (DPhil, Rhodes Scholar), Harvard (BA, summa cum laude), and Alief Hastings High School in rural east Texas, home of the Fighting Bears. After that, I worked as an associate in M&A at Goldman Sachs in their London and Frankfurt offices, and I studied classical guitar in Seville, Spain with América Martínez, a disciple of Andrés Segovia. I've lived or worked in 48 countries.
My most recent book, How to Make a Killing, is a look at the shocking world of the US healthcare through the lens of the dialysis industry, where a miracle cure has become a nightmare for many patients. My previous books are: Crisis of Conscience, is a cultural history of whistleblowing and fraud, published in October, 2019 by Penguin Random House (in their Riverhead imprint) in the US, and by Atlantic Books in the UK and Commonwealth countries; and Extra Virginity, a New York Times best-selling account of olive oil culture, history, and crime, published by W W Norton. My articles have appeared in the New Yorker, National Geographic Magazine, New York Times Magazine, Atlantic Monthly, and elsewhere, and have been included in anthologies like Best American Science Writing and Best American Travel Writing.
Nina Turner, the oldest of seven children, grew up in a working-class family in Cleveland’s Lee-Harvard community. After working her way through college and graduate school—she earned an associate’s degree from Cuyahoga Community College and a bachelor’s and a master’s from Cleveland State University—she started a career dedicated to keeping Ohio working families afloat.
Nina made history in 2005 as the first woman to represent ward one on the Cleveland City Council, and again in 2008 as the first African American woman to serve as a state senator in Ohio’s 25th District. She went on to serve as the chair of party engagement for the Ohio Democratic Party, leading the effort to build a more robust and inclusive organizing infrastructure and support for local Democratic candidates across the state.
Nina took her record of accomplishments and commitment to justice to the nation when she became a national surrogate for Bernie Sanders’ 2016 presidential campaign and national co-chair for Bernie 2020. Her extensive travels showed her the commonality of the struggles faced by people in communities across the country. Between those two campaigns, Nina served as the president of the national grassroots political organization Our Revolution. When the Congressional Seat in Ohio’s 11th Congressional District became open, she ran a grassroots campaign focused on advancing progressive ideas and policies that would lift the working families of Northeast Ohio.
Nina is a wife and mother and a proud grandmother. She is a former assistant professor of history at her alma mater, Cuyahoga Community College; a member of Sigma Gamma Rho; and the host of the “Hello Somebody” podcast on iHeartRadio. When she is not speaking truth to power, she enjoys traveling, working out, cooking, and spending time with her family and friends.
Mia Charlene White (she/her), PhD, is a first generation Assistant Professor of Urban & Environmental Studies at TNS where she uses theories of race, space, and justice to teach critically about the environment. Hailing from Queens, NY, Mia is a mom of two and identifies as a Black woman of African American and Korean descent. Her interdisciplinary service includes election as Vice-Chair of the Black Geographies Group of the American Association of Geographers (AAG), and a Track Chair appointment for Planning History & Theory for the Association of Collegiate Schools of Planning (ACSP), where her goals are to support and transform the spatial study of race. Mia’s in-progress manuscript on community land trusts and reparations contributes to the literature on blues epistemology and reparative planning as theories of spatial belonging that build a language for future-building at the intersection of racial, climate, and housing justice.
Savanna Washington is a filmmaker, activist and educator and has used her life to effect change. Savanna founded Aardvark Alley Films in 2005. In talking about her work Savanna says, “Aardvark Alley Films is where film meets activism to work towards a better world.” Her latest film, “Playing Frisbee in North Korea,” is now having its U.S. national broadcast through American Public Television and can be seen on-demand through PBS Passport. Ms. Washington traveled to North Korea to shoot for the film. The film began at a conference on Korean reunification sponsored by General Colin Powell and the Colin Powell Center where she was a Graduate Fellow.
In Spring, 2024 Savanna produced the first annual “Harlem Earth Day.” Savanna’s next film project, “Greening of the Bronx: An Urban Garden Tale,” looks at the challenges and solutions Black and Brown urban environmental activists are bringing to the table in the Bronx and nation-wide.
Remembering Michelle Materre (1954–2022)
It is with great sorrow that we say goodbye to legendary racial justice and feminist filmmaker Michelle Materre, who died at only age 67 on March 11, 2022 following a battle with cancer. She was our inaugural Director of Creative Strategies at The New School's Institute on Race, Power and Political Economy and a beloved longtime member of the New School community.
Michelle was a highly regarded member of the faculty of media and film studies at The New School since 2001 and the founder or co-founder of important media inclusion initiatives for Black and other underrepresented people, including Creatively Speaking, a robust platform for film producers, and KJM3 Entertainment Group, one of the nation's first Black-focused film production companies.
During her short but productive service at the Institute on Race, Power and Political Economy, Michelle helped form our early and successful media strategy and academic programs linking film, art, and culture to larger issues of race and political economy.
In her memory, a committee of Institute principals and staff is planning to introduce a Michelle Materre Senior Fellowship program and an allied Lecture Series.
Michelle's own groundbreaking work has been acknowledged widely across the United States and the world in obituaries published in the New York Times, Philadelphia Tribune, and Amsterdam News, as well as the New School Free Press.
Michelle was an active board member and supporter of important organizations of progressive women filmmakers, including New York Women in Film and Television and Women Make Movies.
Above all, Michelle Materre was a remarkable and caring human being, a role model and champion to all of her colleagues and students, and a voice of reason and calm in an otherwise loud and troubled world. She is irreplaceable and will be sorely missed by all who had the privilege to know her.