Partners and Collaborators
Dr. Derrick Gay
Dr. Derrick Gay has been working with Scarsdale Schools as a DEI consultant since the 2021-22 school year. Dr. Gay is an educator, activist, and consultant working across a broad spectrum of sectors on a range of topics related to diversity, equity, and inclusion. His work with the District will focus on collaborating with students, teachers, parents, and the Board of Education via presentations and workshops. Additionally, Dr. Gay will also assist the District in our long-term planning efforts in this area.
Dr. Gay has been featured in the New York Times, Washington Post, Business of Fashion, The Huffington Post, El Tiempo Latino, NPR, The Brian Lehrer Show, and 60 Minutes. He is also a Forbes contributor.
Dr. Gay has also produced two TEDx Talks: "The Double-Edged Sword," which explores the irony that the word diversity often undermines diversity goals; and "Why Elephants Hold the Key to Success in the 21st Century," which explores the nature of racial discourse in the United States.
Dr. Gay is a proud graduate of Whitney Young Magnet High School; Merit School of Music; Oberlin College, Oberlin Conservatory of Music, Columbia University, and The University of Pennsylvania.
Dr. Bryant Marks
Dr. Marks, Sr. is a minister, researcher, trainer, and award-winning educator. He has provided diversity, equity, and inclusion training for eighteen years. His personal and professional mission is to develop the knowledge, wisdom, and skills of others that will allow them to reach their full potential and live their lives with purpose and passion. Dr. Marks is the Founding Director of the National Training Institute on Race and Equity and is a professor in the Department of Psychology at Morehouse College. He served on President Obama’s Board of Advisors with the White House Initiative on Educational Excellence for African Americans and as a senior advisor with the White House Initiative on Historically Black Colleges and Universities. Dr. Marks was a contributor/trainer with the Obama Administration’s My Brother’s Keeper (MBK) and 21st Century Policing programs. Dr. Marks has provided implicit bias training to individuals in education (K-12 and higher education), philanthropy, non-profits, local and federal government, and several other sectors.
Dr. Marks holds a B.A. in psychology and a minor in economics from Morehouse College, and an M.A. and Ph.D. in Social Psychology from the University of Michigan. Dr. Marks conducts research and professional development in the areas of diversity and implicit bias, Black male psychology and development, the academic achievement of minority college students, innovations in STEM education, and personal passion and productivity.
A Sample of Author Visits
Author Visit: Collum McCann, Narrative 4
At the 10th annual Global Citizenship Day at Scarsdale High School, author Colum McCann was the keynote speaker, and he took the opportunity of the committee’s invitation to share his message of fearless hope through radical empathy. Mr. McCann is a brilliant writer and storyteller whose message to young people is to encourage them to know the grief, happiness, love, and sorrow of others to expand the world and to grow more deeply empathetic. Through his work as co-founder of the Narrative 4, he and other authors and artists have run programs in schools and communities all around the world helping those who share their stories to use them as a means to foster a sort of human reciprocity- “You take responsibility for my life; I take precious care of yours.”
Ken Liu
Event Description: The Paper Menagerie, a magical realist story about a biracial American boy and his Chinese American mother, is the first piece of fiction to simultaneously win three of the world’s top speculative fiction literary awards (Hugo, Nebula, World Fantasy). In this talk, author Ken Liu will discuss writing the story, various reader reactions to it, the complex process of interpretation through which every story becomes a joint creation of the reader and the writer, and how our self-narrative remains the most important battleground in our ongoing examination of structural racism in America. Time will be reserved for audience online Q&A with the author.
Author Bio: Ken Liu is an American author of speculative fiction. A winner of the Nebula, Hugo, and World Fantasy awards, he wrote the Dandelion Dynasty, a silkpunk, epic fantasy series, as well as short story collections, The Paper Menagerie and Other Stories (2016) and The Hidden Girl and Other Stories (2020). He also authored the Star Wars novel, The Legends of Luke Skywalker (2017). Prior to becoming a full-time writer, Liu worked as a software engineer, corporate lawyer, and litigation consultant. Liu speaks frequently at conferences and universities on a variety of topics, including futurism, cryptocurrency, the history of technology, bookmaking, narrative futures, and the mathematics of origami.
Joy Harjo
Author Visit: Joy Harjo, Three-Term U.S. Poet Laureate
Event Description: Joy Harjo, internationally renowned performer and writer of the Muscogee (Creek) Nation will discuss her trailblazing life and career, as well as her soon-to-be-published second memoir, Poet Warrior (W.W. Norton), in conversation with cultural historian Lori Rotskoff.
Harjo was appointed the 23rd United States Poet Laureate, the first Native American to hold the position. Born in Tulsa, Oklahoma, Harjo is the author of nine books of poetry, several plays, children’s books, and one previous memoir. Harjo’s poetry collections include An American Sunrise (W.W. Norton, 2019), Conflict Resolution for Holy Beings (W.W. Norton, 2015), How We Became Human: New and Selected Poems (W.W. Norton, 2004); and She Had Some Horses (W. W. Norton, 1983).
Her first memoir, Crazy Brave (W.W. Norton, 2012) won several awards including the PEN USA Literary Award for Creative Non-Fiction and the American Book Award. Ms. described it as “[t]he best kind of memoir, an unself-conscious mix of autobiography, spiritual rumination, cultural evaluation, history and political analysis told in simple but authoritative and deeply poetic prose.” Harjo’s second memoir, Poet Warrior, invites readers to travel along the heartaches, losses, and humble realizations of her “poet-warrior” road.
Harjo is the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship, the New Mexico Governor’s Award for Excellence in the Arts, and the Rasmuson United States Artist Fellowship. She is the Chancellor of the Academy of American Poets, Board of Directors Chair of the Native Arts & Cultures Foundation, and holds a Tulsa Artist Fellowship. In 2014, she was inducted into the Oklahoma Writers Hall of Fame.
Past DEI Collaborators & Partners
