2026 Presenters

Dr. meaghan davis (she+they) is the associate director of leadership and civic engagement. She is a passionate cocreator of liberatory spaces, committed to reimagination and pushing the boundaries of what is possible in higher education. In her role, meaghan is dedicated to developing and implementing innovative and transformative experiences that center students as they navigate the awesome, critical, and formidable college journey. 

meaghan attended the University of Connecticut, for both her undergraduate and Master’s degree studies. In 2024, she completed the doctoral program in education leadership and equity at New England College. Their doctoral dissertation, Cocreating Liberatory Spaces in Higher Education, posited the Model for Liberatory Spaces in Higher Education. 

Stephenie Futch works in the Division of Information Technology, where their work focuses on process improvement, documentation, service communication, and making technical information easier to understand. In addition to their IT role, they serve as a Vice President for Staff, where clear records, follow-through, and communication are essential. Their session brings together practical workplace experience, documentation strategies, and a realistic understanding of how staff manage competing priorities, unclear expectations, and invisible work.

Managing Conflict at Work begins with curiosity and a willingness to create win-win solutions. It grows from compassion for yourself and the colleague you are struggling with. While you cannot control their behavior, there are strategies you can employ to change the dynamic in the relationship. We invite you to join us with an inquisitive mind and an open heart. 

Jill holds a Certificate from Mani Center for Integral Psychotherapy, an MSW from Hunter College School of Social Work, and an MBA from Columbia Business School. Using skill and compassion, she leads clients through rocky terrain with intention and grace. Jill integrates an understanding of psychological principles, human dynamics, and quantum physics in her workshops.

Daniel Levinson Wilk writes about the modern service sector in nineteenth- and twentieth-century U.S. history.  He argues that places like restaurants, hotels, barbershops, and apartment houses displaced slavery and servitude by offering consumers a better product outside the home.  His work examines the role of trust in the American economy, historical uses of the sociological term “emotional labor,” the intersection of design and labor in service workplaces, race- and gender-typing in service jobs, and the ethics of tipping. 

Dr. Levinson Wilk is currently working on a book titled Hotel Antebellum, a history of service industries in the nineteenth century. 

He has also written extensively on the history of elevators, is an occasional contributor to the trade journal Elevator World, and has been quoted on the subject in The New York Times, The Boston Globe, and The New Yorker.  Until its demise, he was Associate Director of the Elevator Historical Society, the only brick-and-mortar museum of elevators in the world.

Dr. Levinson Wilk speaks and publishes in scholarly, trade, and popular venues.  His 2015 peer-reviewed article “The Red Cap’s Gift,” on the history of tipping as a sociological and ethical practice, won that year’s Philip Scranton Prize for Best Article at the Business History Conference, the largest conference of business historians in the world.  His popular work has appeared online at Atlantic Monthly, Bloomberg, Fortune, and Al Jazeera America.  See below for some links.

A committed educator, Dr. Levinson Wilk won the SUNY Chancellor’s Award for Teaching in 2011.  His course offerings are listed below.  In 2018, he and Dr. Kyunghee Pyun won a $100,000 grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities to develop new curriculum to teach art and design students the business and labor histories of the careers they plan to enter.  He has also created many initiatives for education outside the classroom: the FIT Constitution Day Postcard Competition, the Triangle Chalk Project, the FIT Big Q Competition, the Great Elevator Movie screening series, lectures and conferences on workers’ rights, and other programming on a wide variety of subjects.

Dr. Levinson Wilk is a member of the board of the Remember the Triangle Fire Coalition, an organization that most recently built a work of public art on the building where the 1911 industrial disaster took place.

https://www.fitnyc.edu/creative-nexus/faculty/directory/wilk-daniel-levinson.php