The Speakers

Murali Balaji (he/him)

Murali Balaji is a journalist, author, and academic with nearly 25 years of experience in diversity leadership. He is the founder of Maruthi Education Consulting and has consulted numerous nonprofits, government agencies, corporations, and political campaigns on diversity, equity, and inclusion issues. Balaji has also served as the education director for the Hindu American Foundation, where he was recognized as a national leader in cultural competency and religious literacy. He co-founded The Voice of Philadelphia, a non-profit geared to help high school dropouts (or pushouts) develop media literacy and citizen journalism skills. He has also been a professor at Temple University and Lincoln University, where he chaired the mass communication department and engaged in multi-method research.

His areas of research include political economy, race and media, and the connections between masculinity and nationalism. He worked as a journalist for nearly a decade, covering politics, sports, and demographic changes. He won an Independent Press Association of New York award for covering racial justice issues and was honored by the St. Paul City Council for his work on covering policy issues.

He is the author of The Professor and the Pupil (Nation Books, 2007), a political biography of WEB Du Bois and Paul Robeson; the editor of Thinking Dead (Lexington Books, 2013) and Digital Hinduism (Lexington Books, 2017); and co-editor of Global Masculinities and Manhood (University of Illinois Press, 2012) and Desi Rap (Lexington Books, 2008), one of the seminal volumes on South Asian Americans and hip-hop.

He is a certified anti-bias trainer through the Anti-Defamation League (ADL). He also serves as the board chair of Bhumi Global and on the national board of Americans United for Separation of Church and State, as well as on the national advisory board of the Religious Freedom Center of the Freedom Forum Institute. His work has been featured in publications such as Teaching Tolerance and Religion Dispatches.

Christopher Griffin AKA Plant Kween (they/them)

As a Black queer nonbinary femme, Christopher enjoys exploring creative and accessible ways to use plants as a vehicle to incite further conversations centering on Black joy and resilience, LGBTQ+ advocacy, and the need to increase the visibility, representation, and empowerment of queer and trans people of color in the lush world of horticulture. Rooted in a journey of self-care, joy sharing, and community building, Christopher believes that we can all find a little happiness and authenticity through the wonders of those green little creatures we call plants. 

Taiyon J Coleman (She/Her)

Taiyon J Coleman is an educator, scholar, and writer. 

Taiyon’s research focus includes US American, African-American, and African Diaspora literatures and cultures; gender and women’s studies; film; college composition, developmental writing, and rhetoric; creative writing; education; assessment; anti-racist curriculum; and DEI consulting.

Taiyon’s most recent projects include the published essay, "Fool’s Gold," and she and three colleague’s co-authored grant application has received part of the $12 million in funding offered by The Mellon Foundation’s Inaugural Higher Learning Open Call for Civic Engagement and Social Justice-Related Research and Projects to develop an interdisciplinary, intersectional curriculum that would promote anti-racism. The grant project at St. Kate's was awarded $497,000 to use over three years.

She is a Cave Canem and VONA fellow, and her writing appears in Bum Rush the Page: A Def Poetry Jam; Riding Shotgun: Women Writing about Their Mothers; The Ringing Ear: Black Poets Lean South ; Blues Vision; How Dare We! Write: A Multicultural Creative Writing Discourse; and What God Is Honored Here: Writing on Miscarriage and Infant Loss by and for Native Women and Women of Color. 

Taiyon’s critical essay, “Disparate Impacts: Living Just Enough for the City,” appears in the bestselling 2016 anthology, A Good Time for the Truth: Race in Minnesota, edited by Sun Yung Shin. Mapping Our Potential: a Poem as a Spatial and Temporal Mapping of Human Experience is her TEDx talk. Her article, “The Risky Business of Engaging Racial Equity in Writing Instruction: A Tragedy in Five Acts,” published in TETYC was awarded the 2017 Mark Reynolds Best Article Award, and her essay "Poems as Maps: An Introduction," appears in the August 2017 issue of Places Journal. Her articles, "Making the Invisible Visible: A Project at the U Maps Minneapolis’s History with Racial Housing Covenants” and “Sometimes I Feel like Harriet Tubman (fall 2018),” appear in Minnesota Alumni Magazine.

Taiyon’s book, co-authored with colleagues, Working toward Racial Equity in First-Year Composition, from the Routledge Research in Higher Education Series, was published in 2019. Her poem, “It’s Bigger than This” appears in the spring 2020 issue of Minding Nature, and her poem, “What,” appears in the A Moment of Silence anthology, which offers unabashed accounts by Black artists in Minnesota facing The George Floyd Uprising and COVID-19. 

Taiyon has been an invited panelist on Minnesota Public Radio’s (MPR) Disparities in Minnesota from the Eyes of Those Who Fight Them; Who are We as Americans after this Election?; What is Feminism Today?; The Power of Live Performances; What Happens when Women Challenge Powerful Men?; America Grapples with the Pervasiveness of Sexual Harassment; How Woman Can be Better Allies?; Community Leaders React as We Wait for the Chauvin Verdict as hosted by national correspondent Kerri Miller; and an invited commentator with KARE 11 News Anchor, Jana Shortal, for Power to Change: The Legacy of George Floyd on April 20, 2021. 

“I AM NOT YOUR NEGRO: James Baldwin, White Supremacy & Police Violence” is her podcast discussion on Feminist Frequency Radio: Episode #128;  Laptop Cinema Club: Miss  Juneteenth Discussion is her interview of Director, Channing Godfrey Peoples (“Queen Sugar”) on June 23, 2020 for Women in Film (WIF); Laptop Cinema Club: Sighted Eyes/Feeling Heart is her discussion with director Tracy Heather Strain on August 12, 2020 for Women in Film (WIF); Laptop Cinema Club: Farewell Amor on December 2, 2020 is her discussion with writer/director, Ekwa Msangi, whose film premiered at the 2020 Sundance Film Festival; Toni Morrison's Song of Solomon and Eve’s Bayou are her two most recent podcasts for Feminist Frequency Radio; and Women in Film: Laptop Cinema’s interviewer/moderator with the writer and director of the film Master, Mariama Diallo, and her costume and production designers. Master premiered at the 2022 Sundance Film Festival.

Taiyon’s work was quoted in Time Magazine and Bloomberg City Lab. Her non-fiction book manuscript, Traveling without Moving: Personal Essays on Motherhood, Love, Equity, and Teaching, was a finalist for the New Rivers Press' Many Voices Project: Prose 2019.  

Taiyon’s work also appears in  Civility, Free Speech and Academic Freedom in Higher Education: Faculty on the Margins (Routledge); What Kind of Ancestor Do You Want to Be?: Ethics for the Long Game (University of Chicago Press); Sixteen Teachers Teaching edited by Patrick Sullivan (Utah State University Press 2020), which was awarded the CCCC 2022 Outstanding Book Award for an Edited Collection; Sparked: George Floyd, Racism, and the Progressive Illusion (Minnesota Historical Society Press); and seven poems from her poetry manuscript, Communicating with the Dead: Pandemic Love Poems, are featured in the fall 2020 issue of journal Minding Nature in the series, “Poems as Portals.” 

Taiyon is a 2017 recipient of a McKnight Foundation Artist Fellowship in Creative Prose, and she is one of twelve Minnesota emerging Children’s Writers of Color selected as a recipient of the 2018-2019 Mirrors and Windows Fellowship funded by the Loft Literary Center and the Jerome Foundation. 

Taiyon earned a BA in English Literature and a MA in English (Phi Kappa Phi and Ronald E. McNair Scholar) from Iowa State University, and she holds a MFA in Creative Writing and a PhD in English Literature and Culture with a minor in African American and African Diaspora Studies from the University of Minnesota, Twin-Cities as an Archie Givens Collection of African American Literature Research Fellow.

Taiyon is Associate Professor of Literature, Language, and Writing & Women's Studies at St. Catherine University in St. Paul, Minnesota, and she is an University of Minnesota Libraries' Mapping Prejudice National Think Tank Affiliated Scholar. 

Taiyon’s book collection of critical essays, Traveling without Moving, is forthcoming from the University of Minnesota Press.

@TaiyonJColeman

tjcoleman@stkate.edu