Guest Speakers

Lisa Folch

Lisa Folch joined the Carlson School Undergraduate Program team in October 2022 as an academic advisor. Previously Lisa worked in CLA as an Academic Advisor for six years and was a member of their Equity & Inclusion Training Committee.  Lisa was a presenter at the 2018 UGE Building Belonging Conference, delivering a session called “Building Relationships, Even During the Contentious Conversation.”  

Having a strong passion for equity and inclusion, Lisa serves on Carlson’s UG DEI Team and works with the Emerging Leaders of Color (ELOC) program, which is a free, 8-month pathway program for underrepresented high school students.  Lisa currently is a Co-Chair of the Academic Advising Network (AAN) Board, leading the Professional Development Sub-committee.

Tish Jones

Tish Jones is a poet, emcee, and Hip Hop Theater artist from Saint Paul, MN, with a deep and resounding love for Black people. Her work explores themes of Black love, liberation, politics, and Afro-Futurism. She has exhibited her work throughout the United States and abroad as a public performance artist committed to the power of narrative change through the arts. Her writing can be found in We Are Meant to Rise (University of Minnesota Press), A Moment of Silence (Tru Ruts and The Playwrights Center), the Minnesota Humanities Center’s anthology entitled, Blues Vision: African American Writing from Minnesota (Minnesota Historical Society Press) and more. 

Currently serving as a Jerome Hill Artist Fellow and an Arts Matters Artist2Artist Fellow, Tish is grateful to have been supported through numerous grants, fellowships, and awards throughout her career. That generous support has allowed her to excavate the kind of stories that chart new worlds. She also serves as the Founding Executive Director of TruArtSpeaks. For all of it, she is eternally grateful.

Brad Fortier

Brad Fortier is a Senior Equity Training and Education Coordinator for Uplift Oregon. He was the training and development specialist for the Oregon Health Authority’s Equity and Inclusion Division. He also coordinated Portland Community College’s (PCC) Illumination Project, a student leadership program that uses interactive theater to teach about social justice issues. He tries to listen more than he speaks and be accountable, present, genuine, and clear when he facilitates. Brad Fortier is also an anthropologist, author, educator, and entertainer who has taught and trained adults in various settings for over 20 years. 

Brad has been working in the inclusion, diversity, equity, and access space since creating Spontaneous Village, a trauma-informed game and play-based community-building intervention for refugees used in 2014 in San Antonio, Texas, and in 2016 in Berlin, Germany. He had an advisory role with the United Nations Institute for Training and Research (UNITAR) in 2016 for incorporating interactive and experiential training methods in their work.

Riikka Salonen

Riikka Salonen, MA, brings nearly 30 years of expertise in diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) and health equity to her role as the Managing Director of Health Equity at BCT Partners. Riikka oversees the Think Cultural Health Program for the HHS Office of Minority Health, which has enrolled nearly a million learners thus far. Riikka supports client organizations in building strategic DEI and health equity initiatives. Before joining BCT, Riikka held DEI leadership positions at Oregon Health & Science University and PeaceHealth, where she advanced workforce diversity and health justice efforts, including community collaborations during the pandemic on culturally tailored testing and vaccinations. Her international professional impact is felt across 20 countries, including her role as one of 115 global experts who authored the 2021 Global Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Benchmarks. 

Riikka serves on the local Southwest Washington Equity Coalition board, committed to dismantling structural white supremacy and advocating for marginalized communities. Before healthcare, she co-led intercultural programs at The Scholar Ship, an ocean-going university, and the Intercultural Communication Institute. A pioneer in her field, Riikka completed her graduate studies in intercultural communication at the University of Jyväskylä in Finland.

Colette Campbell

As Chief People and Culture Officer, Colette is responsible for the oversight of Bremer Bank's human resources teams; diversity, equity and inclusion strategy; and talent acquisition team. In this role, Colette manages all dimensions of the employee experience, including attracting and hiring talent, and developing and retaining employees. Prior to her current role, Colette served as Bremer’s Chief Talent Acquisition and Diversity Officer, where, among other accomplishments, she established a new team that shaped Bremer’s recruiting processes and champions the integration of DEI into Bremer’s overall business. Under her leadership, Bremer’s first diversity council and supplier diversity program were created. She also helped build the needed teams for Bremer’s reinvestments and expansions into diverse, historically underserved communities. 

Colette brings both a professional diversity to her position as well as personal. She was raised in Canada by Jamaican-born parents and has lived and/or taught on almost every continent in the world. Outside of her role with Bremer, Colette serves on the Minneapolis Foundation Board, as an advisor for Ag Centric at Central Lakes College, and serves as an advisor to the business programs at both North Hennepin Community College and Saint Paul College.

Dr. Terresa Moses

Terresa Moses is a proud Black queer woman dedicated to the liberation of Black and brown communities through art and design. As a designer and illustrator, her work focuses primarily on race, identity, and social justice. She advocates for positive change in her community using creativity as tools of community activism and organizing like her solo intersectional exhibition, Umbra, and her community distro project, Stop Killing Black People. Terresa is the Creative Director at Blackbird Revolt, a social justice-based design studio. She is also an Assistant Professor of Graphic Design and the Director of Design Justice at the University of Minnesota’s College of Design. 

As a community engaged scholar, her design research interests include; Project Naptural, which creates spaces to educate, connect, and empower Black women about their natural hair and self-identity, and Racism Untaught, a curriculum model that reveals ‘racialized’ design and helps students, educators, and organizations create anti-racist concepts through the design research process. She has multiple publications including two books through MIT Press, Racism Untaught and An Anthology of Blackness.

Shilpa Alimchandani

Shilpa Alimchandani is the Founder and Principal of Mookti Consulting. She has more than 20 years of experience in diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI), leadership development, and intercultural learning. Shilpa is a coach and facilitator who partners with clients to develop holistic solutions that lead to transformational change. She has designed and implemented inclusive leadership programs, facilitated team retreats, and coached leaders at various levels. In her role as the Director of Learning & Innovation for Cook Ross, she built the learning and development function from the ground up and led the organization’s curriculum and product development initiatives. 

Before her work at Cook Ross, Shilpa designed and implemented global leadership programs for the State Department, led the development of a global learning strategy for the Peace Corps, and taught in the School of International Service at American University. She has facilitated trainings in nearly 20 countries around the world, and has received numerous awards, including twice receiving the Peace Corps' Distinguished Service Award.

Andrew Zhao

Andrew has spent the majority of his career working in the nonprofit sector. He's consistently been motivated to improve organizational culture in these mission-driven environments with an emphasis on diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging. He holds a BA in Operations Management (University of Maryland) and certificates in Change Management (Cornell University) and Equity (University of Minnesota). His strengths are very relational and he enjoys the complex beauty that comes out of working authentically and collaboratively. The journey toward belonging takes all of us, so it's important to progress forward collectively while also trying to meet as many people where they're at individually. Andrew lives in South Minneapolis with his spouse, 3 kids, and 2 dogs and he loves the Chicago Cubs.