The Speakers

Ms. Bostick is the Director of Programming at CREED (the Center for Racial Equity in Education). A former print journalist, high school teacher, museum educator and Writing Center Director, she has spent much of her career building relationships with communities and helping stakeholders authentically connect to their communities. A champion of literacy and access, Ms. Bostick is a current student in UNC Charlotte's Ph.D. in Curriculum and Instruction program.

Dr. Child is the author of award-winning books of American Indian history, including Boarding School Seasons: American Indian Families, 1900-1940, which won the North American Indian Prose Award; Holding Our World Together: Ojibwe Women and the Survival of Community; and Indian Subjects: Hemispheric Perspectives on the History of Indigenous Education (with Brian Klopotek). Her book My Grandfather’s Knocking Sticks: Ojibwe Family Life and Labor on the Reservation won the American Indian Book Award and the Best Book in Midwestern History. Her book for children, Bowwow Powwow, won the the American Indian Youth Literature Award for best picture book. Dr. Child served as a member of the board of trustees of the National Museum of the American Indian-Smithsonian and was President of the Native American & Indigenous Studies Association.

Dr. Danis focuses on the interdisciplinary relationship of community capital development, regional planning, multi-modal transportation, food systems policy, cultural behavior, resilience, and sustainability practices. I empower community and personal engagement by listening, being empathetic to shared values, and by building the trust needed to ensure a vibrant future for all regional stakeholders. Her work is informed by 20+ years of professional directorship experience in environmental science, land use planning and policy, regional collaboration, community development/redevelopment, and watershed/water supply protection planning.

Ms. Gilewski became a resident of the Charlotte community in 1967. In 1972, she moved to East Charlotte, where she raised her own family and developed a strong bond with her local community. She has always had a passion for helping others and since 2010, her love for her community has inspired her to be an advocate for change and improvement. She served one term as her neighborhood association president, has been a member of the CharlotteEAST board since 2012, and served two terms as past co-chair. Through this organization, Ms. Gilewski advocates for economic development and transportation options for the East community.

Dr. Harden is a teacher educator and expert on civic engagement. Harden’s teaching, research, and service expertise is in understanding community engagement at cultural institutions and developing engaged scholarship in higher education. She completed a Ph.D. in Curriculum and Teaching with a concentration in cultural studies from UNC Greensboro. As a Mecklenburg County commissioner, Dr. Harden is the first tenured faculty member to hold a significant elected office while on the UNC Charlotte faculty.

Dr. Johnson develops policies, structures, and programming that supports engaged scholarship and enriches the student experience through experiential and community-based learning, civic engagement, and international education. She works collaboratively to create strategic initiatives that align teaching and research around urgent community needs. She also coordinates the 49er Democracy Experience strategy team, a committee of faculty, staff, and students dedicated to civic learning and voter engagement. Dr. Johnson co-founded and directs UNC Charlotte’s Bonner Leaders program. She was the 2018 Civic Professional of the Year – Emerging Leader Award recipient, presented by North Carolina Campus Compact.

As a child clinical-community psychologist, Dr. Kilmer's interests center around children and families and: (a) factors influencing the development of children at-risk for emotional, behavioral, and/or academic difficulties, particularly risk and resilience and youngsters’ adjustment to trauma; and (b) the use of evaluation research to guide system change, program refinement, service delivery, and policy. His current primary effort involves a multi-year partnership with our local school system’s pre-kindergarten program and office of research, analytics, and evaluation. Dr. Kilmer is working collaboratively to increase their capacity to collect, manage, and use data to better support teacher coaching, teacher differentiated instruction, teacher curricula implementation, and research capacity.

Dr. Nation is the Robert Innes Professor of Human and Organizational Development in the Peabody College of Education at Vanderbilt University. His work focuses on prevention of violence and bullying among school-aged children, restorative practices and other approaches to managing student discipline and reducing racial/ethnic inequities in exclusionary discipline, and on interventions that promote positive school and community environments. Dr. Nation has been principal investigator on numerous grants from sponsors such as the Centers for Disease Control, the National Institute of Justice and the Health Resources and Services Administration.

Dr. Olabisi is a participatory modeler exploring the sustainability of complex systems with human and environmental components. She works directly with stakeholders, using participatory model-building techniques to foster adaptive learning about the dynamics of coupled human-natural systems, and to integrate stakeholder knowledge with academic knowledge. The models she builds incorporate feedback and non-linear dynamics, and typically include biophysical, social, and human behavioral components. Her work addresses the complexity, interdisciplinary, and engagement aspects of sustainability research. Dr. Olabisi works predominantly around problems related to agriculture, climate change, and food security, but the modeling tools she uses may be applied in a wide range of contexts.

Dr. Richardson is Executive Director of Read Charlotte, a community initiative that unites families, educators and community partners with the goal of improving third-grade reading proficiency in Mecklenburg County to 80% by 2025. In this role, he is responsible for using research, data and strategic funding to coordinate, integrate and align the efforts of dozens of organizations across Charlotte-Mecklenburg to improve children’s language and literacy development from birth through third grade. He has worked in philanthropy for most of the past 20 years. Read Charlotte is his fifth startup venture, and he has received local and national recognition for his efforts at the organization.

Professor Suclupe researches the intersection of Latinx communities and health/mental wellness, Latinx communities and access to services, community based participatory research, grief and loss, child/adolescent/adult mental wellness, cultural awareness, humility, and inclusion in social work practice, creating and increasing social capital through social mobility, and creating healthy and thriving communities. His expertise in the clinical field includes working individuals who have experienced complex trauma (physical abuse, sexual abuse and neglect), families who have adopted, vulnerable populations in the school system, Latinx communities, children and families involved in higher levels of care , grief groups and statewide clinical program marketing.

Dr. White joins the UNC Charlotte UrbanCORE from StrivePartnership where he is vice president and executive director of the public-private collaborative focused on cradle-to-career outcomes in urban education. Prior to his work with StrivePartnership, White served as Vice President for University Engagement and as Chief Diversity Officer at Cleveland State University. Formerly, he was Vice Chancellor for Economic Advancement at the Ohio Department of Higher Education and Associate Vice President for Community Engagement at Xavier University following a career at the Chicago Tribune.