About Our Keynotes
Olmeca
Olmeca is a Bilingual Hip-Hop artist, producer, activist and scholar who has been featured on Complex Magazine, Billboard, NPR, Huffington Post, Noisey, and Democracy Now. His work has been featured on various documentaries on PBS, BBC World, as well as, featured films. He has written music for tv shows including “Sons of Anarchy,” and new series, “The Mayans” on FX and toured Latin American, U.S. and Europe.
Currently, Olmeca is celebrating the release of his new album, “DEFINE". The album can be found on multiple playlists on Spotify and itunes where some of the singles are reaching 100k plays. He is faculty at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas in the Interdisciplinary Gender and Ethnic Studies Department teaching Latin American History, Latinx in the U.S. and Hip-Hop courses. For the next year, Olmeca will be a Kennedy Center Artist Fellow and is finishing a poetry book to accompany the album
Noisey says, "Olmeca is a 21 century shaman and one of the reasons bilingual music is a thing today..."
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Olmeca grew up in the barrios of L.A. and Mexico, a reality that brewed his blending of music genres and cultural sensitivity. His bilingual music has earned him respect and praises in both English and Spanish news outlets and genres (Hip-Hop and Latin Alternative). Olmeca has collaborated with Taboo (Black Eyed Peas), Latin Alternative band, Ozomatli, Hip-Hop legend, Ras Kass, and Dave Kushner (Velvet Revolver). Olmeca has toured Canada, Latin America and Europe and has helped spawn a new trend of bilingual Hip-hop. While everyday people respect his lyrical content, music connoisseurs value the production, and educators utilize Olmeca’s music in their classrooms.
This, along with his social commentary and community efforts makes Olmeca a stand-alone artist in how he can intersect various identities and demographics. It is also for this reason that he is not only a gifted performing artist, but a university lecturer doing guest lectures, residencies and keynote speeches in universities throughout the U.S. His capacity to bring various campus programs, offices and academic departments together is not only unique, but also necessary. His work has been noted by social justice dignitaries speaking alongside Dolores Huerta, Naomi Klein and many others.
Michael Benitez, Ph.D.
Michael Benitez, Ph.D., recently joined MSU Denver in September as vice president for Diversity and Inclusion. Over the past two decades, Benitez has served higher education in different capacities, including academic and student affairs; diversity, equity and inclusion; and teaching. He is a nationally acclaimed scholar practitioner in higher education and a highly sought speaker and workshop leader at universities, colleges and conferences nationwide.
His role includes providing leadership over the development, implementation and assessment of diversity strategic goals and planning, institutional efforts and programming aimed at cultivating and sustaining an equitable and inclusive campus climate, and ensuring that diversity, equity and inclusion are prominent components in the decision-making and organizational culture that drives inclusive excellence.
Benitez has authored book chapters and articles on student identity, hip-hop culture, cultural centers, faculty development, cultural and ethnic studies, and campus climate assessment. He has been featured in educational documentaries such as “Cracking the Codes: The System of Racial Inequity” (2012) and on talk shows such as “Hard Knock Radio” and “Speak Out With Tim Wise.” He is co-editor of the anthology “Crash Course: Reflections on the Film ‘Crash’ for Critical Dialogues About Race, Power and Privilege” (2007). His most recent works on supporting faculty of color and creating campus-community participatory frameworks for difficult conversations and institutional action can be found in AACU’s “Liberal Education” (2017) and “New Directions in Institutional Research” (2017).
Prior to joining MSU Denver, Benitez served as chief diversity officer/dean for Diversity and Inclusion at the University of Puget Sound, director of Intercultural Leadership and Engagement at Lafayette College, director of Diversity Initiatives at Dickinson College and CAMP retention and academic counselor at Penn State University. He has helped create, shape and lead innovate equity and inclusion-based strategies, programs and practices to address some of higher education’s more pressing campus-climate issues and challenges. Such programs include “Inclusive Teaching Conversations,” the “Diversity Monologues,” the campus-climate community participatory frameworks and the NW5C cross-institutional consortium for supporting faculty of color.
Benitez completed his B.S. and M.Ed. at Pennsylvania State University, where he gained interest in pursuing doctoral studies as a McNair Scholar. He holds a Ph.D. in Educational Leadership and Policy from Iowa State University’s School of Education and has been recognized with several leadership and scholarly awards throughout his career.