Our Team

Valerie Ifill, MFA, is a dance artist, educator and researcher interested in the intersections of dance and community, identity development, and embodied processing. Valerie is a collaborative dance artist in Philadelphia and an Assistant Professor of Dance at Drexel University. Through her creative and justice-oriented work, Valerie creates spaces that support honest dialogue and participatory learning through embodied practices. Valerie has founded community dance programs in several states. Valerie earned her MFA in Dance from the University of Oregon, Independent Study Program from The Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater, and Bachelor of Business Administration with a Dance minor from Kent State University.

 Raja Schaar, IDSA is Program Director and Assistant Professor of Product Design at Drexel University’s Antoinette Westphal College of Media Arts and Design. She also co-chairs IDSA’s Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Council. She is an industrial designer with an extensive background in museum exhibit design and healthcare design who is passionate about ways design can make positive impact on society at the intersections of health equity, the environment justice, and STEAM education. Raja’s interdisciplinary research focuses on addressing inequities in maternal health through wearable technology; methods for engaging black girls and underrepresented minorities in STEM/STEAM through design and technology and dance; innovation and entrepreneurship education; and biologically-inspired design and sustainability. Raja studies the ethical implications of design and technology through the lenses of science fiction and speculative design.

Michelle L. Rogers, PhD is a program officer at the National Science Foundation in the Computing and Networking Systems division of the CISE directorate. There she is working on the Broadening Participation efforts with the Education and Work Force working group. In addition, she is an associate professor in the College of Computing and Informatics at Drexel University. For over 15 years, Dr, Rogers has used human factors engineering methods and socio-technical systems theory to study the impact of health information technology (HIT) on clinical workflow and usability of technology with and by medically under-served populations.  Most recently, Dr. Rogers has been investigating the usability and utility of patient portals and electronic medical records. Internationally, her investigations are focused on HIT in Uganda health systems. In addition, she is collaborating with faculty from industrial design, dance and education to understand how making, arts, and coding can assist in making the realization of a career in STEM fields achievable – BlackGirlsSteamingthroughDance (BGSD).

Ayana Allen-Handy, PhD is an Associate Professor of Urban Education in the Department of Policy, Organization, and Leadership at Drexel University. She is also the Founder/Director of the Justice-Oriented Youth Education Lab (The JOY Lab). Grounded in critical race and intersectional theoretical framings, her work is dedicated to justice-oriented urban education and is built upon debunking and (re)framing pejorative narratives of urban students, schools, and communities. Her work strives to (re)imagine urban from a place of decline to a place of possibilities. Therefore, her research employs asset-based critical perspectives which recognize the resources and assets that individuals and communities possess that derive from their lived experiences, and the role that power and privilege have played in maintaining inequitable educational opportunities. Particularly, her work centers the strengths that illuminate the community cultural wealth and funds of knowledge that are embedded in historically marginalized places and spaces and amongst the mosaic of diverse people groups therein. She seeks to highlight the human, cultural, and social capital that are often unrecognized and unacknowledged by the status quo. Her work does not focus on problems and issues in urban education alone, but critical solutions and participatory approaches in an effort to espouse equity, agency, and critical capacity building. For example, her work strives to support the capacity of students, teachers, schools, and communities to create, implement, and sustain their own solutions to issues that directly impact them through critical Youth and Community-led Participatory Action Research. 

Moe Woodard is PhD Candidate in Education at Drexel School of Education with a focus on educational technology. She has several years of experience working in projects teaching  students to code and design virtual environments. She is focused on teaching students to become producers of technology through teaching them to code with the devices they have readily available

 Destiny Bugg has spent the past several years as an arts administrator and coordinator in the non-profit sector of Philadelphia. She is a graduate of Drexel University, class of 2019, and is heavily involved in the arts. She is an advocate for arts education and strives to support educational programming in various aspects of her life. Destiny is specifically focused on continuing to make the arts accessible and increasing exposure in communities where the arts disproportionately lack funding. She has multiple years of experience as a dance teacher for the youth and also as a company member for a Philadelphia dance company, Danse4Nia. Destiny is now the Project Coordinator for Black Girls STEAMing through Dance, an interdisciplinary program that encourages and engages young Black girls in dance, design, and coding activities.