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 Michelle L. Rogers, PhD is an associate professor in the College of Computing and Informatics at Drexel University. Dr. Rogers is engaged in research and teaching at the intersection of people, technology and information, primarily but not exclusively, in the healthcare domain. For more than 15 years, she has focused on solving three focused research problems (1) the evaluation of implementing and designing information technology in complex work systems, (2) the inefficient and ineffective healthcare information technology (HIT) used by healthcare providers’ with and by medically underserved communities (patient portals and electronic medical records) and (3) understanding the success of women and girls’ participation in STEM fields/careers. She has used techniques from industrial and systems engineering, sociotechnical systems theory, user interface design methodologies, scenario-based user evaluation and participatory design. She has secured funding from the National Science Foundation (NSF), Spencer Foundation, Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, and the Nokia Corporation. Internationally, Dr. Rogers has investigated HIT in the Ugandan maternal health system among midwives and other community health workers. Most recently, 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 – Black Girls Steaming through Dance (BGSD). From 2020 - 2022, she served as a program officer at the National Science Foundation in the Computing and Networking Systems (CNS) division of the Computer and Information Science and Engineering (CISE) directorate. There, she was working on the Computer and Information Science and Engineering Research Expansion Program (CISE MSI).

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. 

Aanika M. Allen is a dynamic arts administrator, educator, and advocate for inclusive and equitable learning environments with over a decade of experience in theater education and program coordination. Most recently serving as Assistant Dean of the Ira Brind School of Theater Arts at University of the Arts, Aanika has been instrumental in fostering innovative academic initiatives, supporting students through institutional transitions, and championing diversity in faculty hiring and artist engagement.

With a strong foundation in socially engaged art (BFA, Goddard College), Aanika has held pivotal roles at renowned institutions such as the Eugene O'Neill Theater Center, where she served as Associate Director of the National Theater Institute. Her expertise spans curriculum development, international arts programming, high-level faculty relations, and managing multimillion-dollar budgets.

Known for her empathetic leadership and strategic thinking, Aanika brings a commitment to community-building, creative collaboration, and transformative education in the arts.