Julia Hazel is a Black American, queer educator who has worked in public education for close to twenty years. She was a longtime elementary school classroom teacher in Brooklyn, New York, and Portland, Maine.  She has led and collaborated on multiple district equity initiatives in her decade with the Portland Public Schools, including co-creating a district professional development course called Race in the United States: Perspectives for Portland Educators. For the past several years, Julia has been developing other structures of support and advocacy for BIPOC educators in the Portland Public School district. Since August of 2021, she has been in the newly created role of Director of BIPOC Career Pathways and Leadership Development, a role embedded in the district’s Office of Diversity, Equity, and Belonging, which focuses on BIPOC recruitment and retention. Julia is a co-author on articles published in Kappan, Philosophy in Education, and Groundworks. She was one of four Portland Public Schools recipients of Bowdoin College’s 2022 Educator for the Common Good Award, who were honored for their coordinated and sustained efforts to transform the conditions for educators of color in the district.

Tuan D. Nguyen is an assistant professor in the Department of Curriculum and Instruction at Kansas State University. He applies rigorous quantitative methods (quasi-experimental designs and meta-analysis) to examine 1) the teacher labor markets, particularly looking at the factors that drive teacher attrition and retention, and 2) the effects and implications of teacher policies and education policies intended for social equity and school improvement. He has also examined issues of rurality and rural education in various contexts.