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  • Anne Wass, is president of the Massachusetts Teacher's Association. She has served on the MTA Board of Directors and state Executive Committee and has been president of her local association in Hanover at two different times. For many years, Wass has chaired the training program for new local presidents at the MTA Summer Conference in Williamstown. More than 100 local presidents have benefited from attending these sessions. Wass has won several awards honoring her abilities as a teacher. These include the Plymouth County Education Association's Honor Award and the PCEA's Loretta Quinlan Award.
  • Hollie Manheimer began work as the first and only executive director of the Georgia First Amendment Foundation in January 1996. She graduated cum laude from Dartmouth College; received a Master's in English from New York University; earned her Juris Doctorate from Emory University Law School; and received a Master's in Communication from Georgia State University. When not serving the foundation, Hollie practices law with Stuckey and Manheimer, Inc. and serves as a pro hac vice judge of the Dekalb County Recorders Court.
  • President Mohler-Faria was the first member of his family to go to college. Three decades and four degrees later, he continues to cite the work ethic and moral fabric of his late father, a construction worker, and his late mother, a laborer in the cranberry bogs of Wareham and in the factories of New Bedford, as the standards by which he holds himself up to each and every day. In addition, Dr. Mohler-Farias optimistic outlook on life is a credit to the Cape Verdean community in which he grew up, and it is because so much of that communitys hopes and dreams were placed on his shoulders that he continues to be firmly rooted in the lives of tomorrows generation. President Mohler-Faria is the first person of color to lead Bridgewater State College and, at the time of his inauguration, was only the second Cape Verdean in the United States to be elected the president of a higher education institution. Shortly after becoming president, Dr. Mohler-Faria undertook an aggressive plan to expand the number of full-time, tenure-track faculty at the college. He also founded Connect, a Southeastern Massachusetts partnership dedicated to advancing the regional mission of public higher education; Connect members include Bridgewater State College, the University of Massachusetts at Dartmouth, Bristol Community College, Cape Cod Community College, Massasoit Community College and the Massachusetts Maritime Academy. Prior to becoming president, Dr. Mohler-Faria served for 11 years as the colleges vice president for administration and finance, during which time he oversaw the largest construction and renovation program in college history. He has also held numerous senior administrative positions at Mount Wachusett Community College, Bristol Community College and Cape Cod Community College. Dr. Mohler-Faria holds a doctorate in higher education administration from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, masters and bachelors degrees in history from Boston University, and an associates degree from Cape Cod Community College. He has participated in the Oxford Roundtable, the Millennium Leadership Institute, the New England Resource Center for Higher Education and Harvard Universitys Institute for Education Management and Senior Executives Program.
  • Lynn Stuart, School Development Coach, worked in the Cambridge Public Schools as a bilingual teacher, curriculum specialist, primary education coordinator and principal of the K-8 Cambridgeport School. She works with students, teachers and families to create strong learning communities. Lynn serves on the National Commission on Teaching and America's Future.
  • Kalpana Rahita Seshadri teaches courses in the critical philosophy of postcolonial studies, political and cultural theories of nationalism, and Anglophone literatures of India and Africa. She is the author of *Desiring Whiteness: A Lacanian Analysis of Race*, (2000) published in the series *Opening Out* edited by Teresa Brennan. She has also co-edited with Fawzia Afzal-Khan a collection of essays, *The Pre-Occupation of Post- Colonial Studies*, published by Duke University Press 2000, and published articles on the intersection of psychoanalysis and race and postcolonial theory in journals such as *Cultural Critique*, *Ariel*, and *Discourse*. She is at present working on a book length project on postcolonial ethics, death, and alterity tentatively titled *The Other Difference*. She is the founding chair of the Postcolonial Studies seminar at Harvard's Humanities Center, and the convenor of the Postcolonial Studies Discussion Group at the MLA. She was visiting fellow in Women's Studies at SUNY Stony Brook in Spirng 2002, where she taught a graduate seminar on "Feminism and Universalism." In Spring 1999, she co-taught with Professor Laura Frader (History, Northeastern University) a graduate seminar "Gender, Race, Class, and Colonialism" in the Graduate Women's Studies Consortium at Radcliffe.
  • Tim Wise is among the most prominent anti-racist writers and activists in the U.S., and has been called, "One of the most brilliant, articulate and courageous critics of white privilege in the nation," by best-selling author and professor Michael Eric Dyson, of Georgetown University. Wise has spoken in 48 states, and on over 400 college campuses, including Harvard, Stanford, and the Law Schools at Yale and Columbia, and has spoken to community groups around the nation. Wise has provided anti-racism training to teachers nationwide, and has trained physicians and medical industry professionals on how to combat racial inequities in health care. He has also trained corporate, government, entertainment, military and law enforcement officials on methods for dismantling racism in their institutions, and has served as a consultant for plaintiff's attorneys in federal discrimination cases in New York and Washington State. Wise is the author of *White Like Me: Reflections on Race from a Privileged Son*, and *Affirmative Action: Racial Preference in Black and White*. A collection of his essays, *Speaking Treason Fluently: Anti-Racist Reflections From an Angry White Male*, will be published in the Fall of 2008, and his fourth book, *Between Barack and a Hard Place: Race and Whiteness in the Age of Obama*, will be released in Spring, 2009. He has contributed chapters or essays to 20 books, and is one of several persons featured in *White Men Challenging Racism: Thirty-Five Personal Stories*, from Duke University Press. He received the 2001 British Diversity Award for best essay on race issues, and his writings have appeared in dozens of popular, professional and scholarly journals. Wise has been a guest on hundreds of radio and television programs, worldwide. Wise has a B.A. in Political Science from Tulane University, where his anti-apartheid work received global attention and the thanks of Nelson Mandela and Archbishop Desmond Tutu. He received training in methods for dismantling racism from the People's Institute for Survival and Beyond, in New Orleans.