Boston Schedule & Workshop Descriptions

Facilitated by Denise Brown | Curry 318

Hope, when practiced intentionally, becomes a strategy for survival, connection, and advancement. In the current higher education climate, marked by rollbacks of civil rights and challenges to inclusion and belonging, women of color faculty often experience isolation and limited access to mentorship. This interactive workshop introduces a research-informed mentorship intervention designed as a practice of hope, community-building, and professional sustainability. Drawing from doctoral research in leadership and innovation and lived experience in higher education, participants will explore mentorship as an intentional infrastructure rather than an informal support. Attendees will engage with a practical framework for building mentoring communities that foster connection, resilience, and continued purpose in increasingly restrictive academic environments.

Facilitated by Soljane Martinez, Juana Parillon | Curry 340

In an era of systemic rollbacks, “Hope as Practice” is our most rigorous tool for institutional survival. This workshop reframes external opposition as a catalyst for innovation and deeper alignment with democratic values. Participants will learn to navigate political headwinds by shifting DEI narratives from partisan agendas to pillars of educational excellence through reframing resistance, navigating political headwinds, narrative shifts, and sustaining leaders and teams. Drawing on organizational resilience we will explore practical methods to protect vulnerable communities and sustain leadership teams.

Facilitated by Tiffany Bailey | Curry 322

This workshop invites participants to engage with Black feminist texts while discussing and expressing creativity. We will start with an exercise in color association before reading excerpts from Ntozake Shange’s choreopoem for colored girls who have considered suicide / when the rainbow is enuf. Thinking about their moods, intentions for the day, and favorite colors, participants will color a mandala, an homage to the choreopoem’s first set design and to interconnectedness. Participants will choose colors and learn how to crochet a flower using only their hands, expressing themselves through creative process. This workshop is meant to be mindful, stress releasing, and fun, while potentially learning a new skill.

Facilitated by Charlyn Okigbo, Karen Okigbo | Curry 320

These challenging times call for us to be intentional about how we show up. While many view executive presence as a strategy for leaders to demonstrate credibility, we redefine it as an active practice of authentic resilience. When individuals are anchored in this presence, they become less reactive and more resilient. The current chaos (i.e., the ongoing attacks on civil rights and the erosion of DEI in higher education) serves to distract us from our clarity and authority. In this workshop, participants will learn how cultivating executive presence helps them stay centered and true to themselves amid institutional, political, or even personal turbulence.

Facilitated By Alexis Lawton

Speech-language pathology and other clinical disciplines are often framed as neutral or apolitical, despite deep roots in racialized norms of communication, professionalism, and assessment. This workshop invites participants—particularly Women of Color in clinical, health, and STEM-related fields—to critically examine how race shapes clinical education and teaching. Centering the experiences of Black faculty, the session will explore strategies for decolonizing curricula, challenging “standard” language ideologies, and navigating resistance from students and institutions. Through case studies and collaborative discussion, participants will identify pedagogical practices that advance justice while sustaining themselves within systems not designed for their survival.

Facilitated By Carmen Capo Lugo, Keshrie Naidoo, Camille Powell

Activism burnout is not an individual failure, but an outcome of working in environments of misalignment and structural inequity. For women of color in the academy, burnout is intensified by invisible labor, professional isolation, and the tension between caring for students, communities, families, and ourselves. Activists must resist existential despair in the current climate while also avoiding toxic positivity. Sustainable activism is not about doing more. It is about doing what is possible, with intention, community, and joy. This interactive workshop will provide participants with the opportunity to design personalized strategies for sustainability with positive rituals grounded in reality.

Facilitated By Sabrina Debrosse, Alta Mauro | Curry 318

In an era when DEIB and related efforts are under public, political, and institutional scrutiny, women of color in higher education find their work questioned, minimized, or strategically renamed. This interactive session—led by the Harvard College Associate Dean for Culture & Community and the Dean of Students Office Communications Lead—offers concrete strategies to take control of your narrative, frame your contributions as mission-critical, and leverage communications tools to advocate for yourself and your work. Participants will leave with a draft “value narrative,” language to reframe DEIB-aligned work in the current climate, and tactics to build visible, sustainable support for their roles.

Facilitated by Machienvee Lammey, Christina Silva | Curry 320

This workshop introduces participants to Freire’s concept of critical hope and shows how it can be leveraged to counter despair among women of color in STEM. As an action-oriented framework, critical hope empowers individuals to advance social justice and equity for themselves and others despite painful realities. Through guided reflections and small group discussions, participants will learn how to apply critical hope and be offered concrete relational mentoring and community-building strategies that cultivate its principles to foster agency and wellbeing in graduate education. This workshop aligns with the 2026 conference theme of hope as a praxis and source of empowerment.

Facilitated by Stefany Breton | Curry 322

This workshop centers the often unseen labor beneath leadership—the emotional, relational, and embodied work required to lead without losing oneself. Grounded in my research and lived experience, I introduce RISE (Radical Healing, Intersectional Leadership, Sisterhood, and Empowerment) as a leadership practice developed with and for Black women navigating complex institutions. Rather than focusing on strategies or performance, this session invites participants to slow down, reflect, and engage in collective meaning-making about how leadership is shaped by care, power, and context. Participants will leave with language, practices, and points of connection that support leading with clarity, integrity, and wholeness.

Facilitated by Pamela Zabala Ortiz | Curry 322

Joy is revolutionary. Laughter is medicine. Humor, Dr. Maya Angelou said, is needed to thrive. In this lively and interactive workshop, participants will dust off their funny bone and draw on strategies from improvisational and stand-up comedy to explore how women of color in academia can use humor and joy to recenter themselves in their purpose and as tools for healing and survival. Through guided comedic exercises, moments of play, and facilitated discussions and reflections, participants will leave with a renewed sense of self and another tool in their arsenal for confronting the adversities they face in academia and beyond.

Facilitated By Monique Holsey- Hyman, Shanika Wilson

Women in higher education, especially women of color, often have limited resources for mentorship and reduced access to advancement opportunities within academic spaces. There is a need to explain the difference between mentorship and sponsorship and show why mentorship alone is not enough to close gaps in promotion, leadership opportunities, and professional visibility. McCrimmon (2022) found that mentorship and sponsorship partnerships support recruitment, retention, and leadership growth among women of color in higher education. Participants will engage in an interactive activity to recognize sponsorship, address barriers, and develop strategies to build a culture that supports women of color.

Facilitated By Tori Bowser, Rhicka-Joyce Crudo, Destini Hall

Hope Over Hustle invites higher-ed professionals to critically examine how norms of professionalism influenced by white supremacy culture demand perfection, urgency, and self-sacrifice at the expense of well-being, authenticity, and hope. Grounded in lived experience and collective storytelling, this interactive workshop reframes de-centering professionalism as a practice of care, self-preservation, and sustainability. Participants will identify how these norms show up at work, explore tools informed by Polyvagal Theory, and reconnect with their nervous systems. Attendees will also leave with tangible practices and tools to cultivate hope, protect energy, and foster more connected workplaces together.