Leadership

Miriam Jiménez Román

Miriam Jiménez Román is Executive Director of afrolatin@ forum. For over a decade she researched and curated socio-historical exhibitions at the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, where she also served as the Assistant Director of the Scholars-in-Residence Program. She was the Managing Editor and Editor of Centro: Journal of the Center for Puerto Rican Studies. She has taught courses on race, ethnicity, and gender in Latin America and the Caribbean at Binghamton, Brown and Columbia universities. A frequent speaker and consultant on African American and Latino issues, her essays on diasporic racial formations and inter-ethnic relations have appeared in a number of scholarly publications. A visiting scholar in the Department of Social and Cultural Analysis at New York University, she is co-editor of The Afro-Latin@ Reader: History and Culture in The United States (2010), which received this year’s American Book Award.

Guesnerth Josué Perea

Guesnerth Josué Perea is the Director of Programs and Communications for the afrolatin@ forum. His research has been part of various publications including Let Spirit Speak! Cultural Journeys through the African Diaspora and the Journal for Colombian Studies. He has spoken about issues regarding race and social justice for the Inter-American Foundation, the National Urban League, NAACP, the LATISM Conference and has been a guest on the Spanish-language political talk show Pura Politica which airs on NY1 Noticias. His insights on social media as a tool for change were published in Just BE Cause: Ah Ha Moments To Inspire the Next Generation of Change Makers. In 2010, Josué was named by the newspaper amNewYork as one of five Colombians "making a mark" in New York City. Josué holds degrees in Latin American History and Theology.

Raquel Casilla-Reynoso

Raquel Casilla-Reynoso currently serves as the Director of Operations and Administration for the afrolatin@ forum, serving with the organization since 2011. She received her MPA from NYU Wagner - Public and Nonprofit Management and Policy Program, with a specific concentration on managing nonprofits. Born and raised in New York City, Raquel obtained a B.A. in History from Nyack College, and has taught as the Associate Lecturer of World History at Nyack College since 2005. Raquel’s area of interest within the social sector is in empowering communities of color by expanding access to higher education and income equality opportunities.

Yamila Sterling

Yamila Sterling is a board member of the afrolatin@ forum and has worked for the "I Have a Dream" Foundation. Yamila holds a Bachelor's of Art in Sociology from Hunter College-CUNY and has expertise in Development on Youth Identity, self-esteem and leadership skills.

Ejima Baker-Morales

Ejima Baker-Morales is an educator and artist. Her artistic work focuses on the experiences of women, and her academic work focuses on popular culture, race and sexuality. She has a BA in Africana Studies and Music from Barnard College, Columbia University, an MA in Ethnomusicology from CUNY, and an MA in Anthropology from the New School University. When she is not teaching, she is working on writing a one-woman show and finishing her PhD in Anthropology. She is one of the original members of the afrolatin@ forum, and is the Director of Development of the organization.

Dash Harris

Dash Harris is a journalist and educator based in New York of Panamanian descent. She attended Temple University for broadcast journalism, business & french. Her body of work is concentrated in documentaries and multi-media examining how power dynamics inform societal norms, colonization, color, race and class politics in the Americas, the African Diaspora and Afrodescendants in Latin America, the intersection of race and gender and its affect on the Afrodescendant woman and the family. Her work has been screened all over the nation as well as abroad and featured in the Museum of Art in Caguas, the 2012 Africa Rising Summit and the 13th annual alucine latin film+media arts.

Pablo José López Oro

Pablo José López Oro is a doctoral student in the Department of African and African Diaspora Studies at The University of Texas at Austin. He holds an undergraduate degree in History and graduate degrees in Latin American Studies, Bilingual Education, and African American Studies. He taught middle school Spanish in East Harlem for three years as a Teach for America 2009 corps. His research looks at second and third generation Garífuna Honduran youths articulation of their Blackness, Indigeneity, and Latinidad in New York City. He has been an afrolatin@ forum member since Fall 2009 and currently remains active in the Conference Planning Committee.

Lori Robinson

Lori Robinson is an award-winning journalist and the author of I Will Survive: The African-American Guide to Healing from Sexual Assault and Abuse. Her work has been published in Ebony.com, the Detroit Free Press, Chicago Tribune, Washington Post and several national magazines. She was selected as a 2013 Fellow by the Tow-Knight Center for Entrepreneurial Journalism at the CUNY Graduate School of Journalism. A proud Spelman College graduate, Robinson earned a master’s degree in journalism from New York University. She is now based in Detroit.

Kwami Coleman

Kwami Coleman is a pianist, composer, and musicologist from Harlem and an Assistant Professor and Faculty Fellow at the Gallatin School of Individualized Study, New York University. He received his Ph.D. in musicology from Stanford University in May 2014 and is an alumnus of Hunter College - City University of New York. Kwami's research interests are in the musical traditions of the African Diaspora, postcolonialism, historiography, aesthetics, experimentalism, jazz history, and improvisation. In addition to Harlem, Kwami has family roots in Puerto Rico, Dominican Republic, and Brooklyn.

Zaire Dinzey-Flores

Zaire Dinzey-Flores is Associate Professor in Sociology and Latino & Hispanic Caribbean Studies at Rutgers University. Her research focuses on understanding how urban space mediates community life and social inequality. Her book, Locked In, Locked Out: Gated Communities in a Puerto Rican City, winner of the 2014 Robert E. Park Award for best book in urban and community sociology, investigates race and class inequality as negotiated through community gates in private and public housing. Her new project examines race and class as enacted in the production of housing built environments in a gentrifying neighborhood.

Miguel Lopez Jr.

Miguel López Jr. has served as an educator to the diverse population of Harlem youth for nearly ten years. As an Internship Coordinator he has provided job training and work experience to over 400 Harlem Renaissance H.S. students by placing them at various worksites in the uptown area. He is committed to bridging the educational disparities that plague/exist for or in under-served communities and to the proliferation of access and opportunity. He currently serves as Co-Chair of the organization.

Miguel Luciano

Born in San Juan, Puerto Rico, Miguel Luciano is a Brooklyn-based artist who received his MFA from the University of Florida. His work has been exhibited nationally and internationally. He is the recipient of the Joan Mitchell Foundation Painters and Sculptors Award Grant, a New York Foundation for the Arts (NYFA) award for painting and the Artists and Communities Grant from the Mid Atlantic Arts Foundation. His work is featured in the permanent collections of the Brooklyn Museum, El Museo del Barrio, the Newark Museum, and the Museo de Arte de Puerto Rico. Luciano’s work is currently featured in the PBS Annenberg documentary series, “Art Through Time: A Global View.”

Daphnie Sicre

Daphnie Sicre is a board member of the afrolatin@ forum and a full time faculty member of the Speech, Communications and Theatre Dept at Borough of Manhattan Community College. Currently, a Ph.D. candidate in Educational Theatre at NYU, she is finishing her research on AfroLatin@s in performance. She holds a Bachelors of Art in Journalism, Theatre & History from Lehigh University, a Master's of Art in The Teaching of Social Studies from Columbia University-Teachers College, and Master's of Art in Educational Theatre from NYU. Daphnie is a performer, poet, teaching artist, social justice advocate, and academic who educates teachers on issues of race, using theatre as a teaching tool and using theatre across the curriculum.

Melissa M. Valle

Melissa M. Valle is a board member of the afrolatin@ forum and a sociology Ph.D. candidate at Columbia University. She was awarded a Fulbright U.S. Student award to explore how symbolic boundaries related to race, class and gender are translated into spatial and social boundaries in a gentrifying neighborhood in Cartagena, Colombia. She previously served as a New York City Teaching Fellow on the Lower East Side and as a community development public policy director in Harlem. She holds a dual BA in economics and African-American studies from Howard University, and masters degrees in public and nonprofit management and policy, education and sociology.

Tashima Thomas

Tashima Thomas Tashima Thomas is a Ph.D. candidate in the Art History department of Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey. She specializes in the African Diaspora in Latin American and Caribbean art. She received her MA in Art History from San Diego State University and her BA in Art History from the University of Houston. Her work focuses on food pathways, networks of exchange, race, class, gender, and sexuality. She is the recipient of the Goldman Sachs Multicultural Afro-Latino Fellowship at the Smithsonian. She serves as the Co-Director of Development for the organization.