MICIA MOSELY, KEYNOTE

Micia Mosely, a comedian and educator who earned her Ph.D. in education from U.C. Berkeley, keeps audiences learning & laughing in a variety of contexts and venues. Mosely’s one-woman show, "Where My Girls At?" (an off-Broadway comedy about Black lesbians) was nominated for a New York Innovative Theatre Award (Best Solo Performance). Currently, she performs her brand of social justice stand up comedy across the country. She began her career teaching high school social studies in San Francisco and went on to work as a coach with The National Equity Project and a National Training Specialist with The Posse Foundation. Mosely's research and practice focuses on equity, race, and urban education. She is also known for her one-woman show “Where My Girls At?” a comedy about Black Lesbians. She stays connected to teaching as lecturer at UMass Boston and an Induction Mentor for the residency program a Teachers College, Columbia University. Mosely spends the majority of her time as the founding Executive Director of The Black Teacher Project, an organization committed to recruiting, developing and sustaining Black teachers for schools in the United States.

Learn more at www.miciamosely.com&  www.blackteacherproject.org.

ROBYNE WALKER-MURPHY, KEYNOTE

Robyne is a nationally recognized art and social justice educator and administrator.  In November of 2016, she began her appointment as Executive Director at Groundswell, New York City’s premier organization dedicated to advancing the practice of public artmaking.  Previous to her position at Groundswell, Robyne served as director of membership development and engagement at the National Guild for Community Arts Education, working closely with a national network of community arts organizations. Robyne created the Guild's first network for leaders of color in the arts, ALAANA (African, Latin, Asian, Arabic, Native American) to raise the profile of work being led by people of color (POC) in the arts, increase POC access to sustained resources, and invest in the growth and leadership of people of color in the field of community arts education. This role was deeply rooted in her work serving for seven years as the director of the DreamYard Art Center, located on the ground floor of an affordable housing unit in the Morrisania section of the Bronx. Under her leadership, DreamYard Art Center’s offerings expanded from three programs serving high school students to 16 multi-disciplinary art and college readiness programs for young people in grades PreK-12. In 2012, DreamYard Art Center was recognized by the White House as one of the top 12 out of school programs in the nation. Robyne accepted the award from First Lady Michelle Obama at a White House ceremony. During her tenure at DreamYard, Robyne also led the organization through the development of several arts and social justice programming and community engagement initiatives. She created and co-developed DreamYard’s Social Justice Pedagogy Team, a professional development series aimed at establishing important tenets of social justice education; creating common language across programs; exploring best practices; and learning from veteran social justice educators.

Robyne has conducted workshops about art and social justice at conferences and institutions across the country including: New York University, City College, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Lincoln Center, the Bronx Museum of Art, Carnegie Hall, and the National Guild’s Conference for Community Arts Education (Chicago/Los Angeles).  Her writing on social justice education has been featured in Teachers and Writers and Teaching Artist Guild magazines. Robyne is a graduate of Clark Atlanta University where she majored in English with an emphasis in African American Literature. She has delivered keynote addresses on liberatory education at the University of Chicago, Seattle Museum of Art and Harvard Graduate School of Education (November 2017).  

Robyne obtained her MFA in acting from the University of Washington’s Professional Actor Training Program. She resides in Brooklyn, New York with her husband, Tarik Murphy and her son, Ras.

Laura Clark

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