Leadership

The HAL Hub staff coordinates coalition activities.

Our Steering Committee guides HAL’s strategic plan and direction.

The Accountability Working Group created HAL’s values and mechanisms for holding ourselves accountable, and provides ongoing oversight for it.

Partners lead their local work and shape collective projects.

HAL Hub Staff

Regina Campbell

Co-Director

Regina Campbell

Co-Director

Regina Campbell has been working full time with HAL since fall 2021 and became co-Director of HAL in 2023, focusing on HAL’s States of Incarceration project, organizational management, and peer learning. She continues to oversee oral history and engagement for the Rikers Public Memory Project (RPMP), of which HAL is a founding partner. For RPMP, Regina has organized the collection of over 100 oral histories of people who were incarcerated at the Rikers Island Jails, ensuring that the stories of those who have suffered because of Rikers are preserved.

Regina brings an incredible wealth of private, non-profit, and government experience in organizational development and planning, implementing, and monitoring programs. She dedicated four years to service leadership in Belize, developing educational systems for youth and creating economic opportunities for women. Upon her return to the U.S., Regina worked to break the cycle of illiteracy, poverty, and low expectations by helping families in low-income communities address the barriers to lasting success. She also has worked extensively with students with a variety of learning abilities.

In 2022, Regina was selected to be a leader in the Culture of Health Leadership Institute for Racial Healing, which uses the Truth, Racial Healing and Transformation (TRHT) framework to strengthen the ecosystem of practitioners who are advancing racial and health equity in their work. Regina has an MBA in Organizational Management from Georgia State University Robinson College of Business, Atlanta.
Leora Fuller

Learning and Coalition Facilitator

Leora Fuller

Learning and Coalition Facilitator

Leora Fuller (she/her) is a trans artist, organizer, and facilitator currently teaching at Rutgers University-Newark and working as the Learning and Coalition Facilitator for the Humanities Action Lab (HAL). As a member of HAL, she helped organize and facilitated the 2019 & 2022 Climates of Inequality Gatherings, developed the Translocal Learning Studio, currently teaches the course “Mutual Aid Storytelling & Sharing: A Translocal Learning Space,” and is developing a Newark community run Free School.

She has taught at New York University, led creative workshops at the New School and CUNY Grad Center, and curated several immersive exhibits as co-founder of the Below the Grid Lab including “Haunted Files: The Eugenics Record Office.” Her passion is supporting students and working people telling their own stories in ways that evoke the past and present to imagine and enact radical futures.
Thyquel Halley

Administrative and Communications Coordinator

Thyquel Halley

Administrative and Communications Coordinator

“Philippians 4:13, "I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me."”

Thyquel M. Halley (he/him) joins HAL as the Administrative & Communications Coordinator in Newark, NJ. Thyquel brings years of experience from his backgrounds in leadership, governance, advocacy, and education. Thyquel graduated from New Jersey City University in 2023 with a BA in Political Science and minor concentrations in Pre-Law and African & African American Studies. As an undergraduate, some of his roles included Representative on the Board of Trustees, President of the Student Government Association for two terms, and as a Resident Assistant. In addition, he served as Vice-Chair of the NJ Higher Education Student Assistance Authority and interned with the NJ Department of State and the office of Congressman Donald Payne. Thyquel was formerly employed by the City of Jersey City for 7 years working in the Mayor’s Office, Diversity & Inclusion, Cultural Affairs, and Law Department. In addition, He is also the CEO & Founder of TMH Collectives LLC, a professional services company offering services in; Public/Inspirational Speaking, Writing, Notary Public, Advocacy, Dilettante Photography, and strategic planning consulting. Thyquel is deeply involved in the community, where he works as a volunteer and actively fights food insecurity. Faith is a large part of Thyquel’s life both professionally and personally. He is licensed and ordained minister at Good News Bible Mission Church under the leadership of Pastor Errold Lanier Sr. Thyquel’s life revolves around God, and his motivation is Philippians 4:13, “I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me.”
Wilmarie Medina-Cortes

Associate Director

Wilmarie Medina-Cortes

Associate Director

Wilmarie Medina-Cortes (she/they) is the Associate Director for the Humanities Action Lab. In this role, she supports both the Climates of Inequality and States of Incarceration Projects, HAL’s Mellon-funded national initiative. She also coordinates the local staging of Climates of Inequality and States of Incarceration, working with HAL’s university and community partners. Wilmarie received her M.A. in Museum and Exhibition Studies from the University of Illinois in Chicago. Her capstone project Community Archives of Resistance: Diasporic Experiences of Puerto Ricans in Chicago as represented in El Archivo explores a community archive at the Puerto Rican Arts Alliance, connecting photographs to the history of diasporic Puerto Ricans in Chicago from 1920 to 1990. She completed a fellowship with the Summer Institute for Climate and the Environment at University of Illinois in Chicago working with the Puerto Rican Agenda to identify how to address climate justice through urban agriculture in the Humboldt Park community of Chicago. She continues this work as a member of the Climate Committee for the Puerto Rican Agenda.
Liz Ševčenko

Co-Director

Liz Ševčenko

Co-Director

Liz Ševčenko (she/her) is the founding director of the Humanities Action Lab. She started HAL at The New School in New York City and now co-directs it from Rutgers University-Newark with Regina Campbell, focusing on HAL’s Climates of Inequality project, fund raising, and communications.

HAL grew out of the Guantánamo Public Memory Project, an international collaboration of universities and organizations that Ševčenko launched from Columbia University’s Institute for the Study of Human Rights, to build a global conversation about the past, present, and future of the US naval base at Guantánamo Bay. Ševčenko was the founding director of the International Coalition of Sites of Conscience, a network of historic sites that foster public dialogue on pressing contemporary issues.

Prior to starting the Coalition, Ševčenko served as Vice President for Programs at the Lower East Side Tenement Museum, developing exhibits and educational activities that connect the stories of the neighborhood’s immigrants past and present. In 2017 she was awarded a Rome Prize in historic preservation from the American Academy in Rome to complete her book, Public History for a Post-Truth Era: Fighting Denial Through Memory Movements. She received her M.A. in history from New York University.

Coalition activities are coordinated by a small staff based at Rutgers University – Newark.

Steering Committee

Rosa Cabrera

Adjunct Faculty in the Department of Anthropology, Graduate College, Latin American and Latino Studies, and Museum & Exhibition Studies University of Illinois at Chicago

Rosa Cabrera

Adjunct Faculty in the Department of Anthropology, Graduate College, Latin American and Latino Studies, and Museum & Exhibition Studies University of Illinois at Chicago

Rosa M. Cabrera, Ph.D, is the Executive Director of the Rafael Cintrón Ortiz Latino Cultural Center at UIC. Cabrera is an adjunct faculty in the Department of Anthropology, Graduate College, Department of Latin American and Latino Studies , and Museum and Exhibition Studies. She is also a Keller Science Action Center Associate at the Field Museum and a Mellon Faculty Fellow with the Humanities Action Lab. Cabrera earned her Doctorate in Anthropology and Bachelors of Arts in Design from UIC and has talked extensively on the role of ethnic museums and cultural centers in shaping community identity. She is currently working on the Humanities Action Lab “Climates of Inequality” project, which includes a traveling exhibit that amplifies local stories of environmental justice. The local story of La Villita, developed by students in her EJ course in partnership with Little Village Environmental Justice Organization (LVEJO) and Alianza Americas, reveals how environmental and social injustices intersect in this neighborhood.
Ricia Chansky Sancinito

Professor of English, University of Puerto Rico, Mayagüez, Puerto Rico

Ricia Chansky Sancinito

Professor of English, University of Puerto Rico, Mayagüez, Puerto Rico

Ricia Anne Chansky, Ph.D. is a professor in the English Department at the University of Puerto Rico at Mayagüez and the Director of the new Oral History Lab @UPRM. Her work is focused on decolonial storytelling projects as a means of amplifying the voices of disaster survivors for the purpose of mitigating the climate crisis within the Puerto Rican archipelago and around the world.
Bryan Ramos Romero

Graduate Research Fellow, University of Puerto Rico, Mayagüez, Puerto Rico

Bryan Ramos Romero

Graduate Research Fellow, University of Puerto Rico, Mayagüez, Puerto Rico

Native to Camuy, Puerto Rico, Bryan Ramos Romero is a senior student majoring in English with a teacher certification in the University of Puerto Rico at the Mayagüez Campus. Shortly after his enrollment to the UPRM, he has been involved with collaborating in the Mi María: Puerto Rico After the Hurricane Oral History Project. His work in the field of oral history and interest in alternative pedagogical approaches granted him the opportunity to become a student fellow of the Humanities Action Lab’s Climates of Inequality project and thus has continued working with the coalition led by Rutgers University-Newark. He is also an avid fiction and poetry writer, appearing in the Sábanas Bilingual Literary Magazine and Halfway Down the Stairs magazine under the pseudonym B.R. Grayson. Currently, Bryan and Yaritza Sanchez Silva are working to finalize the publication of a zine about food insecurity and food sovereignty in Puerto Rico. Their hope is to disseminate the zine to public schools, universities, social and environmental justice organizations, and the public alike. The zine is also funded by the Humanities Action Lab.
Yaritza Sanchez Silva

Student, University of Puerto Rico, Mayagüez, Puerto Rico

Yaritza Sanchez Silva

Student, University of Puerto Rico, Mayagüez, Puerto Rico

Yaritza Sanchez Silva is a student at the University of Puerto Rico at the Mayagüez Campus. Along with Bryan Ramos Romero, Yarita is working to finalize the publication of a zine about food insecurity and food sovereignty in Puerto Rico. Their hope is to disseminate the zine to public schools, universities, social and environmental justice organizations, and the public alike. The zine is also funded by the Humanities Action Lab.
Anthony Diaz

Co-founder and Executive Director of Newark Water Coalition, Newark, NJ

Anthony Diaz

Co-founder and Executive Director of Newark Water Coalition, Newark, NJ

Anthony Diaz is the Co-Founder and Executive Director of the Newark Water Coalition – a multi-generational, multi-ethnic coalition working to foster the understanding that water, housing, and food are human rights and are an essential frame for discussing climate solutions that address multiple needs.
Cathy Gudis

Associate Professor of History and Director, Public History Program, University of California, Riverside

Cathy Gudis

Associate Professor of History and Director, Public History Program, University of California, Riverside

Catherine Gudis is Associate Professor of History and Director of Public History at University of California, Riverside, where she holds a Pollitt Endowed Term Chair for Interdisciplinary Research and Learning. She also serves as scholar-in-residence at L.A. Poverty Department’s Skid Row History Museum & Archive. The author of Buyways: Billboards, Automobiles, and the American Landscape, her public humanities projects include Climates of Inequality: Stories of Environmental Justice, A People’s History of the Inland Empire, and Play the L.A. River. Her current research is towards a book, Framing LA: Preservation and the Performance of Place.
Camille Mays

Founder of Peace Garden Project MKE, Milwaukee, WI

Camille Mays

Founder of Peace Garden Project MKE, Milwaukee, WI

Camille Mays is a community activist who founded the Peace Garden Project MKE, an organization that creates peace gardens to honor victims of gun violence
Valerie Johnson

Co-Director, North Carolina Environmental Justice Network

Valerie Johnson

Co-Director, North Carolina Environmental Justice Network

Dr. Valerie Ann Johnson is Co-Director of the North Carolina Environmental Justice Network experienced in connecting undergraduate and graduate students, especially at HBCUs, with community-engaged work on health equity and environmental justice. She promotes public participation in science research as a board member for the Association for Advancing Participatory Sciences.
Stevie Raymond Ruiz

Associate Professor at California State University, Northridge

Stevie Raymond Ruiz

Associate Professor at California State University, Northridge

Stevie Raymond Ruiz is an assistant professor in the Chicana/o Studies Department at California State University, Northridge, where he teaches about environmental justice and critical race theory. His research focuses on the intersections between environmental justice, land rights, and comparative ethnic studies. He earned his PhD in Ethnic Studies from the University of California, San Diego.
Lisa Park

Professor, Department of Asian American Studies, University of California-Santa Barbara

Lisa Park

Professor, Department of Asian American Studies, University of California-Santa Barbara

Lisa Sun-Hee Park’s interdisciplinary research focuses on the politics of migration, race, and social policy. Her work examines the ways in which immigrants and communities of color are not only excluded from the rights and protections of social citizenship, but also the problematic ways in which they are included – and, more importantly, how this relationship is interconnected. Her most recent books include: Entitled To Nothing: The Struggle for Immigrant Health Care in the Age of Welfare Reform (NYU 2011), which investigates the impact of federal welfare and immigration policies on Latina and Asian immigrant women’s health care access. And, The Slums of Aspen: Immigrants vs. the Environment in America’s Eden (co-authored with David N. Pellow, NYU 2011), a case study of how environmental initiatives utilize anti-immigrant, population control rhetoric to produce exclusive spaces of privilege within the global economy.
Yvonne Marquez

Yvonne Marquez

Bio coming soon!
Rosa RiVera Furumoto

Professor of Chicana and Chicano Studies, California State University, Northridge

Rosa RiVera Furumoto

Professor of Chicana and Chicano Studies, California State University, Northridge

Rosa RiVera Furumoto received her Ed.D in 2011 at the University of California, Los Angeles in Education. Her areas of interest are Chican@/Latin@ parents’ critical consciousness, cultural capital, and school involvement; use of Chica@/Latin@ children’s literature with families for purposes of humanization; and urban school militarization.
Martha Escudero

Activist, Reclaiming Our Homes

Martha Escudero

Activist, Reclaiming Our Homes

Martha Escudero is a housing activist with Reclaiming Our Homes, addressing the inequities stacked against unhoused and housing-insecure families.

HAL’s Steering Committee is composed of faculty, community leaders, and students who have participated in HAL projects. The Steering Committee frames and makes recommendations on issues that impact the whole coalition, including: overall program priorities; new partner outreach and participation terms; strategic planning; and major decisions about governance.

Accountability Working Group

Ricia Chansky Sancinito

Professor of English, University of Puerto Rico, Mayagüez, Puerto Rico

Ricia Chansky Sancinito

Professor of English, University of Puerto Rico, Mayagüez, Puerto Rico

Ricia Anne Chansky, Ph.D. is a professor in the English Department at the University of Puerto Rico at Mayagüez and the Director of the new Oral History Lab @UPRM. Her work is focused on decolonial storytelling projects as a means of amplifying the voices of disaster survivors for the purpose of mitigating the climate crisis within the Puerto Rican archipelago and around the world.
Valerie Johnson

Co-Director, North Carolina Environmental Justice Network

Valerie Johnson

Co-Director, North Carolina Environmental Justice Network

Dr. Valerie Ann Johnson is Co-Director of the North Carolina Environmental Justice Network experienced in connecting undergraduate and graduate students, especially at HBCUs, with community-engaged work on health equity and environmental justice. She promotes public participation in science research as a board member for the Association for Advancing Participatory Sciences.
Bryan Ramos Romero

Graduate Research Fellow, University of Puerto Rico, Mayagüez, Puerto Rico

Bryan Ramos Romero

Graduate Research Fellow, University of Puerto Rico, Mayagüez, Puerto Rico

Native to Camuy, Puerto Rico, Bryan Ramos Romero is a senior student majoring in English with a teacher certification in the University of Puerto Rico at the Mayagüez Campus. Shortly after his enrollment to the UPRM, he has been involved with collaborating in the Mi María: Puerto Rico After the Hurricane Oral History Project. His work in the field of oral history and interest in alternative pedagogical approaches granted him the opportunity to become a student fellow of the Humanities Action Lab’s Climates of Inequality project and thus has continued working with the coalition led by Rutgers University-Newark. He is also an avid fiction and poetry writer, appearing in the Sábanas Bilingual Literary Magazine and Halfway Down the Stairs magazine under the pseudonym B.R. Grayson. Currently, Bryan and Yaritza Sanchez Silva are working to finalize the publication of a zine about food insecurity and food sovereignty in Puerto Rico. Their hope is to disseminate the zine to public schools, universities, social and environmental justice organizations, and the public alike. The zine is also funded by the Humanities Action Lab.
Ana Monteiro

Co-facilitator, Newark, NJ

Ana Monteiro

Co-facilitator, Newark, NJ
Desiree Roquetti

Research Consultant of Clement A. Price Institute on Ethnicity, Culture, and the Modern Experience at Rutgers, Newark, NJ

Desiree Roquetti

Research Consultant of Clement A. Price Institute on Ethnicity, Culture, and the Modern Experience at Rutgers, Newark, NJ
Anthony Diaz

Co-founder and Executive Director of Newark Water Coalition, Newark, NJ

Anthony Diaz

Co-founder and Executive Director of Newark Water Coalition, Newark, NJ

Anthony Diaz is the Co-Founder and Executive Director of the Newark Water Coalition – a multi-generational, multi-ethnic coalition working to foster the understanding that water, housing, and food are human rights and are an essential frame for discussing climate solutions that address multiple needs.
Camille Mays

Founder of Peace Garden Project MKE, Milwaukee, WI

Camille Mays

Founder of Peace Garden Project MKE, Milwaukee, WI

Camille Mays is a community activist who founded the Peace Garden Project MKE, an organization that creates peace gardens to honor victims of gun violence
Renee Shalhoub

Representative of Mutual Morris, Morris County, NJ

Renee Shalhoub

Representative of Mutual Morris, Morris County, NJ

HAL’s values and mechanisms for holding ourselves accountable to them were created by a rotating group of community leaders, faculty, and students that meets in an ongoing way to review how are values are – or are not – operating in all aspects of our work including courses, student-community partnerships, story sharing, media production, convenings, and the HAL Hub staff.