Coco Co (She/her)
As the Youth Outreach Coordinator, Coco supervises the Youth Leadership Corps (YLC) and supports their training, team building, and community outreach/activism. In addition, Coco works to build relationships with middle schools, high schools, communities, and youth-serving organizations. She also trains youth-serving adults on sexual violence prevention and assists in curriculum and program development. Born and raised in Los Angeles amongst a large immigrant community, Coco is dedicated to work focused on youth and community empowerment. Driven by her experiences growing up in LA as a second-generation woman of color, she has spent much of her time working with public schools, educational nonprofits, and youth-serving organizations. Coco spent two years as a City Year Boston AmeriCorps member, working amongst youth, community stakeholders, and educators. Recently she graduated with a master of education degree in human development and psychology from the Harvard Graduate School of Education. Fun fact: Coco loves to cook (e.g., childhood favorites: chicken adobo, tortang talong, and lumpia) and engage in anything music.
Dianne Hanley (She/her)
Ms. Dianne Hanley (she/her) is the Executive Director of Spirit & Justice, a non-profit that brings together deeply spiritual people who are drawn to justice work. She is a volunteer leader with Together Baton Rouge, an organization that strengthens faith-based and civic institutions by deepening relationships across lines that normally divide and building leadership capacity to affect change on concrete issues. Ms. Hanley’s passions are anti-racism work and engaging people in the political process, bringing together people of all walks of life to affect public policy that either inhibits or enhances people's ability to live to their fullest potential.
Ms. Hanley holds a Masters of Pastoral Studies from Loyola University New Orleans and a BA in English from Louisiana State University. Married to John for 39 years, she has 3 children and 3 grandchildren.
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By organizing communities, her organization:
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secured $23 million in dedicated funding for public transportation.
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reformed an 80-year-old state policy that previously used local funding sources to financially subsidize powerful and lucrative industries. The reform has so far brought in $116 million annually to local infrastructure and schools.
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changed the process for building and maintaining local bridges, bringing more infrastructure to under-resources and underserved areas of the community.
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Ms. Hanley was selected by Catholic Relief Services to observe organizing efforts in Tanzania and Ethiopia, learning first hand the impact of US policy on the lives of people in those countries. She also visited Turkey as part of an interfaith, multicultural team to foster intercultural and interfaith dialogue. As a member of the Interfaith Federation of Greater Baton Rouge, Ms. Hanley organized the first annual Poverty Forum of Baton Rouge. As a professional storyteller, Ms. Hanley understands the power of stories to change the world.
Ruthzee Louijeune (She/her)
Ruthzee Louijeune (she/her), lawyer and advocate, is a candidate for Boston City Council At-Large. Ruthzee is running for office to push for more affordable housing and homeownership opportunities, equity in education, and more support for small, local, Black and LatinX businesses. Ruthzee recently started her own legal shop, but prior to that, she served as Senior Counsel on Senator Warren's presidential and Senate campaigns. She graduated from Boston Latin School in 2004, was the Vice President of her class, and was also a Ward Fellow. She graduated from Columbia University in 2008 where she studied Political Science and French and Francophone Studies. She worked at the Posse Foundation for 2 years before returning to school. She graduated from Harvard Law School and Harvard Kennedy School in 2014, where she was a member of the Harvard Legal Aid Bureau and the Black Policy Conference. She currently volunteers with the Massachusetts Affordable Housing Alliance, working on affordable homeownership programs, and the Guild Works, where she delivers food and supplies to people all across Boston quarantining with COVID-19 or experiencing food insecurity. Born in Mattapan, Ruthzee now resides in Hyde Park. To learn more about Ruthzee, visit www.RuthzeeForBoston.com.
Jenee Osterheldt (She/her)
Jeneé Osterheldt believes in the power of words, the strength in storytelling, and that journalism is essential to how we access information, speak truth to power, and relate to one another.
As a Boston Globe culture columnist and associate editor, she serves the community by covering identity and culture through the lens of social justice, community, and the arts. Revolution is an eight-legged spider requiring many tools and journalism is one of them. James Baldwin said we can love one another and be each other's witness, and in doing that, we create room to hope for more, to create more. Jeneé believes journalism, at it's best, allows us to hold space, to make space, to disrupt systems that hurt us. At its worst and most incomplete, it is complicit in the harm.
She centers Black lives and the lives of people of color in her work. Sometimes this means writing about Beyoncé and Black womanhood, calling on the country to call anti-Asian hate the racial terror that it is, or unpacking the importance of public art and representation. Sometimes this means taking systemic racism, sexism, and oppression to task. It always means Black lives matter. As creator of A Beautiful Resistance, she hosts a multimedia series celebrating Black joy and Black lives as well as other people of color. We cannot only cover a people's pain or extreme excellence. That is a disservice of disempowerment. We must allow people their multitudes to capture their full truth.
Osterheldt joined the Globe in 2018, but she's been a full-time journalist since 2002. A native of Alexandria, Va. and a graduate of Norfolk State University, Osterheldt was a 2017 Nieman Fellow at Harvard, where her studies focused on the intersection of art and justice. She previously worked as a Kansas City Star culture columnist. Recently named one of the most impactful Black women in Boston, she appeared on ABC's "Soul of a Nation," where she honored Black joy. She is also a 2021 Scripps Howard finalist.
Dustin Liu (He/him)
Dustin Liu (he/his), US Youth Observer to the United Nations
Dustin Liu (he/his) is the son of two Taiwanese immigrants who have long fostered in him the belief that individuals can engender social change. He is currently serving as the 9th US Youth Observer to the United Nations where he works to support young people on their change-making journeys. His professional interests sit at the intersection of the future of work and post-secondary innovation with a focus on imagining new educational pathways towards gainful employment. Dustin holds a B.S. in Industrial and Labor Relations from Cornell University where he served as the Student-Elected Trustee on Cornell’s Board of Trustees and was named a Fulbright Grantee. He is currently a candidate for a Master’s in Education at the Harvard Education Graduate School of Education.
Ernani deAraujo (he/him)
Ernani Jose DeAraujo is the Vice President of Regulatory Affairs and General Counsel of the East Boston Neighborhood Health Center. At EBNHC, Mr. DeAraujo oversees the legal and government affairs of a community-based healthcare organization that serves over 120,000 patients, of which 70% are Hispanic/Latino and 85% are on public insurance or support. Throughout the Covid-19 pandemic, Mr. DeAraujo wrestled with ethical and justice related issues, ensuring that EBNHC's underserved patient population received the best care during the crisis. Issues included equitably delivering telemedicine; Covid testing; Covid vaccination; and mental/behavioral health services.
Mr. DeAraujo has volunteered for BLS for over 20 years and serves as Vice Chairman of the John William Ward Fellowship and as a Trustee of the private, independent Boston Latin School Association. In February 2021, Mr. DeAraujo was appointed by former Boston Mayor Marty Walsh to the Boston School Committee. Mr. DeAraujo is a graduate of Boston Latin '99; Harvard College; and the Washington and Lee School of Law.
Shannon Dooling (She/her)
Shannon Dooling (she/her), Senior reporterWBUR, Boston’s NPR® news station
Shannon Dooling is an investigative reporter for WBUR, Boston's NPR news station where she works in collaboration with ProPublica. Her stories focus on immigration and criminal justice, and her work can be heard nationally on NPR and Here & Now.
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In 2019, she broke the national news story about the Trump administration's efforts to dismantle a humanitarian immigration process designed to allow seriously ill immigrants to stay in the U.S. for medical treatment.
She’s also shed light on how Boston police share information with federal immigration officials. Her reporting has won several Edward R. Murrow awards, including the 2019 awards for continuing coverage and investigative reporting.
Shannon is a 2003 graduate of the University of Massachusetts Amherst where she studied political science and criminal justice. In 2012, she received a Master of Journalism degree from the University of British Columbia in Vancouver.
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Adam Strom (He/him)
Adam Strom (he/him), Executive Director and co-founder of Re-Imagining Migration
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Adam Strom is the Director of Re-Imagining Migration. Throughout his career, Mr. Strom has connected the academy to classrooms and the community by using the latest scholarship to encourage learning about identity, bias, belonging, history, and the challenges and opportunities of civic engagement in our globalized world. The resources developed under Strom’s direction have been used in tens of thousands of classrooms and experienced by millions of students around the world including Stories of Identity: Religion, Migration, and Belonging in a Changing World and What Do We Do with a Difference? France and The Debate Over Headscarves in Schools, Identity, and Belonging in a Changing Great Britain, and the viewer’s guide to I Learn America. Before joining the Re-imagining Migration Project, Strom was the Director of Scholarship and Innovation at Facing History and Ourselves.
Gerald Howland (he/him)
A graduate of Boston Latin School himself, Mr. Howland (he/him) has been an active member in the Boston Public Schools community for years. He has served on administration for multiple schools throughout the city, and is currently the headmaster of Boston Latin Academy. A former attorney, he has vast knowledge and experience within the Massachusetts legal world, and supervises multiple student activities, including the BLS Mock Trial Team and the Judicial Youth Corps summer program. Through this program, student interns get the chance to work in courthouses alongside professionals, examine Constitutional principles and the civil liberties afforded to them, and study examples of racial bias in law enforcement. With his passion for teaching, he has dedicated his career to empowering students to strive for justice through education and opportunity.