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As President and Chief Executive Officer of UnboundEd, Lacey Robinson sets the organization’s vision for equity-driven national change as she carries the pride and tears of her enslaved ancestors and the native sons and daughters of this sacred land to this work. While continually monitoring the design, delivery, and quality of UnboundEd’s antiracist work, Robinson concurrently maintains the nonprofit’s health, sustainability and future-driven vision for what teaching and learning can be in the 21st century. 

Robinson engaged with industry partners to support standards-aligned, content-focused, equity-driven adult professional learning and development from the organization’s infancy as its Chief of Program and Engagement. She also supported vital design and execution elements for UnboundEd’s signature professional learning opportunity, the illustrious Standards Institute. Robinson’s contributions led to the rapid growth of the organization and positioned UnboundEd as industry leaders. Robinson spearheaded migrating this work into a virtual space during the pandemic to meet the needs of educators.

As a teacher, principal, and staff development specialist, Robinson maintained a focus on literacy, equity, and school leadership for more than two decades. Her life’s work aims to help educators in school systems disrupt systemic racism and all of its legacies in classrooms. Inspired by Langston Hughes, her path is to build temples for tomorrow, as strongly and bravely as she knows how, and to ensure that future generations can stand freely within themselves to be whomever they choose to be. As CEO, Robinson pursues this passion by leading an organization known for the highest integrity in professional development.

Dr. Jamaal Sharif Matthews is an Associate Professor in Educational Studies and the Combined Program in Education and Psychology. Born and raised in Harlem NYC, Dr. Matthews’ research interests are grounded in his experiences as a middle grades mathematics teacher in The Bronx. His research focuses on achievement motivation during adolescence and motivation in mathematics specifically. His work addresses how race, teacher pedagogy, and the sociopolitical context shape students’ beliefs about their abilities in and value of mathematics. He also applies a critical race perspective on the psychological processes that undergird adaptive and healthy school functioning for Black American and Latinx adolescents in urban schools.

Dr. Matthews is a recipient of multiple national awards, including outstanding dissertation awards from the American Psychological Association (APA) and ProQuest. Further, he was awarded the APA Early Career Educational Psychology Research Award, the National Academy of Education/Spencer Postdoctoral Fellowship; and the Best Article Award from Educational Psychologist in 2018 for his article “Black and Belonging at School”.

Emily Hanford is a senior correspondent and producer for APM Reports, the documentary and investigative reporting group at American Public Media. Her work has appeared on NPR and in The New York Times, Washington Monthly, The Los Angeles Times and other publications. She has won numerous honors including a duPont-Columbia University Award and the Excellence in Media Reporting on Education Research Award from the American Educational Research Association. Emily is a member of the Education Writers Association’s Journalist Advisory Board and was a longtime mentor for EWA’s “new to the beat” program. For the past several years, Emily has been reporting on early reading instruction. Her 2018 podcast episode “Hard Words: Why aren’t kids being taught to read?” won the inaugural public service award from EWA. You can find all of her reporting on reading at apmreports.org/reading, including her new podcast, Sold a Story: How teaching kids to read went so wrong (soldastory.org). Emily is based in the Washington, D.C. area. She is a graduate of Amherst College.

Kandice Sumner Ph.D., has been a successful urban and suburban public school teacher, leader and administrator for fifteen years. While born and raised in urban Boston she graduated from a suburban school system via the METCO program (Metropolitan Council for Educational Opportunity); the longest running voluntary desegregation program in America. As the feature of the documentary film “Far From Home '', and author of the TedTalk "How America's Public Schools Keep Kids in Poverty" she is a sought after educational consultant and keynote speaker facilitating difficult conversations about race, education, gender and equity. Kandice's doctoral research was a Critical Black Feminist Autobiography that examined the lived experience of a participant in METCO and calls for further work to be done in the socio-emotional, mental and racial identity development of Black individuals matriculating predominantly white institutions. Going from being one of a few Blacks in her school to learning at a historically Black college to teaching and leading in underserved and predominantly Black and Latino neighborhoods of Boston, Kandice has spent a lifetime traversing the intersecting lines of race, class and gender. Kandice is the Co-Founder and Co-Executive Director of the non-profit Educators for AntiRacism, is currently Associate Principal of Culturally Responsive Practice at New Heights Charter School Brockton and is an adjunct professor in the Urban Education, Leadership & Policy Studies program at the University of Massachusetts Boston.

Recently retired from her position as the Felton G. Clark Distinguished Professor of Education at Southern University in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, Lisa D. Delpit is the former Executive Director/Eminent Scholar for the Center for Urban Education & Innovation at Florida International University, Miami, Florida. She is also the former holder of the Benjamin E. Mays Chair of Urban Educational Excellence at Georgia State University, Atlanta, Georgia. Originally from Baton Rouge, Louisiana, she is a nationally and internationally-known speaker and writer whose work has focused on the education of children of color and the perspectives, aspirations, and pedagogy of teachers of color. Delpit's work on school-community relations and cross-cultural communication was cited as a contributor to her receiving a MacArthur “Genius” Award in 1990. Dr. Delpit describes her strongest focus as "...finding ways and means to best educate marginalized students, particularly African-American, and other students of color." She has used her training in ethnographic research to spark dialogues between educators on issues that have impact on students typically least well-served by our educational system. Dr. Delpit is particularly interested in teaching and learning in multicultural societies, having spent time studying these issues in Alaska, Papua New Guinea, Fiji and in various urban and rural sites in the continental United States. She received a B.S. degree from Antioch College and an M.Ed. and Ed.D. from Harvard University. Her background is in elementary education with an emphasis on language and literacy development. 

Dr. Delpit’s recent work has spanned a range of projects and issues, including assisting urban school districts engaged in school restructuring efforts; developing innovative alternative teacher education programs in urban education and teacher leadership; founding the post-Katrina National Coalition for Quality Education in New Orleans; recruiting renowned mathematician and Civil Rights leader, Dr. Robert Moses to South Florida to establish the national Algebra Project; assisting in the creation of  high-standards, innovative schools for low-income, urban children; and developing urban leadership programs for principals and school district central office staff.  She has taught pre-service and in-service teachers and principals in many communities across the United States.    

Her numerous awards include the Harvard University Graduate School of Education 1993 Alumni Award for Outstanding Contribution to Education; the 1994 American Educational Research Association Cattell Award for Outstanding Early Career Achievement; 1998 Sunny Days Award from Sesame Street Productions for her contributions to the lives of children; and the 2001 Kappa Delta Phi Laureate Award for her contribution to the education of teachers.  

Dr. Delpit was also selected as the Antioch College Horace Mann Humanity Award recipient for 2003, which recognizes a contribution by alumni of Antioch College who have "won some victory for humanity." Winning candidates are those persons, or groups of persons, whose personal or professional activities have had a profound effect on the present or future human condition. She was also selected to deliver the prestigious DeWitt Wallace-Reader's Digest Distinguished Lecturer Award at the Annual Meeting of the American Educational Research Association (AERA). The award recognizes the contributions of an educational researcher whose work leads to improved learning for low income, elementary or secondary students.

Her most recent book, published in 2012, “Multiplication is For White People”: Raising Standards for Other People’s Children explores strategies to increase expectations and academic achievement for marginalized children. Library Journal named Multiplication… one of the 20 best-selling education books of 2013, and the American School Board Journal selected it as one of eight “notable books” for 2012. A previous book, Other People’s Children, has sold well over a quarter of a million copies and received the American Educational Studies Association’s “Book Critic Award,” Choice Magazine’s Eighth Annual Outstanding Academic Book Award, and has been named “A Great Book” by Teacher Magazine. Her other books include: The Real Ebonics Debate: Power, Language, and the Education of African-American Children; and The Skin That We Speak: Thoughts on Language and Culture in the Classroom. 

A former public high school social studies teacher, Wayne Au is currently Interim Dean and Professor in the School of Educational Studies at the University of Washington Bothell. He is a long-time editor for the social justice teaching magazine, Rethinking Schools, and his work focuses on both academic and public scholarship about high-stakes testing, neoliberal education policy, teaching for social justice, critical pedagogy, and anti-racist education. Author or editor of over 100 publications, his recent books include the 2nd edition of Unequal by Design: High-Stakes Testing and the Standardization of Inequality, Rethinking Ethnic Studies (co-edited) and Teaching for Black Lives (co-edited). He was honored with the University of Washington Bothell Distinguished Teaching Award in 2015, presented the William H. Watkins award for scholar activism from the Society of Professors of Education in 2017, and recognized with the Distinguished K-12 Educational Leader Award from the Evergreen State College MiT program in 2019.