The third event of the Collective Courage Conversations Series, this event explores how cultural institutions navigate political pressure while staying true to their missions and continuing their work.

In this episode of NCAC’s Collective Courage Conversation Series, Ann Burroughs, President and CEO of the Japanese American National Museum, and Dr. Yomaira Figueroa-Vázquez, Director of the Center for Puerto Rican Studies (CENTRO) at CUNY Hunter, discuss how their organizations have taken seemingly divergent paths forward to achieving the same outcome: continuing their programs as intended. 


Participant bios:

Ann Burroughs is the President and CEO of the Japanese American National Museum and its National Center for the Preservation of Democracy. She is an internationally recognized leader in the field of human rights and social justice. She is Chair of the International Board of Directors of Amnesty International, the immediate past Chair of Amnesty International USA and a former Chair of Amnesty International’s Global Assembly, its highest decision-making body. She is also on the board of the Heart Mountain Wyoming Foundation. Her life-long commitment to racial and social justice was shaped by her experience as a young activist in her native South Africa where she was jailed as a political prisoner for her opposition to apartheid. For over 25 years, she has worked with leaders, organizations, and networks in the US and abroad to promote racial justice and a rights-based culture. She has previously served as Executive Director of the Taproot Foundation and as the Executive Director of LA Works, and has worked as a consultant to private philanthropic foundations such the Omidyar Network and the Rockefeller Foundation.

Yomaira C. Figueroa-Vásquez is an Afro-Puerto Rican writer, teacher, and scholar from Hoboken, NJ. She is Professor of Africana, Puerto Rican, and Latino Studies and is the Director of the Center for Puerto Rican Studies (CENTRO) at CUNY Hunter. She is author of the award-winning book Decolonizing Diasporas: Radical Mappings of Afro-Atlantic Literature (Northwestern University Press, 2020; translation, Editora Educación Emergente, 2023), and the forthcoming book, The Survival of a People (under contract with Duke University Press). Her published work can be found in Hypatia, Decolonization, CENTRO Journal, Small Axe, Frontiers Journal, Hispanofila, Contemporânea, Diálogos, and Feminist Formations. 
 
A first-generation high-school and college graduate, Dr. Figueroa-Vásquez is passionate about mentoring underrepresented and first-generation students. She earned her BA in English, Puerto Rican & Latino Studies, and Women’s & Gender Studies at Rutgers University, New Brunswick (Douglass College) and her M.A. and Ph.D. in Comparative Ethnic Studies at UC Berkeley. At her former institution, Michigan State University) she founded the Mentoring Underrepresented Students in English Program (MUSE), the Womxn of Color Initiative, #ProyectoPalabrasPR, and the award-winning digital/material project Taller Electric Marronage. She is the PI of the 2022-2027 “Diaspora Solidarities Lab,” a $4M Mellon Higher Learning project focused on Black feminist digital humanities initiatives that support solidarity work in Black and Ethnic Studies and leads the CENTRO “Rooted and Relational” Initiative, a $6.48M project supported by the Mellon Presidential Initiatives.