Board of
Advisors
Charles A. Black
Board Chair
A native of Miami, Florida, Mr. Charles A. Black is an alumnus of Morehouse College, where he was Editor of the student newspaper, a varsity debater, President of the senior class, one of only eight students taught by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Charles also served as the second Chairman of the Atlanta Student Movement, which helped desegregate Atlanta public facilities and advance the goals of the Civil Rights Movement. Charles is a veteran actor and voice talent on TV, in feature films, commercials, and industrials, and has starred in a number of serialized faith-based films shown in more than 1,000 churches nationwide. As one of the founding members of Freedom University’s Board of Advisors when the organization was reopened in Atlanta in 2014, Charles has since played an instrumental role in securing safe locations for Freedom University classes and has participated in acts of civil disobedience alongside undocumented students as a respected veteran of the Civil Rights Movement. Charles has served as the Chair of the Board since 2018. Charles also serves on the board of the Hammonds House Museum, and is Chairman of the Board of Illien Adoptions International, Inc.
Karla Umana
Board Secretary
Originally from El Salvador, Ms. Umana aims to use her international background to bring concerns of marginalized communities to the forefront. As a DACA recipient, her passions lie at the intersection of social justice and public health. She began to advocate against anti-immigrant policies in 2012, conducting research on institutional scholarships and publishing "The Ultimate Guide for College Bound Undocumented Students". In 2012, she also received a full-ride scholarship from the Goizueta Foundation to attend Agnes Scott College. Through a series of internships, academic projects, and professional employment, including field research in Antigua, Guatemala on unaccompanied child migration from Central America to the U.S., she discovered her love for the multidisciplinary field of public health. She then went on to pursue her Master's in Public Health at Emory University. There, she received the Kathleen Miner award for Public Health Excellence, largely for her work in health promotion with the immigrant community in Atlanta. She currently works as a Health Care analyst for the National Committee for Quality Assurance (NCQA) in Washington, D.C. and remains an outspoken advocate for immigration reform and education equity.
Fernando Esquivel-Suárez, Ph.D.
Dr. Fernando Esquivel-Suárez received an M.A. and a Ph.D. in Spanish from Emory University. His background includes training in cultural studies and philosophy at Universidad Javeriana, in his hometown of Bogota, Colombia. His main research interests focus on African American/Latinx relations, overlapping oppression, and solidarity. His current project analyzes the War on Drugs as a hemispheric phenomenon that disproportionately affects both African American and Afro Colombian communities.
Assistant Professor of Ethnic Studies, Department of English, Spelman College
Kwame Phillips, Ph.D.
Born in London and raised in Jamaica, Dr. Kwame Phillips specializes in sensory media production, visual anthropology and audio culture. He received his MSc in Transcultural Mental Healthcare from Queen Mary, University of London and his PhD in Anthropology from Emory University. His work focuses on resilience, race, and social justice and he is passionate about merging art, activism and academia. An avid cinephile, his current work oscillates between experimental documentary and mixtape scholarship, where recently he published an essay/mixtape entitled “The People Who Keep on Going”: A Listening Party, Vol. I, within the book The Futures of Black Radicalism, published by Verso Books.
Associate Professor, Department of Communications and Media Studies, John Cabot University
Karen Stolley, PhD
Dr. Karen Stolley received her Ph.D. in Spanish from Yale University and her B.A. in Spanish and French, summa cum laude, from Middlebury College. She spent a year as a Rotary Fellow in Tucumán, Argentina, and received a Fulbright Fellowship to study at the Universidad de los Andes in Bogotá, Colombia. Dr. Stolley has served as a professor at Emory University in the Spanish and Portuguese department since 1992. Prior to coming to Emory, she taught at Vassar College; she has also taught at the Middlebury Summer Spanish Language School and as a visiting faculty at the University of Pennsylvania. Dr. Stolley also serves as a member of the Board of Trustees of Middlebury College and the Board of Advisors of the Middlebury Institute for International Studies in Monterey, CA.
Professor of Spanish, Department of Spanish and Portuguese, Emory University.
Nsé Ufot, JD
Professor Ufot's life and career have been dedicated to working on various civil, human, and workers rights issues. As the Executive Director of the New Georgia Project, she is proud to lead the organization to its goal of strengthening the state's democracy by registering and engaging roughly 1,000,000 eligible, but unregistered African Americans, Latinos, and Asian Americans.
Executive Director, New Georgia Project
Aly Wane
Aly Wane is an undocumented human rights activist originally from Senegal. He has worked on numerous antiwar, economic, and racial justice issues with groups like the American Friends Service Committee, the Alliance of Communities Transforming Syracuse, and Black Lives Matter Syracuse among others. He has also worked with the Black Alliance for Just Immigration and the UndocuBlack Network. He is currently with the Syracuse Peace Council and on the advisory board of the Immigrant Justice Network. His political philosophy can be summed up in the Kikuyu proverb: “I am only well if you are well.”
Independent activist and organizer