Keynote Speakers

Khalilah Shabazz, Ph.D.
Vice President and Chief Diversity Officer
Butler University

Dr. Shabazz serves as the inaugural Vice President & Chief Diversity Officer at Butler University where she leads the development and execution of Butler’s strategy around diversity, equity and inclusion ensuring initiatives are in alignment with, and supportive of, Butler University’s vision, mission, and strategic goals.

She holds a Master’s and Ph.D. in Higher Education from Indiana University with a 21-year progressive career in higher education administration, DEI work, and teaching. Dr. Shabazz is a cultural competency educator, higher education administrator, DEI consultant, and dialogue facilitator designing and leading strategy & education efforts at organizations & companies across the country.

She is an Indianapolis native and serves as the International Grand Anti-Grammateus (Secretary) for Sigma Gamma Rho Sorority, Incorporated and is an active member of the local Alpha Sigma Chapter. She grew up steps from Butler University with her great-grandmother, Vivian Irene White Marbury, one of the seven founders of the sorority. Her fun and relaxation time activities include cooking, traveling, enjoying family, reading and shopping.

John Gates, Ph.D.
Vice Provost for Diversity, Inclusion, and Belonging
Clinical Professor, Mitchell E. Daniels Jr. School of Business
Purdue University

John F. Gates serves as Purdue University’s Vice Provost for Diversity, Inclusion and Belonging and is a clinical professor in the Mitchell E. Daniels School of Business. In his role, he provides executive leadership and vision related to critical diversity strategy, conducts system-wide alignment activities, and advises broadly on policy, planning and practice. Since 2021, he has had oversight of the Equity Task Force, a $75-million effort focused on the representation, experience, and success of Black Boilermakers.

Prior to his 2019 appointment at Purdue, Gates had served as the inaugural associate dean in the University of Virginia’s School of Engineering and Applied Science, where he was responsible for diversity, inclusion and engagement strategy. He also provided leadership in the recruitment and retention of faculty and graduate students from underrepresented minorities and guidance for diversity in curriculum development and programming.

Other prior academic posts include serving as associate dean for administration and finance at Harvard College, Harvard University and special assistant to the president and provost at the University of Vermont, where he focused on strategic initiatives, change management and diversity. He also held a series of positions with increasing responsibility at New York University, culminating with his role as executive director of global operations.

Gates also launched and led his own consulting firm, Criticality Management Consulting, where he advised corporate clients on a range of workforce issues. A native of Gary, Indiana, Gates received a bachelor’s degree from Morehouse College, a master’s degree from New York University and a Ph.D. from the University of London.

Recent Media:

Building Belonging – Purdue Alumnus (Spring 2023)
Purdue for Life Foundation

John Gates, Belonging and Inclusion for Everyone – Techies Today (Episode 018)
Purdue Polytechnic Institute

Vice Provost Gates aims to transform campus culture – The Persistent Pursuit (Feb 6, 2021)
Purdue Marketing and Communications

Redgina Hill, Ph.D.
Vice President for Inclusion and Equity
Saint Mary's College

Dr. Redgina Hill is a South Bend, IN native who has spent the past 18 years working in higher education in various roles to enrich the lives of students and other institutional constituents. Dr. Gina currently serves as the Vice President for Inclusion and Equity at Saint Mary's College in Notre Dame, Indiana. In this capacity, she leads strategy, innovation, employee engagement, and solves problems through the lens of diversity, equity, inclusion, and justice while working cross-departmentally. She also provides strategy and vision for offices that both serve students of today and orients them towards the future, as well as the Women's Entrepreneurship Initiative, which empowers women entrepreneurs and businesswomen through personal and professional development conferences, workshops and seminars.

Dr. Gina received her Bachelor degree from Indiana University Bloomington, an MBA from Indiana Wesleyan University, and earned a Ph.D. in Higher Education from Azusa Pacific University where she was the recipient of the 2015 Social Justice Fellowship. She has keynoted and presented at numerous national and international conferences, co-authored articles as a member of the Race & Justice in Higher Education research team, and her dissertation research was featured in Forbes Magazine in 2020.

Dr. Gina is an active member within her community and serves on several boards. She is a proud member of Delta Sigma Theta Sorority, INC and serves as an ordained minister of Faith Alive Praise & Worship Center.

Ken Iwama, JD
Chancellor
Indiana University Northwest

Ken Iwama was appointed the seventh Chancellor of Indiana University Northwest on August 1, 2020 - in the throes of the world-wide pandemic - one of the most challenging times in IU Northwest history. As the most diverse campus in the state, and a recently designated Hispanic Serving Institution, Chancellor Iwama is leading the university into a new era of community-engaged strategic priorities to advance student success.

Prior to coming to Northwest Indiana, Chancellor Iwama served as the Founding Vice President of Economic Development, Continuing Studies, and Government Relations with the College of Staten Island of The City University of New York. He is responsible for leading the college’s strategic priority in re-engaging with the Borough of Staten Island and New York City, generating unprecedented resources to grow the educational and research environments needed to enhance academic excellence. Of particular note, Chancellor Iwama secured more than $22 million for major facilities and infrastructure projects as well as academic initiatives. He also led the creation of the CSI Tech Incubator, the first technology incubator on Staten Island, and initiated the development of the borough’s first innovation center.

Prior to working at the college, Chancellor Iwama was General Counsel for the State-Operated School District of Jersey City, the first school district in the nation subject to takeover by the state because of its struggles in meeting educational standards. He was a senior member of the state-appointed intervention team that was ultimately successful in raising performance standards and commencing the school district’s return to local city control.

Chancellor Iwama has presented on higher education issues at national conferences and seminars, and has served in leadership positions with numerous higher education, legal, and community organizations. He is currently an executive committee member for the Coalition of Urban and Metropolitan Universities and a member of the AASCU Millennium Leadership Institute steering committee. Chancellor Iwama is the Secretary for the Urban League of Northwest Indiana and serves on the Boards of the Northwest Indiana Forum and the One Region economic development organizations.

Chancellor Iwama has a BA in English from the University of New Hampshire, an MA in Labor and Employment Relations from the Rutgers University School of Management and Labor Relations, and a JD from Seton Hall University School of Law.

Alexander Jun, Ph.D.
Global Researcher in Equity and Justice
Professor of Higher Education
Azusa Pacific University

Alexander Jun researches equity and justice in higher education worldwide. He was a TEDx speaker in 2012, a global fellow with the Center for Khmer Studies in Cambodia, an international research fellow at Curtin University in Perth, Australia, and a scholar-in-residence at Belmont University. Jun is the author of several books, including From Here to University: Access, Mobility, and Resilience among Urban Latino Youth, White Out: Understanding White Privilege and Dominance in the Modern Age, White Jesus: The Architecture of Racism in Religion and Education, and White Evolution: The Constant Struggle for Racial Consciousness. His latest book, Global White Supremacy: Anti-Blackness and University as Colonizer, was released in May 2023. Jun holds a Ph.D. in education policy from the Rossier School of Education at the University of Southern California. He is currently a professor of higher education at Azusa Pacific University

Lori Patton Davis, Ph.D.
Professor and Chair of the Department of Educational Studies
The Ohio State University

Lori Patton Davis is among higher education's most respected, accomplished, and influential scholars. She is the author of more than 70 peer-reviewed journal articles, book chapters, and other academic publications appearing in venues such as The Journal of Higher Education, Teachers College Record, Journal of College Student Development, Urban Education, and International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education. Her research has been cited in more than 6,000 publications and funded by grants from the Spencer Foundation, Lumina Foundation, American Psychological Foundation, and an array of other entities. She has served on seven editorial boards for journals in the field of education and was previously associate editor of QSE. She was the American Educational Research Association Division J Equity and Inclusion officer for six years. The American College Personnel Association members elected her to a two-year term as the first director of Equity and Inclusion on the Association’s national governing board. Patton Davis has received many national awards for her scholarly contributions and was recognized in the Edu-Scholar Rankings among the top 200 educators in the United States. She is a frequently sought-after expert on a wide range of education topics. The Chronicle of Higher Education, Inside Higher Ed, Huffington Post, Diverse Issues in Higher Education, and dozens of other media outlets have quoted Patton Davis and featured her research. She has also advised university presidents and other senior administrators, philanthropic foundation executives, culture center directors, and educators in urban K-12 schools.

Vasti Torres, Ph.D.
Interim Vice Provost for Undergraduate Education
Professor of Educational Leadership and Policy Studies
Indiana University

Previously, Vasti Torres was a professor at the Center for the Study of Higher and Postsecondary Education and an associate faculty member in Latino Studies at the University of Michigan. She has been the principal investigator for several grants, including a multi-year grant investigating the choice to stay in college for Latino students and a multi-year grant looking at the experiences of working college students. She has worked on several community college initiatives, including Achieving the Dream and Rural Community College Initiative. Her professional service includes being vice president for Division J: Postsecondary Education for the American Educational Research Association from 2019 to 2021; in 2007, she became the first Latina president of a national student services association – ACPA, and in 2020, she began her term as the editor of the Journal of College Student Development. Previously, she served as the dean of the College of Education at the University of South Florida and director of the Center for Postsecondary Research in the School of Education at Indiana University.

Torres’ awards include the Contribution to Knowledge Award from the American College Personnel Association (ACPA) and the National Association of Student Personnel Administrators. The ACPA also honored her as a Diamond Honoree, Senior Scholar, Wise Woman, and the Latino Network John Hernandez Leadership Award. Other honors include the Professional Achievement Alumni Award from the University of Georgia, Program Associate for the National Center for Policy in Higher Education, Hispanic Scholarship Fund Alumni Hall of Fame in 2014, and the Indiana University Trustees Teaching Award In 2008. She served as a Fulbright specialist in South Africa in 2011-2012. Prof. Torres is a graduate of Stetson University and holds a Ph.D. from The University of Georgia.

Ellise Smith, M.S.Ed.
Director of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion in the Division of Student Affairs
Indiana University Indianapolis

Ellise Antoinette Smith is from Detroit, Michigan, with a research focus on the experiences of bodies that identify as fat. With an interdisciplinary focus, Smith uses photography (#VisualActivism), podcasting, spoken word poetry, and social media as a catalyst to center these narratives.

As a doctoral student in the Urban Education Studies program at IUPUI, Smith dedicates her scholarship to creating celebratory spaces for the marginalized identities that she holds using frameworks such as Black Feminist Thought, Sense of Belonging, Intersectionality, and Critical Race Theory. In addition, she aims to ensure that the work and narratives around bigger bodies are included in academia while challenging the dominant ideologies around body image acceptance.

Smith centers her work within the diversity, equity, and inclusion sector as she pulls from her experiences working with first-generation, low-income students, racial equity, and eradicating injustices for underrepresented populations.

Kimberlé Crenshaw, L.L.M.
Civil Rights Activist and Feminist

Kimberlé Crenshaw is popularly known for her development of “intersectionality,” “Critical Race Theory,” and the #SayHerName campaign, and is a leading authority on civil rights, Black feminist legal theory, and race, racism, and the law. She is the most cited woman legal scholar in the history of the law and was named one of the ten most important thinkers in the world by Prospect magazine in 2019. In addition, Crenshaw writes a column for The New Republic and is a frequent contributor on MSNBC and NPR.

Crenshaw is the co-founder and executive director of the African American Policy Forum, a gender and racial justice legal think tank, and the founder and executive director of the Center for Intersectionality and Social Policy Studies at Columbia Law School. She is the Promise Institute Professor at the UCLA Law School and the Isidor and Seville Sulzbacher Professor of Law at Columbia Law School. She hosts the popular podcast Intersectionality Matters!, and since March 2020, has moderated the widely impactful webinar series Under the Blacklight: The Intersectional Vulnerabilities that the Twin Pandemics Lay Bare, which over five months has convened almost 20 times to discuss the lethal intersection of pre-existing inequalities, opportunistic disease, and police violence. The series is a snapshot of a uniquely disruptive moment in American history.

Based on interviews with the mothers of Black women slain by police, she has co-authored a play entitled “Say Her Name: The Lives that Should Have Been.” The plot entangles the stories of six women, victims of police violence and their mothers, to weave a tapestry of intergenerational loss, grief, resistance, and rebirth.

Crenshaw is a leading voice in calling for a gender-inclusive approach to racial justice interventions, and alongside the #SayHerName campaign, has spearheaded the “Why We Can’t Wait” campaign and co-authored Black Girls Matter: Pushed Out, Overpoliced and Underprotected and Say Her Name: Resisting Police Brutality Against Black Women.

Her groundbreaking work on “Intersectionality” has traveled globally and influenced the South African equality clause. She has held visiting professorships at the London School of Economics and the European Institute and was the Fulbright Chair in South America. Crenshaw authored the background paper on gender and race discrimination for the World Conference on Racism and has given talks on race and gender justice around the world.

Crenshaw received her J.D. from Harvard, L.L.M. from the University of Wisconsin, and B.A. from Cornell University. She sits on the boards of VDay and the Algorithmic Justice League.

Marsha Jean-Baptiste
Third-Year Law Student
Indiana University Maurer School of Law

Marsha Jean-Baptiste is a third-year law student at Indiana University Maurer School of Law. She is a first-generation college student, law student, and American. Born in Brooklyn, New York, to two Haitian immigrant parents, Marsha was raised in Indianapolis, Indiana, from toddler age. She is a cum laude graduate from Indiana University-Bloomington, Class of 2020.

She served the student-legal community as the immediate former National Parliamentarian of the National Black Law Students Association and former president of the award-winning Black Law Students Association at Maurer Law. She is currently the Treasurer for the National Bar Association's Law Student Division.

Marsha's research in law school focused on equity in the jury selection process, highlighting the shortcomings of the Batson challenge in preventing racial discrimination, specifically with regard to Black hair. She is graduating in May and has accepted an offer at a regional full-service law firm in Indianapolis, Indiana.

In her community, Marsha is a member of Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority, Inc., Kappa Tau Omega Chapter. She has volunteered with multiple nonprofits in Bloomington and Indianapolis and was named the 2022 Outstanding Leader of Tomorrow by the City of Bloomington. In 2018, Marsha began the Jean-Baptiste College Fund, where she continues to award prelaw students scholarships and provides resources to navigate the road to law school.

Marsha Jean-Baptiste wears many hats but enjoys traveling, roller skating, and creating social media content in her free time.