Urban Schooling Division

Activist Mama. Disruptor. Storyteller. Freedom Dreamer. Dr. Tunette Powell’s career embodies boldness, resistance and defiance across sectors, including in educational, nonprofit and entertainment spaces. She freedom dreams and moves through connection and collaboration in pursuit of liberation. She is an equity practitioner, published author, and an award-winning public speaker.

Her commitment to historically and contemporarily marginalized groups is evident in both her personal and professional pursuits. Dr. Powell gives her time freely to parents and families in need of a co-conspirator as they navigate harmful, racist and anti-black systems.

In academic spaces, Dr. Powell is known as a scholar who studies kinship, race, racism, and school-induced collective trauma. She supports schools and universities to acknowledge and repair historic harm, and promote affirmation and healing in curriculum and instruction, policy, professional development, and family and community partnerships.

In nonprofit spaces, Dr. Powell serves as both a board member and equity practitioner where she supports groups and organizations committed to and in search of sustainable approaches
to equity and inclusion in the areas of HR, policy revisions, and DEI strategic development.

In entertainment spaces, she works as a storyteller and disruptor and is best known in TV writing rooms where she co-creates inclusive writing rooms,
diversifies writing teams and tells more diverse stories. Most recently, she served as a DEI consultant, story editor and writer on seasons 10 and 11 of Hallmark’s “When Calls the Heart.”

Valdez is an assistant professor in the Department of Elementary and Bilingual Education at CSU Fullerton. She was honored for her community activism with the Scholar-Activist & Community Advocacy Award from AERA’s Critical Educators for Social Justice SIG. Valdez is involved in a number of community organizations such as the Association of Chicana Activists; Los Angeles Coalition for Justice for Oscar Grant; Association of Filipinas Fighting Imperialism, Refeudalization and Marginalization; the Graduate Student Association of Education at UCLA; and the Teacher Activist Group National. She has served as part of the leadership for the Critical Educators for Social Justice AERA SIG. Her research focuses on grassroots teacher organizing and ethnic studies for elementary level students.

Pham has been honored with the Outstanding Dissertation Award by Division K of the American Educational Research Association for her dissertation “The Multi-Faceted Nature of Racially Transformative Practices: Bringing to Light the Invisibilized Labor and Leadership of Teachers of Color.” Her research focuses on the often overlooked tasks that are regularly performed by teachers of color — tasks that are much more challenging in the face of the global pandemic. She posits that there is another layer in serving students of color, particularly for teachers of color. “My political commitments to teaching are heavily influenced by my identities and experiences as a daughter of Vietnamese refugees, as an Asian American woman, and a woman of color,” Pham says. “As justice-oriented teachers of color, we recognize that traditional schooling was not designed with communities of color in mind.”

Marjorie Faulstich Orellana is Professor of Urban Schooling, Associate Director of the Center for the Study of International Migration, and Co-Director of Faculty for the Teacher Education Program. Her research centers on the experiences of immigrant youth in urban schools and communities, including as language and cultural brokers for their families. She is the author of Translating Childhoods…