Who We Are

Alana Peterson is Executive Director of Spruce Root, a “triple bottom line” economic development corporation in Southeast Alaska. Born and raised in Sitka, Alana is Tlingit — a Raven of the Luknahadi (Coho) clan. She served as a small business development volunteer in the Peace Corps Peru from 2009-2011. Since she has worked in economic development for Central Council Tlingit & Haida Indian Tribes of Alaska and Sealaska. Alana and her husband, Jose, also own the Backdoor Cafe, a local Sitka institution.

(bio on Current Staffulty page)

Carla Beam spent more than 40 years leading and advising Alaska private, public, and nonprofit
entities in communications, public affairs, development, and governance. She retired in 2015
from her final position as University of Alaska vice president of university relations and
president of the University of Alaska Foundation. She has been a volunteer leader, serving on numerous nonprofit boards. Currently she chairs the Anchorage Museum Association board and serves as a member of the Anchorage Museum Foundation board. She also serves on the Board of Trustees of Reed College.

Christian Correa is President and Chief Investment Officer of Franklin Mutual Series, the global equities value investing group at Franklin Templeton. He previously worked at Lehman Brothers and wrote code at SPL Worldgroup. Christian is a member of the board of the All Stars Project of New Jersey, which uses the developmental power of performance to transform the lives of youth from poor and underserved communities. Christian earned a B.A. in philosophy, politics and economics from Claremont McKenna College, an M.A. in economics from Northwestern University and is a graduate of Harvard Law School.

Derek Schrier is the Founder and Chief Investment Officer of Indaba Capital Management, LP. He previously worked at Farallon Capital Management, L.L.C. and Goldman, Sachs & Co. Derek lived and worked in South Africa between 1992 – 1994 and during that time managed the elections research and polling for the African National Congress’s political campaign during South Africa’s first-ever democratic and non-racial elections in 1994. Derek is a board member of Matriculate, a non-profit organization that expands college access for high-achieving high school students. He serves as Chair of the Advisory Board for the Boston Review, an independent political and literary forum. Derek also is a member of the Dean’s Advisory Councils at Stanford Law School and Princeton University. Previously, he chaired the Board of the African Leadership Foundation and was a trustee and early funder of the African Leadership Academy. Derek is also co-founder, along with his wife, of the Cameron Schrier Foundation. Derek earned an M.B.A. from the Graduate School of Business at Stanford University and a J.D. from Stanford Law School. He attended Princeton University where he graduated with an A.B. from the Princeton School of Public and International Affairs.

Jeff Clifford is President of Heyday Films, David Heyman’s production company based at Warner Bros, which is best known for the HARRY POTTER series. At Heyday, he has served as Producer on THE LIGHT BETWEEN OCEANS and Executive Producer on PADDINGTON and PADDINGTON 2. Prior to Heyday, Clifford oversaw production and development for The Montecito Picture Company, the Paramount-based partnership between Ivan Reitman and Tom Pollock, where he produced UP IN THE AIR, among many other films. Prior to Montecito, Clifford was Vice President of Production at Warner Bros and at Walt Disney/Touchstone Pictures. Clifford began his career as an independent producer in New York. He graduated from Yale in 1991. He currently serves as Board President for The Independent School Alliance for Minority Affairs in Los Angeles. He is a founding board member of Outer Coast College.

Joe Nelson (Board Chair) is Chairman of Sealaska, a for-profit Alaska Native Corporation owned by more than 22,000 Tlingit, Haida, and Tsimshian shareholders. He serves as a director on Spruce Root’s board and ex-officio trustee for Sealaska Heritage Institute. Joe has been a Sealaska director since 2003 and has been board chair since 2014. Joe also serves as a director for Alaska Legal Services. Joe is a Brown Bear (Teikweidí) from Yakutat. He is also a Kwáashk’I kwaan yádi. His Tlingit name is Kaá Ax Gú. Joe grew up commercial fishing and subsistence living in Yakutat. After graduating from Yakutat High School, Joe completed a bachelor’s degree in Political Science and a Master’s degree in American Indian Studies from UCLA. He also has a juris doctorate from Loyola Law School. Joe, his wife, Crystal, and children, Job, Nora, and Jude, live in Juneau.

Jonathan Kreiss-Tomkins (founder) was born and raised in Sitka and represents Southeast Alaska in the Alaska Legislature. During and after his time studying at Yale, Jonathan founded Alaska Fellows Program and Historical Restoration Interns program. Jonathan began to explore creating a new institution of higher education in Sitka summer 2014. In January 2015, he visited Deep Springs, and soon after made the decision to embark on the Outer Coast project.

Louise Davis Langheier is the Founder and former-CEO of Peer Health Exchange (PHE), a non-
profit organization tasked with giving teenagers the knowledge and skills they need to make healthy decisions. They do this by training college students to teach a comprehensive health
curriculum in public high schools that lack health education. Since its founding in 2003, PHE has
trained 4,000 college student volunteers to deliver health education to 40,000 low-income
public high school students in New York City, Boston, Chicago, Oakland, San Francisco, and Los
Angeles. Louise has served on the Boards of other missions and organizations she believes in–from
Dwight Hall at Yale (Yale’s center for public service and social justice) to Generation Citizen,
America Achieves, and the Cow Hollow School. Louise was a Pahara-Aspen Education Fellow
and an Ashoka Fellow. Louise lives in San Francisco with her husband, their three boys, and their dog.

Roger Schmidt has been the Executive Director of Sitka Fine Arts Camp (Alaska Arts Southeast, Inc.) since 2000. During this time, the summer program has grown from a two week camp serving 40 adolescent students to a ten week program serving 1,000 students ages five to adult. In 2010, Roger negotiated the donation of the historic Sheldon Jackson School which had closed its doors in 2007. Subsequently, he has overseen the restoration of the campus by harnessing the support of thousands of volunteers and donors. Under Roger’s leadership, the Camp has grown to include a year-long arts advocacy program that offers a performing arts series, a statewide teacher training institute, after school arts classes for all ages, and a vibrant young performer’s theater program. Roger graduated from Oberlin College and Conservatory with degrees in philosophy and trombone performance with additional music studies at the Aspen Music Festival, Pierre Monteux School and internationally in London and at the Bruckner Conservatory in Austria.

Shanik Morales-Tapia is a member of the Outer Coast Year 2022-2023 Student Body and graduated from John Marshall High School in Los Angeles, CA. 

Tukaan ‘Ezra’ Dan is Outer Coast’s current OCY 2023-25 student representative on the OC Board of Trustees. Tukaan joined Outer Coast in the spring semester of OCY 2023 after graduating from S.A.V.E. High School in 2019. As the administrative assistant for OC’s 2023 Summer Seminar with First Alaskans Institute, Tukaan was a teacher’s assistant for Yeidikook’áa Dionne Brady-Howard.  Tukaan grew up in Anchorage with three older siblings, connecting with his Yup’ik heritage at summer fish camp on Stuart Island near Stebbins, Alaska with his grandma. Tukaan wrote for his school newspaper, Eagle’s Cry, for three years while also working with Alaska Teen Media Institute as a youth radio producer. Some of Tukaan’s interests include doing subsistence activities outdoors, cooking for friends and family, hiking, and kayaking.

Anne Fadiman is an essayist and reporter. A former NOLS instructor, she won a National Book Critics Circle Award for her first book, The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down, and has written a memoir, The Wine Lover’s Daughter, as well as two essay collections, Ex Libris and At Large and At Small. As the Francis Writer in Residence at Yale, Anne teaches nonfiction writing and serves as a mentor to students who are considering careers in writing or editing. In 2012 she received the Brodhead Prize for Teaching Excellence. She is a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

Brian Rogers was the Chancellor of University of Alaska, Fairbanks from 2008-2015. Before UAF, he was partner and CFO at the consulting firm Information Insights; served as Vice President of Finance for the University of Alaska statewide system; and represented Fairbanks in the Alaska Legislature. Brian holds an M.P.A. in public administration from Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government.

Bruce Botelho served as Alaska Attorney General from 1993 to 2002 and mayor of Juneau for four terms, from 1988-1991, and again from 2003-2012. Bruce was born and raised in Juneau, graduating Juneau Douglas High School and going on to earn his B.A. and J.D. from Willamette University. Bruce’s record of civic service prolific, including serving as president of Alaska Conference of Mayors, director for Alaska Municipal League, trustee to the Alaska Permanent Fund Corporation, and chair of Conference of Western Attorneys General. Bruce is also an Eagle Scout, and has served as president of Boy Scouts of America’s Southeast Alaska Area Council. Bruce lives in Juneau.

Carol Bazarsky received her degree in medical communications from Ohio State University and has been involved throughout her career in enhancing education in Newport, RI — serving on numerous boards and committees, including the Newport Public Education Foundation. In addition, Carol is president of a private family foundation whose primary focus is enhancing elementary and secondary education. Carol brought the educational music program “Little Kids Rock” to the Newport Public School System and is working on bringing a literacy program to Newport County. She is currently serving on the strategic planning committee of FabNewport, a fabrication workshop where lab members use innovative technologies and materials to make (almost) anything.

David Bazarsky is president of a real estate development company in Newport, RI. After practicing law at Seyfarth Shaw in Chicago he returned to Rhode Island to develop commercial real estate. David has served as board chair of St. Michael’s Country Day School and Child & Family Services of Newport County. He serves on the boards of Salve Regina University (where he teaches Business Law in the MBA program) and a local bank (where he chairs its audit committee). David has also served on the board of Portsmouth Abbey School, Newport Hospital, and the Newport Preservation Society. David holds a B.S. from Boston University and a J.D. and L.L.M. from the University of Miami.

Ed Cohen received his B.A. from Amherst College and J.D. from the University of Virginia. Ed became general counsel at Donaldson, Lufkin & Jenrette at the age of 26. Ed served as President and CEO of the New York State Urban Development Corporation from 1975-1977. He became a partner in McKinsey & Company in 1977, and in 1980 he was recruited to start the organization which became General Atlantic Partners. He was managing partner from 1980-1992 and chairman from 1992-1995. Ed is a founder of the Echoing Green Foundation, New Leaders for New Schools, and the Four Times Foundation. He initiated and funded Dartmouth Medical School’s efforts to promote the effective functioning of the medical school in Pristina, Kosova. He served as President and Chairman of the Manhattan Theatre Club, Co-Chairman of The MacDowell Colony and Chairman of City Year. He currently serves on the Board of America Achieves and New Profit in Boston. Ed is President of Carlin Ventures, Inc. in New York City.

Janelle Vanasse is superintendent of Mt. Edgecumbe High School in Sitka, Alaska. As superintendent of Alaska’s premier public boarding school for over 400 rural and Native students since 2016, Janelle has deep background in rural education, previously serving as director of secondary education for the Lower Kuskokwim School District, principal of Bethel Regional High School, and executive director of Yuut Elitnaurviat, a Bethel non-profit that provides vocational training to youth and adults. Before Sitka, Janelle lived in Bethel for over 20 years.

Jack Newell served as president of Deep Springs College from 1995 to 2004 as well as Dean of Liberal Education at the University of Utah for 16 years, where he built a nationally-celebrated arts and sciences core curriculum required of all undergraduates. Jack’s teaching has been awarded the Hatch Prize for Teaching Excellence. He has been designated a Presidential Teaching Scholar, appointed to the special rank of University Professor, and recognized as the State of Utah’s first Professor of the Year. He has written a number of books, including a history of Deep Springs College and L.L. Nunn. Jack attended Deep Springs College, earned his M.A. in history and theology at Duke University, and earned his Ph.D. in the history and philosophy of universities at Ohio State University.

Lisa Busch began working as the executive director of the Sitka Sound Science Center in 2010. She and Roger Schmidt spearheaded the revitalization of the Sheldon Jackson Campus in the wake of the former Sheldon Jackson College’s sudden closure. Under Lisa’s leadership the Science Center staff has grown from two to 20 and has brought dozens of science educators and researchers to Sitka, most notably through the Scientist in Residency Fellowship and Scientists in the Schools.

Laurie Hummel served as Adjutant General-Alaska and Commissioner of the Alaska Department of Military and Veterans Affairs from 2015 to 2018, overseeing 4,100 soldiers and airmen. Laurie started her military career commissioned into the Military Intelligence Corps in 1982 and served 30 years in the Active Component Army in a variety of intelligence assignments, and also served as a consultant to the Defense Intelligence Agency and Woodrow Wilson Center. She deployed on several missions in support of Operations Iraqi Freedom and Enduring Freedom, including advising the Afghan National Army’s leaders of the National Military Academy of Afghanistan. MG Hummel holds graduate degrees from the University of Colorado (Ph.D.), Penn State (M.S.), Army War College (M.S.S.), University of Alaska Anchorage (M.Ed.), and a B.S. from the U.S. Military Academy, where she has also taught as a professor.

Nicole Borromeo is executive vice president and general counsel of Alaska Federation of Natives. A Doyon shareholder, she earned her B.A. from the University of Alaska Anchorage and J.D. from University of Washington School of Law. Prior to joining AFN, she clerked for Judge Patricia Collins (ret.) and worked in the Anchorage office of Sonosky, Chambers, Sasche, Miller & Munson, one the premier Indian law firms in the U.S. Nicole was raised in McGrath, and now resides in Anchorage.

Temp Keller is a social entrepreneur working to increase student agency and access in K-12 education. He is the Co-founder and CEO of Templeton Learning, founded to leverage the human and financial capital of the Keller Family and build high quality, highly accessible K-12 education models for 21st century learners.​ Temp also serves as the President of Templeton Academy, a family of independent micro schools with locations in Washington, D.C. and Nashville that exist to revolutionize access to Student agency by nurturing young people from all backgrounds into purposeful adults who use their gifts in a way that brings them joy and serves others. The model affords deeper, purpose-centered, experiential learning though block teaching, core advisory, and using cities as classrooms. A former fifth grade teacher, Temp was the Founder, former President and Chairman of Resources for Indispensable Schools and Educators (RISE), a national nonprofit that worked to recognize and retain effective teachers in public schools serving low-income communities. In 2004 he was awarded the Ashoka Fellowship for “innovative, entrepreneurial solutions to some of the world's most pressing social problems.” 

Temp serves on several for-profit and non-profit boards, including TK Capital, the Loomis Chaffee School, Kids Science Labs, Austin Achieve Public Schools and Hillside Early Childhood Center. He also serves on the advisory boards of Dell Seton Medical Center at the University of Texas, Outer Coast, a new two-year institution of higher education in Sitka, Alaska, and the Coalition for College, which works to bolster lower-income, under- resourced, and/or first-generation students success in college and beyond. He received his B.A. in Politics from Princeton University, where he currently serves on the President’s Advisory Council, and his MBA from The University of Chicago. Temp, his wife, Kerry, and their three young children live in Austin, Texas.

Anna Clock is Athabascan from Kaltag and Eyak from Orca. While these are her ancestral homelands, she was raised in Seward on the traditional homelands of the Alutiiq people, and currently makes her home in Anchorage, on the land of the Dena’ina people. Anna went to Middlebury College to study Japanese language and history. Her favorite area of work is in revitalizing Alaska Native languages, and believes firmly in the Lingít saying, “Kusaxán tín yagaxtoodláak” (We will succeed with love of the people). Anna works with the Outer Coast team as the Tlingit Language MOOC coordinator.

Cecilia was a member of the Outer Coast team from 2016-2022. She joined the team in 2016 as a Fellow through the Alaska Fellows Program and subsequently contributed six years of full-time work to the project, leading Outer Coast’s on-the-ground development as the institution progressed from idea to reality. Cecilia served in myriad roles at Outer Coast, including as the 2018 and 2019 Summer Seminar Program Coordinator and eventually as the Director of Programs and Operations, until concluding her tenure in May 2022. Prior to joining Outer Coast, Cecilia had long held aspirations to become a doctor. She is now a medical student at UCLA’s David Geffen School of Medicine. 

Erin Slomski-Pritz is a graduate of Whitman College, where she earned a B.A. in English. Prior to attending Whitman, she spent her first two years of college at the University of Washington. Since graduating, she has worked in various community-based organizations, aiming to make education and healthcare more accessible to individuals from low-income socioeconomic backgrounds. She currently serves as assistant poetry editor for Bracken Magazine. Erin joined Outer Coast as a Sitka Winter Fellow and worked with the team from January through December 2018.

Grace Greenwald was a member of the Outer Coast team from 2019 – 2022. Grace worked in development as a grant-writer, and in student life as an Academic and Residential Advisor across two years of programming. She is currently studying education leadership at the Harvard Graduate School of Education and building out the project-based curriculum of a new public middle school in Dorchester called The Burke. In whichever hat she wears, Grace focuses on human development, resilient relationships, and the power of storytelling and narrative in school environments. 

Javier Botero is a film producer, writer, and software engineer. Javier coproduced the cyber warfare documentary Zero Days for Director Alex Gibney, which was short-listed for the 2017 Academy Award for Best Documentary. He has led software development and communications for several tech start-ups. He and Jonathan, with others, co-founded the Sitka Fellows Program in 2012. Javier studied philosophy at Yale.

Kira Fagerstrom is from Wasilla, Alaska and is a sophomore at Harvard College studying Human Developmental and Regenerative Biology. You can also call Kira by her Iñupiaq name, Tayaġana. As a student at the 2019 Summer Seminar, she was inspired by Outer Coast’s mission and vision for higher education. Kira returned to Outer Coast as an intern at the 2020 Summer Seminar though the Cook Inlet Tribal Council’s Youth Employment Program, and at the 2021 Summer Seminar through the First Alaskans Institute.

Sara turned to screenwriting after working as a public defender in Brooklyn, NY, for seven years. During that time she also started an alternative-to-incarceration arts program for court-involved youth, Young New Yorkers. She currently writes on POWER BOOK II: GHOST, wrote on the final two seasons of ABC’s HOW TO GET AWAY WITH MURDER, and wrote an episode for the anthology series TALES on BET. She also served as the researcher/writers’ assistant in the mini-room for SELF MADE: INSPIRED BY THE LIFE OF MADAM C.J. WALKER at Netflix.

Stephanie Gilardi has worked as a staffer in the Alaska Legislature and, previously, on Tlingit language revitalization projects at the Sitka Tribe of Alaska. Stephanie completed M.A. coursework focused on language ideologies and endangered language issues and holds a B.A. from Wellesley College.

Will Hunt is a graduate of Deep Springs College and Yale College. He took a gap year between Deep Springs and his final two years of undergrad in order to work full-time to bring Outer Coast into existence, then transferred to Yale in the fall of 2016 and continued to work on Outer Coast remotely for some time. Will is now pursuing a PhD in Political Science with the University of California Berkeley.

Lance Twitchell carries the Tlingit names X̱’unei and Du Aaní Kawdinook, and the Haida name Ḵ’eijáakw. He lives in Juneau with his wife and bilingual children, and is from the Tlingit, Haida, and Yupʼik native nations. He speaks & studies the Tlingit language, and advocates for indigenous language revitalization. He is a Professor of Alaska Native Languages at the University of Alaska Southeast, has a Ph.D. in Hawaiian and Indigenous Language Revitalization from Ka Haka ʻUla o Keʻelikōlani College of Hawaiian Language at the University of Hawaiʻi at Hilo, and also is a Northwest Coast Artist, musician, and filmmaker. At Outer Coast, X̱’unei has taught the Tlingit Language Massive Open Online Courses, served as faculty at the Summer Seminar, and supported the project in a wide variety other ways.

Adam Haar works to translate brain science into experiences and interventions, with a focus on sleep and dreams. He is a co-inventor of the Dormio device and Targeted Dream Incubation technique, both tools which help people guide their dream content. At the moment he is building tools for nightmare treatment with psychiatrists at the US Dept of Veterans Affairs, and bridging art and neuroscience in overnight museum installations with artist Carsten Höller. He’s proud to serve on the board of the Center for Law, Brain and Behavior, where he works on neuroscience-based prison policy change, and on the planning committee for the Dream Engineering Symposium series focused on scientific ethics and education. Adam got his PhD at MIT working between the MIT Media Lab, McGovern Institute for Brain Research, and Harvard Medical School. In the rainy season he can be found mushroom foraging, on sunny days hackysacking, and when the cold comes in the woodshop. You can learn more here.

Barbara was born to a French mother and an American father in Benin. She grew up in Italy, before moving to Canada and finally Alaska, the place she decided to call home. She now lives in Anchorage within Denai’na Elnena (Dena’ina Country).  She is a PhD student at the University of Alaska Fairbanks (UAF) in the Natural Resources and Sustainability program, researching the economics of small water systems in rural Alaska and consulting on applied economics projects. She regularly teaches Intro to Economics courses and has an MSc in Resource and Applied Economics from UAF and a BA in Environmental Studies from McGill University in Canada.  Barbara is the co-founder of 49th Rising, an Alaska based non-partisan advocacy group putting a face on the statistics about sexual violence and pushing forward legislation to make Alaska as safe as it is beautiful.  In her spare time Barbara likes exploring the outdoors, and her projects this summer include learning to packraft, fish, harvesting plants and berries and working on her dissertation.

See Current Staffulty page.

David was born and raised in Vancouver, British Columbia, and has a deep love for the Pacific Northwest. He completed his DPhil in philosophy at the University of Oxford in 2011 and since that time has taught at Oxford, McMaster University, the University of Chicago, and Hunter College (CUNY). David is also a playwright with work professionally produced on both sides of the Atlantic.

Ilegvak is a Yup’ik culture bearer, artist, designer, filmmaker, and educator based in Sitka, Alaska. His hand-sewn works repurpose skin from self-harvested traditional foods, bridging worlds of Indigenous art, fashion, and subsistence. Ilegvak completed artist residencies at Santa Fe Art Institute and Institute of American Indian Arts and has guest lectured and/or taught skin sewing at Yale University, Stanford University, UCLA, Portland Art Museum, and Alaska State Museum, among others. His art has been shown at museums and galleries across North America.

His presentations at New York Fashion Week and Fashion Week Brooklyn in 2015 and 2016 led to profiles in The Guardian and The New York Times. He co-produced the documentary Harvest: Quyurciq, which received a Native Peoples Action project grant and screened internationally. He was a 2020 Luce Indigenous Knowledge Fellow and nominated for the Joan Mitchell Foundation Painters and Sculptors Grant.

Jenell is a Professor of Anthropology at Messiah College. She earned her Ph.D. in Anthropology from American University, with a focus on African American urban life. She teaches at Messiah College, a liberal arts college in Pennsylvania, in areas including research methods, gender studies, and cultural anthropology.

Jocelyn is a writer, performer, and scholar who has taught in a variety of settings including the Prison University Project at San Quentin and UC Berkeley. Her most recent publications include kith & kin and Dead Letter. She is currently working on a collaborative poetic project with LA-based visual artist Cybele Lyle for Kelsey St. Books and a collection of lyric essays—meditations on a poetics of reading and writing, their queer somato-sonic kinship, in ancient and contemporary poetry.

Joel Alden Schlosser is Chair and Associate Professor of Political Science at Bryn Mawr College, where he has been a faculty member since Fall 2014. Prior to that, he held the Julian Steward Chair in the Social Sciences at Deep Springs College, where his teaching was featured in the CNN Documentary Film Ivory Tower (2014). He has published articles and chapters on topics ranging from ancient figures such as Thucydides, Herodotus, and Euripides to contemporary writers such as James Baldwin, Don DeLillo, Joan Didion, and Claudia Rankine in journals including Political Theory, Journal of Politics, Political Research Quarterly, Theory & Event, Law, Culture, and Humanities, and Raritan. His first book, What Would Socrates Do?, was published by Cambridge University Press in 2014 and was featured in an interview by Andy Fitch in the Los Angeles Review of Books. His second book, Herodotus in the Anthropocene, was published by University of Chicago Press in 2020. His teaching ranges from classic texts like Plato’s Republic to current figures such as Angela Davis. At Deep Springs, he especially loved teaching Public Speaking, one of only two curricular requirements at the college. At Bryn Mawr, he has enjoyed interdisciplinary collaborative courses (called 360 Clusters) as well as first year writing courses, named for Bryn Mawr’s Nobel Prize recipient, Emily Balch. Joel taught Living a Democratic Life at the 2020 Summer Seminar, How to Do Nothing (co-taught with Lizzie Krontiris) at the 2022 Summer Seminar, and How to Have a Life (co-taught with Lizzie Krontiris) at the 2023 Summer Seminar.

Justin Kim received his BA from Yale and his MFA from the American University in Washington, D.C. He currently teaches at Smith College and has previously taught at the University of Massachusetts, Dartmouth, Yale, and Deep Springs College, where he served as dean for three years. He has also taught at both the University of Michigan and Cornell branches of the Telluride Summer Association Program. His seminar teaching focuses on the intersection of art and culture, and the reciprocal relationship between art and historical movements. Previous courses include Modernism Through Modern Art, Archetype and Contemporary Art, and Negative Capability in Art and Culture: Romanticism to the Present. A visual artist, his studio practice is based at The Elizabeth Foundation in New York City. He has exhibited in New York and across the Northeast and his work is included in public and private collections.

Ḵaagwáaskʼ is an Inupiaq and Tlingit poet, storyteller, actor, and playwright living in Juneau, Alaska with his wife Lily Hope and five children. Notable recent projects include his second poetry collection, Rock Piles Along the Eddy; serving as a lead writer for Kisima Ingitchuna: Never Alone, produced by the Cook Inlet Tribal Council and E-Line Media; and co-directing, with Scott Burton, Lineage, Tlingit Art Across Generations, a documentary on Tlingit art produced by KTOO Public Media.

Katherine was born in Hangzhou, China. She immigrated to Chicago as a child, where she grew up on the south side. After graduating from the University of Notre Dame with degrees in English and philosophy, she fell in love with California and has lived there ever since. She holds a Masters degree in English from UC Irvine and is finishing her PhD at the University of California, Berkeley. She teaches college writing courses at UC Berkeley and through the Prison University Project at San Quentin. Currently, Katherine is interested in exploring how the essay form can combine critical and personal reflections, and is learning how to use everyday experience as a vehicle for philosophical reflection.

Lizzie Krontiris received her PhD in Political Theory at Yale University in 2019. She wrote her dissertation on Hannah Arendt’s concept of “the common world” and the problem of building shared reality in politics. She is currently a faculty member in the Writing Program at Wellesley College and teaches first-year writing courses on topics including the problem of lying in politics, the purpose and social function of higher education, and the way that work gets valued and shaped by modern capitalism. She has also taught courses for Yale College, the Warrior-Scholar Project, Chicago’s Odyssey Project, and the GCE Lab School in Chicago.

Nicholas received his PhD in Philosophy from the University of California, Berkeley, in 2019, writing a dissertation on Aristotle’s discussion of love and friendship; since then, he’s been an instructor in philosophy at Berkeley and a visiting professor at Deep Springs College. He’s taught courses on a wide range of philosophical topics, with a particular emphasis on moral and political philosophy. Prior to embarking on his PhD, Nicholas worked in outdoor education, leading high school students on month-long backcountry trips in the Pacific Northwest.

Sanjena is a novelist. She holds an MFA from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop. Prior to Iowa she worked as a reporter in San Francisco and Mumbai. She has taught creative writing at the University of Iowa, the Iowa Young Writers’ Studio, and Victoria University of Wellington (New Zealand). Her novel Gold Diggers was published in 2021.

Sharon earned degrees in English from Stanford (BA) and University of Chicago (PhD) before teaching at Deep Springs College, Willamette University, University of Oregon, and the Michigan TASP. Her publications include articles about Shakespeare, English Poetry, American Literature, and Writing. Since 2015 she has given presentations about her book, Freedom and Dialogue in a Polarized World, in Oregon, California, Sweden, and Italy. Beyond academia, she writes essays for newspapers and magazines in Oregon, and she has an active career as a violinist.  

Sol was a citizen of the Cherokee Nation living in the Raven Bioregion of the Pacific Northwest and the traditional homeland of the Tlingit (Lingít Aaní). In 2009, he earned his Ph.D. from Purdue University’s Philosophy & Literature program, where he wrote his dissertation on practices of restorative and critical pedagogy. As an Associate Professor of English and Philosophy at the University of Alaska Southeast, he taught courses in cultural studies, literary and critical theory, philosophy, and Critical Indigenous Studies in an interdisciplinary context. He published widely and served on the Editorial Advisory Boards for Public Philosophy Journal and the Criminal Justice and Philosophy book series. In Fall 2012, Dr. Neely started a prison education program in Juneau called The Flying University, which brings university students inside the local prison for mutual and collaborative study. During Summer 2019, while on sabbatical, Dr. Neely traveled the Trail of Tears with his daughter and father as three generations of Cherokee citizens. In 2020, Neeley became Associate Professor of English at Heritage University in Toppenish, Washington. A beloved educator everywhere he worked and a crucial member of the Outer Coast community in its formative years, Sol Neely unexpectedly passed away in 2022. 

X̱ʼunei carries the Tlingit names X̱’unei and Du Aaní Kawdinook, and the Haida name Ḵ’eijáakw. He lives in Juneau with his wife and bilingual children, and is from the Tlingit, Haida, and Yupʼik native nations. He speaks & studies the Tlingit language, and advocates for indigenous language revitalization. He is an AssociateProfessor of Alaska Native Languages at the University of Alaska Southeast, has a Ph.D. in Hawaiian and Indigenous Language Revitalization from Ka Haka ʻUla o Keʻelikōlani College of Hawaiian Language at the University of Hawaiʻi at Hilo, and also is a Northwest Coast Artist, musician, and filmmaker.