Dr. Audrey Kerr is a professor of English at Southern Connecticut State University specializing in 20th Century African American non-fiction and film. At Southern, she is also the Director of the Office of the University Ombudsperson.  Audrey is a former Coolidge Fellow at Columbia University, Gabriel Scholar at Yale University, and member of the Connecticut Academy of Arts and Sciences.  She has served on the Board of Directors of Amistad America, Incorporated. Audrey is the author of two books: The Paper Bag Principle: Class, Complexion and Conspiracy and the Case of Black Washington, DC (2006) and Normal:  A Chaplain, a Community with AIDS and the Eternal Life of Stories (2019).  

Frank Mitchell is a curator, educator, and public humanities practitioner. His research interests begin with the intersection of race, identity, and American visual culture. Mitchell has taught at the University of Connecticut, Trinity College, Franklin and Marshall College, and the University of the Arts. In partnership with organizations that include the Fairfield Museum, the New Haven Museum, the Amistad Center, and the Smithsonian Institution Traveling Exhibition Service, his curatorial projects include the exhibitions, African-American Artists: 1880-1987, Afrocosmologies: American Reflections, Beyond the New Township: Wooster Square, A Birds-Eye View: Citizen Science & Social Media, and Soulfood: African American Cooking and Creativity. Mitchell’s publications include the catalog Afrocosmologies: American Reflections, the anthology African American Connecticut Explored, and the culinary study African American Food Culture. He shares writing credits on the Connecticut Public Television documentaries African Americans in Connecticut parts I, II and the independent documentary Unsung Heroes: The Music of Jazz in New Haven. Mitchell was a founding member of the New England Foundation for the Arts advisory council and is chair of the CT Humanities Application Review Committee. 

Dr. Paul Turner is the Rachel Carson Professor of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at Yale University, and Microbiology faculty member at Yale School of Medicine. He is an African-American scientist, who grew up mostly nearby the city of Syracuse, NY. Dr. Turner obtained a BA in Biology (1988) from University of Rochester, a PhD in Microbial Evolution (1995) from Michigan State University, and did postdocs at National Institutes of Health, University of Valencia in Spain, and University of Maryland-College Park, before joining Yale in 2001. Dr. Turner studies evolutionary genetics of viruses, particularly phages that infect bacterial pathogens and RNA viruses transmitted by arthropods, and researches the use of phages to treat antibiotic-resistant bacterial diseases. He is very active in outreach and service concerning diversity in science, such as American Society for Microbiology’s Committee on Minority Education, and helping K-12 teachers improve STEMM education in underserved public schools. Dr. Turner’s honors include Fellowship in the National Academy of Sciences, American Academy of Arts & Sciences, and American Academy of Microbiology. 

Staff

Penny Cook is a former research administrator. having served multiple institutions in this capacity including Yale, Bellevue Hospital, NYU Medical Center, The Hospital for Special Surgery and the Aaron Diamon AIDs Research Center. Penny managed every aspect of the research enterprise from day to day operations to grant writing, financial management, ethics and safety, and strategic planning. At Rockefeller University she served as Corporate Secretary and Vice President for Faculty Affairs. Penny has served on multiple for profit and non-profit boards. She continues to write grants for Green Village Initiative, the Kehler Liddell Gallery, WPKN, Columbia University, and Yale. Penny is a resident of Bridgeport, CT.

Linda Lindroth received her Master of Fine Arts degree in Art from Rutgers University Mason Gross School of the Arts in 1979. Her work is in the collections of the Museum of Modern Art and the Metropolitan Museum of Art in NYC, the Bibliothèque National in Paris, the WestLicht Museum of Photography in Vienna, the High Museum in Atlanta, the Newark Art Museum, the New Jersey State Museum and the Princeton University Art Gallery. She has won grants from the Connecticut Commission on the Arts, the New Jersey State Council of the Arts, the National Endowment for the Arts, The Foundation for Contemporary Arts, and the New England Foundation for the Arts. She has been a book editor, copywriter, curator, gallerist, and author. She has taught courses in Visual Culture at Quinnipiac University for 23 years. She lives in New Haven, CT.

Maryann Ott is Managing Director of New Alliance Foundation, which funds $1M in grants annually to non-profit organizations in 41 Connecticut communities. Prior to joining the Foundation, Maryann was Senior Program Manager at the Connecticut Commission on Culture & Tourism (formerly the Connecticut Commission on the Arts), and Regional Program Director at the Arts Council of Greater New Haven. As an amateur astronomer, she enjoys traveling to hard-to-reach corners of the world to observe, in person, solar eclipses.  She currently serves as Chair of the Institute Library Board of Directors, is co-founder of the Connecticut Map Society, a Civil War buff, a bibliophile, an occasional artist and Hamden resident. 

Download the Advisory Board and Staff