Faculty Facilitators
Anna D’Souza is an Associate Professor at the Marxe School of Public and International Affairs at Baruch College. She is a development economist who studies issues related to food security and nutrition, price shocks, conflict and instability, governance, and international trade. She teaches courses on economic analysis of public policy and international development. She is the Provost Innovation Fellow for Inclusive Teaching (2021-2023) and is the organizer of DEI Fridays (2021-2023), a practice of community building, reflection, and learning created to improve campus climate around issues of equity, inclusion, and justice and to equip participants with knowledge and tools to engage in social transformation. Before joining Baruch, she worked as a research economist at the Economic Research Service of the U.S. Department of Agriculture. She also worked as an adjunct professor at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies, a consultant for the World Bank, and a Peace Corps volunteer in Senegal. Dr. D’Souza received a BS in Finance and Economics from the Stern School of Business at NYU and an MS and PhD in Economics from UCLA.
Tracy Henry, Ph.D., joined Baruch College as a Lecturer (Doctoral Schedule) in the Bert W. Wasserman Department of Economics and Finance at the beginning of the Fall 2016 semester. She holds a Ph.D. in Economics from Stony Brook University and teaches economics courses at the undergraduate and graduate (masters) level. She has served on the Zicklin Undergraduate Curriculum Committee since Fall 2018 (at-large member since Fall 2021) and is also serving as a senator (Category 2) on the college’s faculty senate.
David Hoffman (Ph.D. University of Iowa, 2000) works at the intersection of rhetoric, history, and politics. He has published work on classical rhetorical theory, as well as rhetorical criticism of political figures from Thomas Paine to Al Gore. Recent work has focused on religious rhetoric and the American freethought movement. His work has appeared in such journals as Rhetorica, Rhetoric and Public Affairs, and Rhetoric Society Quarterly. Professor Hoffman has taught a variety of courses since coming to Baruch in 2003, including communication courses in the Marxe School’s Master of Public Administration program and undergraduate honors seminars on utopian literature and experimentation. He was the founding chair of the Marxe School’s Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion committee. He recently worked with the Smithsonian National Museum of American History and the Kettering Foundation to produce instructional materials to accompany the Smithsonian’s permanent Becoming Us exhibit, an exhibit that seeks to educate the public about US “immigration and migration history in a more accurate and inclusive way.”
Laura Kolb has been teaching at Baruch since 2014, offering courses in Shakespeare, Renaissance literature, and Great Works. She is the author of Fictions of Credit in the Age of Shakespeare (2021).
David Milch joined the Baruch faculty in the fall of 2018 as Distinguished Lecturer and Director of the MA in Arts Administration. Prior to this, David was the Director of NYIT’s graduate program in Leadership in the Arts and Entertainment Industries (LAEI) in association with Nederlander Worldwide Entertainment LLC in Manhattan. David has an extensive background in performing arts management as well as higher education administration and programming. He sits on the Board of The Assembly Theater and holds a BA in Theater from Wesleyan University and an MFA in Theater Directing from UCLA.
Cynthia Thompson is a professor in the management department in the Zicklin School of Business, where she teaches courses on work-life integration, managing people & organizations, and leadership for organization change & sustainability. Her passions include inclusive pedagogy and environmental sustainability.
Fellow Leaders
Tanzeem Ajmiri is a doctoral student in the Critical/Social Psychology Department at CUNY The Graduate Center. She has been teaching for six years at both Hunter College and LaGuardia Community College. In addition, she has been a Community Organizer for over ten years which has given her the opportunity to develop her facilitation skills which she uses in the classroom. Teaching is her passion and she is excited to be a Communication Fellow.
Fabián Escalona is a doctoral candidate in Theatre and Performance at the CUNY Graduate Center. His dissertation surveys the circulation of theatre and performance in the Latin American Southern Cone during the late colonial/early republican transitional era. He has taught courses in Theatre History, Art History, Human Rights and Oral Interpretation in New York and Santiago, Chile. He also has two years of experience as a Writing Across Curriculum fellow. As a former theatre critic, he collaborated with theatre journals and magazines in the US, Chile, and France. With a background in Art History and Theory, as well as Latin American Studies, his research interests focus on Latin American Theatre and Performance, Human Rights, and Postcolonial Studies.
Benjamin Gillespie is a Lecturer in the Department of Communication Studies at Baruch College. He has taught Theatre, Drama, and Performance Studies at NYU Tisch School of the Arts, The New School, and the City University of New York. His scholarly research in theatre explores the intersection of LGBTQ+ identity, gender, aging, and intergenerational community in the arts. He also researches and teaches Communication and Writing-Intensive Pedagogy to enhance diversity, equity, inclusion, and antiracism in higher education.
Debra Hilborn-Davis recently earned her Ph.D. in Theatre and Performance at the CUNY Graduate Center. Her dissertation explores how material objects shaped the devotional practices of people in medieval Europe. She teaches classes in critical thinking and literature at NYU’s School of Professional Studies, and has also taught courses in writing and communication at Baruch College and LaGuardia Community College. As a teacher, she is especially interested in inclusive writing pedagogy and helping students to create a writing practice that allows them to achieve their academic and professional goals.
Portia Seddon is a doctoral student in the Ethnomusicology Program at the CUNY Graduate Center. She earned her BA and MA degrees in Anthropology from Hunter College, CUNY. Portia has taught at Hunter College, CUNY in the Women & Gender Studies Department since 2012, and in the Music Department since 2017. Her research concerns the intersection of music, gentrification, and citizenship discourse, and her dissertation examines the ska-punk scene’s connections to the Mexican immigrant community in New York City.
Aisha Wilson-Carter is the Associate Director of Equity and Inclusion at Hofstra University. She holds a Ed.D in Administrative Leadership from St. John’s University. Her research centers on anti-oppressive education, academic support, equity, access, social capital, anti-bias curriculum, and antiracist pedagogy. She has a BA in Mass Communications from Clark Atlanta University and an MFA from City College of New York. Aisha teaches Writing Studies and the Rhetoric of Hip Hop at Hofstra University, and serves on the advisory board for the Center for “Race,” Culture & Social Justice and as co-chair of the Black Faculty Council.