Date: February 18, 2022
This event was a Provost Innovation Fellows Event, co-sponsored by the Office of the Provost.
Featured Speaker(s)
Joy Allison is the Associate Director of the Office of Health & Wellness at Baruch College. Joy crafts and presents workshops for higher education personnel, non-profits, and corporate sectors on topics including but not limited to health and wellness, diversity and social justice, conflict management/resolution skills and work life integration. Joy brings her full self and requests participants do the same for an enriching workshop, training or panel discussion. Joy, a first generation student, earned a bachelor’s and two master degrees. Joy has 18+ years’ experience in higher education, currently serving as the Associate Director of the Office of Health & Wellness at Baruch College.
Jael Henry is an associate in The Raben Group’s Beyond Diversity Strategies practice, where he uses his background in research, writing, and media engagement to support clients. Before joining Raben, Jael was an associate producer at Sirius XM, where he gained production experience across multiple Sirius XM channels from Mad Dog Sports Radio to Sirius XM POTUS. He played a key role on the production teams for Let’s Get After It with Chris Cuomo and The Dan Abrams Show, among others. Jael graduated from Stony Brook University with a bachelor’s degree in Journalism and a concentration in Public Policy. He also received a Master of Public Administration from Baruch College’s Marxe School of Public and International Affairs. Jael was born in Dominica and moved to New York as a teenager, where he’s lived in Harlem ever since.
Yvette LaGonterie recently retired from her thirty-year career within the federal government, having held an extensive number of senior positions in immigration and homeland security programs. This included experience as Director of International Operations and Senior Policy Advisor for the Department of Homeland Security and Deputy Director for International Affairs in the former Immigration and Naturalization Service. Yvette has represented the United States as an immigration expert in many multilateral bodies, including the G-8, AIPAC and the Regional Conference on Immigration. Currently, Yvette chairs the advisory board of the MIRR (Migrant, Immigrant, and Refugee Rights) Alliance and serves on the boards of Reading Partners DC and The City Tavern Preservation Foundation. She is also a member of the Pan American Development Foundation’s advisory committee. In addition, Yvette is an independent historian and does freelance writing and serves as vice president of the DC-area Baruch College alumni chapter board. Yvette holds a B.A. in Mass Communications from SUNY Buffalo and a MPA from Baruch College. Read about how Yvette’s research uncovered her family’s history of being enslaved in a Georgetown Hotel.
Keisha V. Thompson, Ph.D. is an Associate Professor of Psychology at Kingsborough Community College, City University of New York. A native of Trinidad & Tobago, Dr. Keisha grew up in Brooklyn, NY. As a first-generation immigrant and college graduate, it is important to Dr. Thompson that her work addresses issues of cultural diversity. Her clinical experience includes college counseling, community mental health, the federal prison system, VA medical center, and various K-12 school settings. Her professional interests include diversity issues in higher education, themes of psychosocial development, and mental health in Black youth and women. “There All Along: The Women of Trinidad & Tobago 1970 Black Power” is her first film project. Dr. Keisha also hosts two podcasts – “Misadventures of an Inspired Woman,” which highlights personal goals and achievement in women, and “Black and Saved,” aimed at fostering community at the intersection of Blackness and Christianity. In her spare time, Dr. Keisha enjoys singing and convening spaces where women can come together to provide encouragement, share ideas, and build community.
Connie Zhao has more than 13 years of experience providing end-to-end tax function transformation. She has managed various tax reporting system implementations to multi-national companies and provided leading solutions from upstream data collection to downstream reporting. Connie is currently a Partner in EY’s Tax Technology & Transformation (TTT), a team that provides an array of consulting services to improve the operating performance of corporate tax departments, including tax system implementations, tax function assessments, tax process redesign with an emphasis on direct tax. Connie Zhao is leading the design and implementation of EY’s standard process for Tax Finance Operates around non-US tax reporting, which utilizes RPA, Alteryx, and Power BI to create a streamlined process for direct tax. Connie received both a Bachelor of Science in Accountancy and a Masters of Accounting (Tax) from Baruch College and is a Certified Public Accountant licensed in New York.
Resources Shared