A Candid Talk on Race and Activism

Debbie Almontaser is the founding and former principal of the Khalil Gibran International Academy. As a 20-plus-year veteran of the NYC public school system, she taught special education, inclusion, trained teachers in literacy, and served as a multicultural specialist and diversity advisor. She co-designed a curriculum for the Muslim Communities Project at Columbia University and for Educators for Social Responsibility/Metro. She has contributed a chapter in The Day Our World Changed: Children’s Art of 9/11 for New York University’s Child Study Center and the Museum of the City of New York as well as articles and essays in several magazines. Almontaser has worked as a consultant to groups such as Nickelodeon’s Nick Jr., Channel 13 WNET, and the Interfaith Center of NYC. Almontaser lectures frequently and serves on panels as well as facilitates teacher and public workshops on conflict resolution, Arab culture, and Islam at universities, libraries, museums, churches, and synagogues across the city and at local, national, and international conferences.

Anurag Gupta is the Founder & CEO of Be More, a millennial-led social enterprise that aims to make real the promises of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness for all humans regardless of their external appearance or presentation. Be More is to human capital as Fair Trade is to coffee, LEED is to buildings, and B Corp is to business. Be More aims to assess, train, and certify public and private corporate entities to understand and transform ingrained habits of thought that lead to errors in how institutional actors perceive, remember, reason, and make decisions regarding human talent, potential, and abilities. Gupta has a J.D. from NYU School of Law, a Master’s in Development Studies from Cambridge, and a Bachelor’s in Middle Eastern & Islamic Studies from NYU task assignment software. Born and bred between old Delhi and New York, Gupta has worked with social enterprises and nonprofits in Korea, the United Kingdom, Mexico, Burma, and across the U.S. He teaches yoga and mindfulness meditation in his spare time.

Rev. Michael-Ray Mathews is the director of clergy organizing for PICO (People Improving Communities Through Organizing) National Network, a faith-based network of more than 1,200 congregations engaged in community organizing in more than 200 cities in the United States. He is the lead organizer of PICO’s Prophetic Voices Initiative, which is organizing a prophetic faith voice leading the struggle for racial and economic inclusion in the U.S. He joined the PICO senior leadership team in January 2008. An ordained American Baptist minister, he served churches throughout California, most recently as the senior pastor of Grace Baptist Church of San José from 2000-2008. A native of California, Mathews celebrates 26 years of pastoral ministry this year. Mathews is a candidate for the Doctor of Ministry degree at the San Francisco Theological Seminary in San Anselmo, California. His dissertation project is an introductory pastoral theology for pastors engaged in faith-based community organizing.