Identity-center practitioners play a critical role in fostering belonging, advocacy, and support for students with marginalized identities. Yet these professionals often navigate complex and challenging environments, particularly amid increased scrutiny of diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts across higher education.

Drawing from Shaking the Table: Survival and Healing Amongst Identity Center Practitioners, this webinar will uplift the voices of current and former identity-center practitioners as they share personal stories of leadership, resilience, survival, and healing. Panelists will reflect on their experiences leading and working within identity-based centers while offering practical insights, lessons learned, and strategies for sustaining themselves and their work.

Rather than a series of formal presentations, the program will feature a facilitated conversation among the book’s co-editors and contributing authors. Together, they will examine the visible and invisible labor of identity-center work, the tension involved in creating belonging within institutions that do not always care for practitioners, and the people, practices, communities, and boundaries that make healing possible.

Join us for a conversation about the challenges and possibilities of identity-center work—and the roles that community, mentorship, and healing-centered practices can play in sustaining professionals committed to creating more inclusive campus communities.


Moderators & Co-Editors

Jonathan A. McElderry, PhD — Dean of Student Inclusive Excellence, Assistant Professor of Education, and Acting Director of the Master of Higher Education Program at Elon University

Stephanie Hernandez Rivera, PhD — Assistant Professor of Education and Dr. Jo Watts Williams School of Education Emerging Professor at Elon University


Contributing Authors & Panelists

Nikita Haynie, MEd — Director of Family Engagement for Student Affairs at the University of Kansas

Julian Ignacio — Associate Director for Student Development and Evaluation at the Asian American Resource and Cultural Center at the University of Illinois Chicago

A. Pierre Sherrill II, EdD — EduLib Consulting