Welcoming Schools National Advisory Council
Members of the Welcoming Schools National Advisory Council serve as key advisors in the development and implementation of the Welcoming Schools initiative and provide leadership in educating the broader educational community about the importance of supporting LGBT students and families.
________________________________________
Vivian Carlo
Associate Professor, Multicultural Education
Lesley University, School of Education
Vivian’s professional practice and research are centered in the fields of multicultural education, bilingual education, cultural diversity and social justice. As an associate professor in the School of Education at Lesley University, Vivian’s primary focus is multicultural introspective teacher preparation and the development of a culturally responsive educational professional practice.
As a multicultural and diversity consultant, Vivian has over 30 years experience working with both private and public organizations to deliver culturally competent services to children of all races, cultures and ages. Since 2001, she has been the primary multicultural adviser and educational consultant on various children’s projects and programs at WGBH-TV in Boston, including Zoom, Arthur, two children’s websites and the new and highly acclaimed, Postcards from Buster..
In addition to the Welcoming Schools National Advisory Council, Vivian also serves on the advisory board of Peacework Magazine, published by the American Friends Service Committee, and recently completed two elected terms on the Board of Directors of the National Association for Multicultural Education (NAME). She is also a founding member and past president of the Massachusetts Chapter of NAME. She holds a doctorate in Multicultural Education and Bilingual/Bicultural Education from Boston University and a master’s degree in Counseling and Psychology from Lesley University.
Fred Fuentes
Executive Director, Latino Policy Institute
Roger Williams University
Aimee Gelnaw
Author, Trainer, Educator
Co-author, Making Room in the Circle
Kean University
Aimee Gelnaw has been working in the area of family diversity and especially focused on LGBT families for almost 20 years. As an early childhood educator, she has worked with children, parents, faculty and school administrators. Most recently, Aimee has served as faculty at Wheelock College in Boston and the University of North Carolina at Greensboro teaching a college course for early childhood education students entitled “Making Room in the Circle: Including LGBT Families in Early Childhood Settings.” Aimee developed and authored the companion text for this course with two other colleagues. Aimee co-authored Opening Doors: Lesbian and Gay Parents and Schools, conceived and coordinated writing of Opening More Doors: Creating Policy Change to Include Our Families and published an article in Exchange titled “Belonging: Including Children of Gay and Lesbian Parents – and ALL Children in Your Program.” A new chapter dedicated to diverse families with a focus on LGBT families and of which Aimee is a contributing author will appear in the upcoming revision of The Anti-Bias Curriculum: Tools to Empower Young Children, by Louise Derman-Sparks and published by the National Association for the Education of Young Children. Aimee served as executive director of the Family Pride Coalition from 2001-2005 and has been an active contributor to the Welcoming Schools project of the Human Rights Campaign Foundation. Aimee lives in Montclair, N.J. and is the mother of two children: Zack,23 and Dewey, 12.
Emily J. Harris
Executive Director, The Burnham Plan Centennial
Program Director, Chicago Metropolis 2020
Emily Harris is executive director of the Burnham Plan Centennial and the program director for early learning for Chicago Metropolis 2020.
From 2001 to 2007, Emily maintained a private consulting practice. She provided strategic planning, research, writing, organizational development and program and policy development services to non profit organizations and public agencies in a wide range of fields. As a consultant to Leadership Greater Chicago, Emily directed the Rockwell Leadership Network (Legacy Project), originated and wrote the LGC Connections newsletter and assisted with development of the website.
From 1990 to 2000, Emily was executive director of the Canal Corridor Association, founded by Openlands Project. She worked with leaders in five counties and more than forty municipalities to develop and implement heritage tourism, open space and historic preservation strategies along the I&M Canal from Chicago to LaSalle Peru. In collaboration with photographer Edward Ranney, she wrote the book and produced the exhibit Prairie Passage: The Illinois and Michigan Canal Corridor, published and exhibited in 1998. The book and exhibit were a central part of the I&M Canal Sesquicentennial Celebration.
Past positions include vice president, ActiveLife Retirement Communities; program director, Landmarks Preservation Council of Illinois and architectural historian, Historic American Buildings Survey.
Emily received her M.A. in urban studies from the University of Chicago in 1981 and her B.A. with highest honors in history from Oberlin College in 1978. She has participated in facilitation training with the Institute of Cultural Affairs. She was a fellow of Leadership Greater Chicago and serves on a number of volunteer boards.
Stephen Henry
President
Metropolitan Nashville Education Association
Stephen Henry is a 6th grade teacher at I.T. Creswell Arts Middle Magnet School and a professional actor in Nashville, TN. A veteran teacher of 23 years, he is the Vice President of the Metropolitan Nashville Education Association . He is also Chief Negotiator and serves on MNEA's Executive Committee and Board of Directors. He is a member of the Tennessee Education Association's Board of Directors, the TEA Executive Committee, and chairs its Human Relations Committee. Stephen has received TEA's E. Harper Johnson Human Relations Award and MNEA's Ted Martin Human Relations Award. Additionally, he serves on National Education Association's Board of Directors and NEA's Sexual Orientation/Gender Identification (SOGI) Committee. He also serves as Co-Chair of NEA's Gay Lesbian Bisexual Transgender Caucus. As a national trainer for the NEA's Human and Civil Rights Division, he has presented workshops throughout the U.S. on Safe Schools and GLBT Issues in Education.
Stephen was a founding member and serves as Vice-President of the Tennessee Equality Project, and Secretary of the TEP Foundation. He has received the Outstanding Young Tennessean Award from the Tennessee Junior Chamber of Commerce and the Brotherhood/Sisterhood Elementary Educator Award from the National Council for Community and Justice for Tennessee.
Scott Hirschfield
Director of Curriculum
Anti Defamation League
Scott Hirschfeld is the director of training and curriculum for the Anti-Defamation League, a leading provider of anti-bias and diversity education training programs and resources. Before joining the ADL, Scott was director of education for the Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network (GLSEN). Prior to his work in the non-profit sector, Scott was a classroom teacher and staff developer in the New York City public school system, during which time he earned a M.S. in elementary education and a M.Ed. in educational leadership from Bank Street College of Education.
Emmy Howe
Founding Member
Welcoming Schools Committee (2004)
Emmy Howe is one of the original authors of the Welcoming Schools Guide and a trainer for the pilot sites. Emmy taught elementary school for 15 years and was the family liaison from Cambridge Massachusetts Public School Department to the LGBT community for eight years. Last year she taught a course at Wheelock College about making elementary, early childhood and health care settings welcoming to LGBT families and people. She is currently director of CampOUT, a farm camp for kids from LGBTQ families and working on the development of Open View Farm Educational Center on a fiber farm in Conway, Mass. She has four daughters ages 22, 20, 12 and 12.
William A. Howe, Ph.D.
Education Consultant for Multicultural Education, Title IX/Gender Equity & Civil Rights
Connecticut State Department of Education
Dr. Howe is the founder of the New England Conference on Multicultural Education (NECME). He is the Past-President of the National Association for Multicultural Education (NAME), based in Washington, DC. In 2008 he was appointed by Governor M. Jodi Rell to service on the newly created Asian Pacific American Commission. He was an Honoree at Connecticut Immigrant and Refugee Coalition (CIRC) for the 11th annual "Immigrant Day" at the State Capitol Tuesday, April 15, 2008, a day to honor immigrants from throughout Connecticut who have made valuable contributions to their communities and/or professions.
He is on the boards of several organizations, including the STEM National Advisory Board, Advisory Board for Native Village, Asian Pacific American Coalition of CT (APAC), University of Connecticut Asian American Studies Institute, Advisory Board of Programs in International Educational Resources of the Yale Center for International and Area Studies, Education Advisory Committee for the Mashantucket Pequot Museum and Research Center, Hartford Public Library Center for the Book, and the editorial board of Multicultural Perspectives, the official journal of the National Association for Multicultural Education (NAME).
He has been an educator for almost 30 years in the US and Canada and has made six trips to China and one to South Africa to study multicultural education. In 2007 he made his first trip to Israel to study the Holocaust. He has given over 300 workshops, lectures and keynotes on diversity, multicultural education and organizational development. He is a regular presenter at state and national conferences, has appeared on both radio and television on diversity issues. Over the past fourteen years he has trained over 14,000 educators in multicultural education.
He is co-authoring a textbook on multicultural education, a book of inspirational stories about teachers, and was a co-author of the Handbook for Achieving Gender Equity through Education, 2nd Edition.
Sikivu Hutchinson, Ph.D.
Senior Intergroup Specialist
Los Angeles County Human Relations Commission
Before joining the L.A. County Human Relations Commission, Dr. Sikivu Hutchinson was most recently chief of staff for Los Angeles Unified School Board member Genethia Hayes. She researched and provided analyses on issues before the school board, supervised the staff, served as community liaison and facilitated parent and community meetings.
Dr. Hutchinson has a doctorate in performance studies from New York University and a Bachelors of Art in anthropology from the University of California at Los Angeles. She has lectured on critical studies at California Institute of the Arts, where she developed and taught courses on ethnic studies and women's studies and has lectured on liberal studies at California State University Los Angeles. She also has developed and taught courses on racial identity and post modernism at Cal Arts, and has published several scholarly works on race and gender, including "Moving to the Center: Culturally Relevant Education and Student Agency in LAUSD," in California English, April 2002.
In her free time, Dr. Hutchinson is an avid long distance runner who loves New York, electric guitar and fiction. Her favorite authors include Toni Morrison, Don DeLillo, Joyce Carol Oates and Sherman Alexie.
Edgardo Menvielle
Associate Professor of Psychiatry
George Washington University
Edgardo Menvielle, MD, MSHS has been practicing child and Adolescent Psychiatry at Children’s National Medical Center (CNMC), Washington, DC since 1986. He is currently an Associate professor of Psychiatry at the George Washington University (GWU). He obtained a medical degree from the university of La Plata, Argentina and a Master Degree in Health Services from UCLA’s School of Public Health. He trained in general and child psychiatry at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston, Texas and CNMC. Subsequently, he joined the CNMC staff and the GWU Faculty. Since 1998, he has focused on childhood and adolescent gender and sexuality issues. He co-founded an outreach program, and later a gender and sexuality development clinic through which he provides clinical services and training for child psychiatry and psychology trainees and students. He has authored several articles on childhood gender variance and he is conducting research on the experience of families with a child with gender variance. He is active in several professional organizations and member of several committees and advisory boards.
Mary Paradise
Government Relations Specialist
National Education Asociation
Mary Paradise is currently working as a Government Relations Specialist at the National Education Association (NEA) in Washington DC. She is a former School Nurse from Seattle, Washington and most recently Alexandria, Virginia. Mary has served as Co-Chair of the NEA-GLBT Caucus; she has been a national trainer for School Safety Issues as they relate to GLBT staff and students. She has a long list of leadership roles in both the Education Associations and in her community. She has been President of the Seattle School Nurse Association, Board of Directors Member and Treasurer of the Seattle Education Association, the Washington Education Association and a leader with the Alexandria Education Association. She serves as a representative of the GLBT Community on the NEA Dropout Prevention Committee. She is a passionate in her defense of GSA formations in school districts as well as insisting on inclusive language for GLBT staff in contact negotiations. In her spare time she loves to read, roller blade and take afternoon naps with her kitties; Will and Grace.
Kathy Pillsbury
Founding Member
Welcoming Schools Committee (2004)
Kathy Pillsbury earned her master’s in public and private management from Yale University. She has served as a financial consultant and project manager for non-profit organizations including many years with Corporate Accountability International. Pillsbury is one of the original authors, primary editor and project manager for the Welcoming Schools project of the Human Rights Campaign Foundation. She and her partner of 28 years, Cindy Marshall, have two children, Jeremy, 15 and Mikayla, 9.
Eric Pliner
Director, Research & Resource Center
New York City Department of Education
Eric Pliner is the director of the School & Youth Development Research & Resource Center with the New York City Department of Education, where he supervises research, information analysis and resource design related to youth development and school climate and safety. He is co-author of the National Health Education Standards and serves as an adjunct instructor at the Hunter College School of Education. Eric also maintains an active career as an author and playwright and is the creator of the Artist-Activist Institute, a social justice-related performance mentorship program for adolescents, coordinated by the NYC LGBT Community Center and Dance Theater Workshop.
Graciela Slesaransky-Poe
Director, Arcadia Annual Inclusion Institute
Assistant Professor, Special Education
Arcadia University
Graciela Slesaransky-Poe is assistant professor and the coordinator of the Special Education Program at Arcadia University, Pennsylvania. She is the co-founder and director of Arcadia’s Annual Inclusion Institute. Dr. Slesaransky-Poe has an extensive history of working with and advocating for the inclusion of people who have been historically marginalized, such as people with disabilities, people of diverse culturally and linguistic backgrounds and people with diverse gender identities and sexual orientations. Dr. Slesaransky-Poe is the mother of two children, one a seven year old boy with gender variance characteristics. She has spent the past few years learning about, advocating for and educating teachers, counselors and school administrators about how to support young kids with non-conforming gender behaviors in their schools.
