Crystal Chen received her doctorate in Education from Teachers College, Columbia University in May 2017, where her research examined the intersections of literacy, teacher education, and urban and multicultural education. Her dissertation is entitled Critical Literacy as Common Ground: The Possibilities of African Immigrant Girls in New York City Public Schools and Community-Based Organizations. Crystal began her teaching career as a high school English teacher in New Jersey. In August 2017, she will be an assistant professor of English Education at North Carolina State University in Raleigh, NC.

Sierra Clouse is a wife, mother, Anti-Human Trafficking Activist, and IT Project Manager. She is currently pursuing her Masters of Science in Information and Knowledge Strategy at Columbia University. She’s passionate about bringing together the power of people and technology to shift the way we pursue success, community transformation, and social justice in the 21st century.

Gemma Mangione is a Lecturer in the Arts Administration program at Columbia University and a Consulting Analyst with Randi Korn & Associates. She hold undergraduate degrees in journalism and art history and a M.A. and Ph.D. in sociology from Northwestern University.Her work connects practices illuminated through organizational ethnography with mechanisms of broader institutional and policy change. She principally interested in the cultural, moral, and political dynamics of legitimacy. To date, Gemma has explored this general theme by examining knowledge politics across humanities and health fields. Her current research compares programs for visitors with disabilities across art museums and botanical gardens and provides an ethnographic perspective on museums’ “health turn” as it gains traction in cultural policy. She has a sustained commitment to exploring how social scientific theory and evaluation practice can together help people make informed choices about the operations of cultural institutions and the values they contain.

The Empire State Virtual NY Branch in collaboration with AAUW NYS and AAUW National, hosted a very successful Dinner Recognition for our AAUW NYC Fellows at the Harvard Club in NYC on Thurs. March 16 from 6:30 pm to 9:30 pm.  This event was funded by the NYC Metro Funds. Thirty five friends joined us including AAUW NYC Fellows and AAUW leaders from AAUW NYS Board & District V Branches.

For over 15 years, Ronna Popkin has taught about and conducted research on women’s health and adolescent sexual and reproductive health in the United States. In her dissertation, Ronna examines the consequences of recent advancements in genetic testing technologies and how expanded screenings are shaping communication, beliefs, and decisions about genetic risk for breast and ovarian cancer. Her goal is to conduct policy relevant research on gender, sexuality, and health as a university professor.

Erin K. Maher is a recipient of the 2015-2016 AAUW American Fellowship. Erin is a Musicologist who specializes in twentieth-century concert-music culture in the United States and France, focusing on issues of exile and migration, national and religious identities, gender, and disability in the lives of musicians. She received her Ph.D. in 2016 from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where she completed her dissertation, “Darius Milhaud in the United States, 1940–71: Transatlantic Constructions of Musical Identity,” as a 2015-2016 AAUW American Fellow. Erin has presented her research at local and national conferences–as well as at last year’s annual meeting for AAUW North Carolina–and her guide to scholarship on Milhaud is forthcoming in Oxford Bibliographies Online. She currently teaches at Delaware Valley University in Doylestown, Pennsylvania.

Charlotte Walker-Said is an American Fellow. Charlotte is Assistant Professor of History in the Department of Africana Studies at the City University of New York-John Jay College. She completed her PhD at Yale University and has taught at Harvard University, the University of Chicago, and Webster University. Her research focuses on Christianity and law in Africa and their effects on women’s rights.  She works on gender and persecution in West Africa has led her to work with female asylum seekers and refugee populations seeking entrance to the United States and the United Kingdom.  Her book on the history of Christianity and Law will be published in 2018.