Speakers & Panelists

Barbara Crain Major is a community organizer and trainer with over forty years of experience in local, national, and international community development efforts. This work includes assisting institutions in developing strategies to deinstitutionalize racism. She is a core anti-racism trainer for The People's Institute for Survival and Beyond. Major connects her local organizing to training in anti-racism with people who live in or work with struggling communities.

Kim Hunter Reed, Ph.D., is Louisiana’s Commissioner of Higher Education. She is currently the only female in the country to have served as the higher education leader in multiple states. She was recognized nationally as the 2020 Exceptional Leader by the State Higher Education Executive Officers Association (SHEEO). Working with the Louisiana Board of Regents, Reed leads the state’s talent development efforts, focused on increasing educational attainment, erasing equity gaps, and increasing prosperity. To reach the state’s goal of doubling the annual number of credentials awarded by 2030, she focuses on transformational policies and deep collaborative engagement in line with Regents’ talent imperative.

Dr. Berenecea Johnson Eanes was recently appointed to serve as president of Cal State LA, becoming the university's first female president. She previously served as president of York College, City University of New York. Eanes has been recognized multiple times for her commitment to equitable student success. She is a recipient of NASPA's Scott Goodnight Award for Outstanding Performance as a Dean/Vice President and California State University's Wang Family Excellence Award for achieving transformative results in her role as vice president for student affairs at Cal State Fullerton. She has served as a faculty member or administrator at various institutions, including Columbia University, Morehouse College, Georgia State University, and Clark Atlanta University.

Judy Reese Morse is President & CEO of Urban League of Louisiana. She is the former Deputy Mayor for the City of New Orleans. Morse brings to the Urban League of Louisiana vast executive-level experience in the government, not-for-profit and media sectors. She has served at all three levels of government, working early in her career in Washington, DC on Capitol Hill for Congresswoman Lindy Boggs. She would later work in the Louisiana Lieutenant Governor’s Office as Chief of Staff for Mitch Landrieu and then as a Deputy Mayor in the Landrieu Administration.

Dr. Willie E. Smith has been working in the Louisiana Community & Technical College System and the former Louisiana Technical College in various executive leadership roles for the past 21 years. He currently serves as chancellor for Baton Rouge Community College. Prior to coming to BRCC Dr. Smith served as the vice president for training and business partnerships for LCTCS, CEO for South Central Louisiana Technical College (SCLTC), and vice president of academics and workforce solutions at South Louisiana Community College (SLCC).

Kay Trent-Pierce was born and raised in Lake Charles, LA and has lived in places such as New Orleans, San Antonio, and now Austin. They are a first-generation student studying at West Texas A&M studying Criminal Justice with a Minor in Business Law and Communications. They are also dually enrolled at Austin Community College to obtain their A.A.S in Paralegal Studies. In May of 2023, Kay graduated with their Associates of Arts in Psychology and landed a role as a Campaign Manager for a candidate running for Texas House Rep.

Dr. Reynold Verret is the sixth president and second lay leader of Xavier University of Louisiana. Of the 107 historically black colleges and universities (HBCUs) and 262 Catholic colleges and universities in the United States, Xavier is the only Catholic HBCU in the nation. Prior to acceding to the presidency of Xavier, Dr. Verret has served as provost at Savannah State University and at Wilkes University.

Dr. Beverly L. Wright is an environmental justice scholar, advocate, author, civic leader, professor of Sociology, and the Founder and Executive Director of the Deep South Center for Environmental Justice (DSCEJ), the first-ever environmental justice center in the United States. Under the Biden administration, Dr. Wright was appointed to the White House Environmental Justice Advisory Council, where she advises on how the federal government can address current and historic environmental injustices.

Jeremy C. Young is the Freedom to Learn program director at PEN America. In this role, he leads PEN America’s efforts to fight government censorship in educational institutions, with a particular focus on the higher education sector. He directs PEN America’s work on educational gag orders, the Champions of Higher Education initiative, and an expanding network of coalitions to mobilize support for professors and teachers. Young was a 2021 New Leaders Council Fellow and is a recipient of the Roger D. Bridges Distinguished Service Award from the Society for Historians of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era.

John DePriest is a member of the Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma, and is working to expand the use of the Choctaw language. DePriest will offer a welcome to the land of his ancestors and share more about his tribe and the other tribes that were the original inhabitants of the land that New Orleans sits on.