Advisory Board

FOUNDING ADVISORY BOARD

DR. DANIEL BANKS

Daniel Banks, Ph.D., is a Visiting Scholar in the Africana Studies Program/Department of Social and Critical Analysis and is a long-time advisor in the Gallatin School for Individualized Studies, both at NYU. He also teaches in the M.A. in Applied Theatre at City University of New York and has served on the faculties of the Department of Undergraduate Drama, Tisch School of the Arts, NYU, and the MFA in Contemporary Performance at Naropa University. He is the founder and director of the Hip Hop Theatre Initiative that uses Hip Hop Theatre as a tool for youth empowerment and leadership training, a project of the arts and service organization DNAWORKS, for which he is Co-Director and Co-Founder. HHTI has worked on campuses and in communities across the U.S. and in Ghana, South Africa, Hungary, Israel, Palestine, and Mexico.

Dr. Banks is a theater director, choreographer, educator and dialogue facilitator. He has guest lectured extensively, at such institutions as: SUNY Stony Brook, University of California-Riverside, Stanford University, Brandeis University, University of Western Michigan, University of Wisconsin-Madison, University of Central Florida, and University of Florida-Gainesville; and has been a Guest Artist at Williams College, City College of New York, Marymount Manhattan College, and the National Theatre Conservatory, Denver. He has worked extensively in the U.S. and abroad, having directed at such notable venues as the National Theatre of Uganda (Kampala), the Belarussian National Drama Theatre (Minsk), The Market Theatre (Johannesburg, South Africa), the Hip Hop Theatre Festival (New York and Washington, D.C.), the Oval House (London), The Skirball Center for Performing Arts, (New York), and served as choreographer/movement director for productions at New York Shakespeare Festival/ Shakespeare in the Park, Singapore Repertory Theatre, La Monnaie/De Munt (Brussels), Landestheater (Saltzburg), Aaron Davis Hall (Harlem), and for Maurice Sendak/The Night Kitchen. He is recipient of the National Endowment for the Arts/Theatre Communications Group Career Development Program for Directors.

Dr. Banks is a project consultant for the "From Homer to Hip Hop" unit of the NEH Page and Stage project and a co-founder of the Acting Together Project, Peace Building and the Arts Program, Brandeis University. He was an Advisory Board member of the Hip-Hop Association, and currently sits on the steering committee of Theatre Without Borders, on the Editorial Board of No Passport Press, and the Downtown Urban Arts Festival. He holds a Ph.D. in Performance Studies from NYU. Publications include "Unperforming 'Race': Strategies for Re-imagining Identity" in A Boal Companion: Dialogues on Theatre and Cultural Politics (Routledge); "From Homer to Hip Hop: Orature and Griots, Ancient and Present, Classical World; and "Youth Leading Youth: Hip Hop and Hiplife Theatre in Ghana and South Africa" in Theatre, Ritual and Building Peace: An Anthology for Artists, Peace Builders, and Policy Makers, a project of the Coexistence Program, Brandeis University, and Theatre Without Borders (Fall 2011). He is editor of the forthcoming critical anthology of Hip Hop Theatre plays Say Word!: Voices from Hip Hop Theatre (University of Michigan Press, Spring 2011) and Co-Editor of the forthcoming Hip-Hop Education Guidebook, Vol. II.

ROLANDO BROWN

As Co-Founder & Chief Cultivator of Parallel MVMT Rolando Brown is making moves. He is motivated vehicle #0000051 and his superhero name is Dr. Grow. Parallel MVMT is his soil. Parallel MVMT helps progressively growing individuals, businesses, and non-profit organizations, utilize the broad range of knowledge needed to realize their full potential and transform their thoughts into actions. Their services are designed to enhance productivity, improve capacity, and build value. I got the chance to meet Rolando about a year and half ago and as of last weekend he just received his license to live on Road Trip #4 of Driving School for Life. He was already living large, but the course got him focused. His superhero name is Dr. Grow It’s because anyone who knows him knows that he is invested logistically, physically, psychology, emotionally and spiritually in the process of “Growing” into the best representation of his highest self, and he spends a lot of my time helping others do the same. Passion + Picture/Vision are his favorite 8Ps “I like to think that people appreciate me because of my work ethic; I’m young, astute, experienced and full of passion. Truthfully, this has given me great opportunities to stand on the shoulders of giants. I work for visionaries, building upon their accomplishments consistently. These visionaries trust me to see the big picture, understand the details, and then develop and allocate resources accordingly. Knowing how to take vision of growth and sustainability to the next level is what I do well. I grow, and grow things.”

ZUHIRAH KHALDUN DIARRA

 Hip Hop researcher Zuhirah Khaldun Diarra has roots in college radio where while attending Barnard College, Columbia University she was DJ and Music Director at WBAR as well as co-host on Columbia's historic, WKCR with Hip Hop luminary, Bobbito Garcia.

After graduating from Barnard, Zuhirah worked for several years in the music industry, spreading "the good word" on the genre as publicist for Hip Hop artists including, The Roots, De La Soul, Ludacris, and Jay-Z.  Zuhirah later opened her own firm working with the Bronx Museum of the Arts managing media relations for the "One Planet Under A Groove: Hip Hop and Contemporary Art" exhibit, and with Converse sneakers partnering with the entertainment industry to relaunch the iconic brand. Interested in doing further academic work on Hip Hop, Zuhirah entered the Research MA program in Cultural Analysis at the University of Amsterdam completing the Master of Arts degree in 2007.  Her thesis was titled, Beats, Rhymes, and Life After Theft: An Analysis of Hip Hop Aesthetics, in which she analyzed the genre and its community building potential in a postmodern world. 

Zuhirah presently lives with her daughter and husband in Harlem, New York and is Marketing Director for the National Urban League, a non-profit focused on economic and social equity.  She DJs when she can at the Lower East Side trattoria, Il Bagatto and her research interests are Hip Hop in the classroom, the Middle East, and Africa.

AARON "DJ SPAZE CRAFT ONE" LAZANSKY-OLIVAS

Aaron Lazansky-Olivas is an internationally recognized urban artist/designer, Hip-Hop Educator, DJ & Music Producer born, raised, and currently residing in New York City. A staple of the NYC underground art and music scenes for over a decade, SpazeCraft One has exhibited his artworks across the world featuring alongside of urban art, design, and toy luminaries such as, Cern YMI, TooFly, Shepard Fairey, Futura 2000, Doze Green, Friends with You, Kathie Olivas, Ugly doll, and many others. Spaze Craft is represented by ARTSPROJEKT for his dope exclusive art goods. Over the years, he's toured and performed extensively internationally as an experimental hip-hop and electronic music producer and DJ sharing the stage and recordings with a wide spectrum of artists ranging from: TES UNO, Xaphryn Follicle, AFRA, DJ Quest, We, Rob Swift, Vast Aire of Cannibal Ox, DJ Rascue, MetaBass-n-Breath, DJ Spooky, Gil Scott Heron, Prince Paul, Yoko Ono, MegMan, DJ Logic, Graham Haynes, Bill Laswell, Otomo Yoshida, Pauline Olivaros, JG Thirwell, and countless others. Spaze Crafte's Art and design continues to expand and evolve the ubiquitous creative forms of graphics, graffiti, and urban street style, while his educational Arts and Media Literacy Interactive presentations, lectures, and youth / professional development workshops continue to solidify his place in academia.

Spaze Craft has an unending commitment to Wellness in community as evidenced by his health/media arts project: "Hip-Hop(e) for Healing." Spaze Craft is also a proud kidney donor, giving one of his precious organs to his wonderful fiance, Marly aka Miz Life.

DR. IRMA MCCLAURIN (HONORARY MEMBER)

Like Zora Neale Hurston, Irma McClaurin is an African America worked professionally as an anthropologists and published writer. This blended background makes her well-suited to analyze Hurston’s works from an anthropological perspective and separate what in Hurston’s work should be credited to the literary and what derives from her anthropological training. Currently, McClaurin is an Assistant Professor of Anthropology at the University of Florida. She received her Ph.D in Anthropology in September, 1993. She has an MFA in English (1976), and is the author of Women of Belize: Gender and Change in Central America , Rutgers University Press (1996), and three books of poetry, Pearl’s Song, Lotus Press (1988), Song in the Night , Pearl Press (1974), and Black Chicago, Amuru Rannick Press (1971). Her poetry has appeared in over 16 magazines and anthologies and she has chapters in the following books: Ginsburg and Tsing (eds), Uncertain Terms: Negotiating Gender in American Culture (1990) and Shenk (ed) Gender and Race through Education and Political Activism: the Legacy of Sylvia Helen Forman (1995). She has written book and film reviews for the following journals: Radical History Review, Gender & Society, Americas, American Anthropologist. McClaurin is presently the General Editor for the Association of Black Anthropologists and the Editor of their journal, Transforming Anthropology. She sits on the Editorial Board of Feminist Studies, the Executive Board of the Association of Feminist Anthropologists and is a member of the Board of Directors of the Florida Humanities Council.

KEREN RAZ

Keren G. Raz is currently the Social Enterprise Fellow at New York University School of Law and a Socially Responsible Investing Associate at Apollo Management. She graduated cum laude from NYU Law, where she was a Root-Tilden-Kern Scholar. She received her Bachelor of Arts with honors from University of Arizona. She is the co-founder of NYU’s Law and Social Entrepreneurship Association, an alumnus of the NYU Catherine B. Reynolds Program in Social Entrepreneurship, and an enthusiastic fan of social entrepreneurial visions. Her article on the legal needs of social enterprises and on emerging legal forms such as the L3C and benefit corporation will be published this year in NYU’s Review for Law and Social Change.

MARCELLA RUNELL HALL

Marcella Runell Hall is the Associate Director for the Center for Multicultural Education & Programs at New York University and oversees the Center for Spiritual Life.  While a full-time administrator at NYU, Marcella is completing her doctorate in Social Justice Education at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. Her dissertation is entitled, "Education in a Hip-Hop Nation: Our Identity, Politics & Pedagogy."

Marcella co-edited 2 critically acclaimed books "Conscious Women Rock the Page: Using Hip-Hop Fiction to Incite Social Change" (2008) and the "Hip-Hop Education Guidebook: Volume 1″ (2007), wrote a best-selling book for Scholastic, "Ten Most Influential Hip-Hop Artists" (2008), published over twenty additional articles and book chapters on Islamaphobia, motherhood, education equity issues and Critical Hip-Hop Pedagogy; and freelanced for VIBE and the New York Times Learning Network. Marcella is currently adjunct faculty in both the Gallatin School of Individualized Study and the Steinhardt School of Education at NYU, and has taught several undergraduate and graduate courses at UMass Amherst, Bank Street College of Education and Upward Bound, winning two teaching awards. She has also served as Director of Education for the Hip-Hop Association. Additionally, Marcella has taught courses on Spirituality and Social Justice Education, and served as an education fellow and Assistant Director of Religion & Diversity Education at the Tanenbaum Center for Interreligious Understanding, as well as a founding board member of the Khalil Gibran International Academy in Brooklyn. 

Currently, at NYU, Marcella co-created and manages the nationally recognized Intergroup Dialogue program, and the award-winning Hip-Hop and Pedagogy Initiative. She has reinstituted the Future Administrators Cultural Training Seminar, co-created the award-winning Administrator Cultural Training Seminar, as well as other programming for graduate students of color. National awards and recognition include the Association of American Colleges and Universities 2009 K. Patricia Cross Future Leaders Award, the NASPA Region II Mid-Level Administrators Award, and two NASPA programming awards as well as a Brooklyn Borough Presidents Racial Unity Citation. Marcella holds a Bachelors Degree in Social Work from Ramapo College of New Jersey, and an MA in Higher Education Administration from New York University.

RALPH VACCA

Ralph Vacca is creative technologist and entrepreneur focused on using interactive media and the social web to empower people to engage in building a more sustainable and equitable world. Vacca is Co-Founder and Chief Learning Architect at Kognito Interactive (www.kognito.com), a learning games and simulations design company in New York City. His work focuses on the design of products targeting human interaction skills and empathy in the areas of mental health and education. Vacca’s work at Kognito has been featured in Crains Small Business, The L.A. Times, and has garnered several prestigious learning design awards. Vacca received his bachelors’ degree in Entrepreneurship Management from Baruch College and is finishing his masters’ degree in Educational Leadership, Politics and Advocacy at NYU. He is currently an NYU Reynolds Fellow in Social Entrepreneurship, an Education Pioneers Fellow, and serves as a mentor for socially responsible enterprises in the Baruch Entrepreneurship Competition. He has taught university courses on digital learning and spoken frequently in conferences about the future of interactive learning media.