African American Dance Ensemble
The African American Dance Ensemble has been the leader of traditional African dance and music for over 30 years. With innovative and strong approaches to the service of the Durham community for the benefit of education, entertaining, health initiatives and outreach, they continue the legacy of community through the performing arts.
Caique Vidal and Batuque
Caique Vidal and Batuque is a unique band that brings infectious energy and riveting dance grooves to the stage. “Batuque” (pronounced ba-TOO-kee) means to drum. The band delivers an explosive performance integrating the sounds of Afro-Brazilian percussion with keyboards, bass, guitar and horns to produce an innovative version of samba, reggae, salsa, bachata, pop, rock and Bossa Nova. Vidal and Batuque just released their debut EP titled TYSM (Thank You So Much). TYSM exemplifies the diversity of rhythms and genres performed by the band during their live shows. Vidal and Batuque have performed in music festivals and universities across the nation providing an insight to Afro-Brazilian music and culture.Caique Vidal and Batuque’s live performance is pure passion and energy!
Jeremy Lewis & Sara Bloo
Sara Bloo and Jeremy take you to the depths of your heart and the edge of your consciousness. A space of beauty and integrity. A space of internal struggle and external foresight. Sounds, voices, melodies, and deep rhythms proposed under the quiet stillness that we all invoke within.
Kelly Garvy
Kelly Garvy is the founder of KilltheBill.com, a website that tracks legislation in the North Carolina General Assembly (NCGA). Garvy's background is in environmental science, economics and policy.
LeVelle Moton
Coach Moton has led the North Carolina Central University Basketball team to four MEAC Championships and three NCAA Tournament berths. He has been deeply inspired by his grandmother and cares deeply for the well-being of those in his care. His brand of leadership is personal, heart-felt, and de-emphasizes winning at all costs.
Writer, Artist, Speaker, and Consultant
Mailande Moran is a writer, artist, speaker, and consultant. Fueled by curiosity, her career has been an exercise in understanding the intersections between art, business, and social change; adventures on that path have included starting an artisan-made textile company, creating the first tablet classroom in a Kyrgyz village school, teaching design thinking in Cuba, and helping people clean out their closets. In 2015, she started drawing on the backs of her grad school business cards and posting them to Instagram, which changed her life forever.
Mark Dorosin
Mark Dorosin is the Co-Director of the Julius L. Chambers Center for Civil Rights, a nonprofit law firm providing low-wealth NC communities with legal representation in their efforts to dismantle structural racism. He is also a Professor at the UNC Law School and currently serves as Chair of the Orange County Board of Commissioners.
Sandra K. Johnson
Sandra K. Johnson is a leader in the tech industry. After 25 years at IBM, Johnson now serves as CEO of SKJ Visioneering, a tech company developing geeRemit, a mobile app that utilizes blockchain to allow users in Western countries to send money to family in developing countries.
Scott Holmes
An attorney and North Carolina Central University law professor, Scott Holmes is best known as the defense attorney for the activists that toppled a confederate monument in Durham and the Silent Sam statue at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
Vivica C. Coxx
Justin Clapp, affectionately known as J. Clapp, has been doing drag for a relatively short amount of time. In only four years, Vivica C. Coxx (J. Clapp's stage name) has risen to prominence in the Triangle queer community and beyond. Having recently emceed for Sylvan Esso at Shakori Hills and slated to host the NC Comicon Guardians of the Gala Cosplay Prom, Vivica does not fit easily into the nightclub box. Her work centers around erudition and social justice with a focus on helping up-and-coming drag artists grow into their own. As the matriarch of the House of Coxx, Vivica mentors 10 other performers across the U.S. Some of whom refer to her as Gigi because she is their grandmother, but Vivica is still coming to terms with that.
Before launching her persona and the events around Vivica, queer nightlife in Durham was dwindling and suffering through sparsely attended events and divides in the community. The House of Coxx is now sought after to host and perform throughout NC because of the commitment to dismantle systems of power and build up the lives of marginalized populations. Really, they just want everyone to be decent humans.
William A. Darity Jr.
William A. (“Sandy”) Darity Jr. is the Samuel DuBois Cook Professor of Public Policy, African and African American Studies, and Economics and the director of the Samuel DuBois Cook Center on Social Equity at Duke University. He has served as chair of the Department of African and African American Studies and was the founding director of the Research Network on Racial and Ethnic Inequality at Duke. Previously he served as director of the Institute of African American Research, director of the Moore Undergraduate Research Apprenticeship Program, director of the Undergraduate Honors Program in economics, and director of Graduate Studies at the University of North Carolina.
Darity’s research focuses on inequality by race, class and ethnicity, stratification economics, schooling and the racial achievement gap, North-South theories of trade and development, skin shade and labor market outcomes, the economics of reparations, the Atlantic slave trade and the Industrial Revolution, the history of economics, and the social psychological effects of exposure to unemployment.