Conversation

Creating Racially Just Schools: Dr. Nadia Lopez

Mon, Feb 28, 2022

4:30 PM–5:30 PM

This event will take place via Zoom. Please join below.

Watch the video recording of this event here:

Join us for a conversation with award-winning educator Dr. Nadia Lopez with Urban Education Ph.D student Noelle Mapes for the Creating Racially Just Schools speaker series as part of a class taught at The Graduate Center, CUNY by Terri N. Watson.

This event will take place Mon, Feb 28 via Zoom. Click here to join starting at 4:30 PM (EDT). ZoomMeeting ID: 828 7390 2908. Passcode: 931300

Dr. Nadia Lopez is an award-winning educator, who became a viral sensation after the popular blog Humans of New York featured one of scholars, naming her as the most influential person in his life. Her work of opening a school to close the prison, was evident in Mott Hall Bridges Academy, a STEAM-focused middle school in Brownsville, Brooklyn she founded in 2010 and served as the principal for ten years. Named LinkedIn’s 2019 Top 10 Voices in Education and the recipient of the 2015 Black Girls Rock award–alongside Michelle Obama– she has been featured in the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Glamour Magazine, PopSugar, MSNBC, CBS, the Ellen Degeneres Show, Good Morning America, and the Today Show. Lopez was also invited to White House to meet with President Obama and selected as a Varkey Foundation’s Top 50 Global Teacher Prize Finalist in 2016. Her TED Talk on the Education Revolution has garnered more than a million views and she served as guest lecturer at the Harvard University’s Graduate School for Education teaching students on the subject matter of Transformative Justice, Education, and the School-to-Prison Pipeline.

In 2020, Dr. Lopez ended her tenure as principal to focus on her work as a mental health advocate and wellness enthusiast after developing a stress-related illness that threatened her life. Through her company, The Lopez Effect, she provides workforce training and coaches leaders to build their capacity, improve culture through DEI practices, as well as develop systems to create healthy spaces for professional sustainability. Additionally, she consults with individuals and organizations on their goals and implementation of social responsibility initiatives that target marginalized communities for a positive impact. Visit her website here for more information.

Noelle Mapes is an Urban Education Ph.D student at The Graduate Center, CUNY and a third grade teacher interested in integration policy, racial literacy, and abolition practices in the classroom.

The Creating Racially Just Schools speaker series is co-sponsored by Ph.D. Program in Urban Education, PublicsLab and The Schools We Need: Lessons Learned from Harlem project as part of the Seminar on Public Engagement and Collaborative Research from the Center for the Humanities at The Graduate Center, CUNY.