Panelists

Anne Melton is a Research Associate at the University of Puget Sound where she identifies and tracks funding sources for the university as part of the Office of University Relations. She has more than a decade of experience in nonprofit program management and has worked for organizations like Planned Parenthood, the College Success Foundation, the Northwest African American Museum, and the Museum of Flight. Anne graduated from UW with a B.A. in History, minor in Public Health, and an M.A. in Museology.

Matt Huang majored in LSJ and History at UW, which heavily influenced his career path. Currently, he is a Public Defense Investigator with the King County Department of Public Defense, working with defense attorneys to investigate cases by conducting interviews while continuously working to locate information and evidence. Previously, Matt worked at OfferUp as a Trust and Safety Investigator.

Ben Lee is a third year CSE Ph.D. student and NSF Research Fellow at UW, where he studies human-AI interaction. As a 2020 Innovator in Residence at the Library of Congress, he developed Newspaper Navigator, a project to re-imagine search and discovery for visual content in historic newspapers. Ben has previously served as the inaugural Digital Humanities Associate Fellow at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, and as a Visiting Fellow in Harvard’s History Department.

Dr. Rachael Tatman is a senior developer advocate at Rasa, where she helps developers use open source tools to build conversational assistants that solve real problems. Her degree is in computational sociolinguistics, and her current main areas of work are natural language processing and machine learning.

Alex Diaz  is a Senior Product Marketing Manager at Webflow. With 9+ years working across a wide range of industries — from startups to ad agencies to Fortune 500s — focused on go-to-market strategies, driving the strategic marketing framework among internal groups, and executing growth marketing tactics for products and brands. Alex is also Executive Committee member for Minds Matter Seattle, Alumni Board of Advisors for the UW Communication Department, and member of the Board of Directors as the Marketing Chair for the Key to Change Studios.

C. R./Chelsea Grimmer is a poet, lecturer, and Public Scholarship Project Director at the UW, who completed their Ph.D  in Literature and Cultural Studies. Their current scholarly book project, Poetry as Public Scholarship: Activist Poetics in the Time of Social Media, examines the relationships between racial capitalism, popularized poetry, digital humanities’ social engagement, and public scholarship methods. C.R.’s books include The Lyme Letters, forthcoming Feb ‘21 from Texas Tech University Press as the Walt McDonald First Book Award Recipient, and O–(ezekiel’s wife)..

Aleenah Ansari (she/her) is a Writer at Microsoft and journalist at heart who works at the intersection of user experience (UX), tech, and storytelling. These days, she interviews engineers and designers behind the internal tools and resources at Microsoft and shares their story in blogs on Microsoft IT Showcase. Her identity as a Pakistani woman empowers her to lift as she climbs, and she hopes to inspire the next generation of designers, writers, and creatives. You can find more of her work on her portfolio and Instagram.

Julia Tesch is an Associate at BERK Consulting, where she helps local governments, state agencies, nonprofits, and foundations answer challenging questions around their strategies, policies, and programs. She works with client staff and with local communities to engage the public in policy making. Prior to joining BERK, she was the Northwest Outreach Manager for the National Parks Conservation Association, a national nonprofit focused on political advocacy for national parks. Julia graduated from the UW’s Interdisciplinary Honors program with degrees in Mathematics and History.

Julian Barr is a PhD candidate in Geography at the UW. He has a BA in history and a MS in geography both from the St. Louis area. He is interested in queer-feminist geography, qualitative methodology, and cultural geography with a focus on place studies and popular culture. His research is focused on the historical geography of lesbian and queer women in Seattle with a focus on place/community development. His secondary research interests include queer public histories and researching issues of representation of identity and place in popular culture.

Matthew Howard is a PhD Candidate of English Language and Literature with an eye toward mobility — specifically how we have come to define it, and what it means as a method of rights-based citizenship. Based on who we are, we move through and are perceived by the world differently — this is the fundamental premise of the work they do. Matthew currently works with the Seattle Department of Transportation’s Street Use Division, where they put this research to use in their day-to-day dealings.

Rayna Mathis is the Assistant Educator for Teen Programs at the Seattle Art Museum and is a graduate of the University of Washington, with a Bachelors of Art in History. She was The Washington Art Education Association’s 2018 Outstanding New Art Educator of the Year, and has presented at national conferences on challenging museums as it relates to racial equity, accessibility, and inclusion.

Ellen Chang is a doctoral candidate in Cinema & Media Studies (CMS) and the 2020-2021 CLIP Fellow at the Department of Comparative History of Ideas (CHID). As a simultaneous film scholar and art curator/practitioner, she is moving towards more engaged, sensitive, and practical understandings of how multimedia art reflects the (re-)occurring themes of everyday politics across international geographies.

Evan Jayne is currently a Master’s student in the Social Sciences program at the University of Chicago, where they are studying sociology. As a strategic planner at two advertising agencies, Evan informed campaigns with audience research, and then worked as a Consumer Researcher for Nordstrom After graduation, Evan seeks to return to consumer research or enter public affairs.

Henry Milander is a versatile researcher whose work spans the public and private sectors. He currently works at the Oxford Business Group, researching COVID-19 responses in the Middle East. He is also an MPA candidate at the London School of Economics and Political Science, focusing on econometrics, inclusive growth, and social issues. Previously, Henry worked in consulting, parks and recreation, and civic engagement. Henry graduated from the UW with degrees in Near Eastern Languages and Cultures (Arabic), International Studies (Political Economy), and Business Administration (Finance and International Business).

Ellen Perleberg graduated from UW with degrees in Linguistics and Near Eastern Studies. She is interested in the opportunities digital humanities presents for the studying less commonly taught languages, and she is working with Ge’ez (Classical Ethiopic) manuscripts through the Princeton Project on the Ethiopian Miracles of Mary. She also works for Seattle Public Schools and plans to pursue graduate education in library and information science.

Hunter Reinhardt is a project manager at REM-Consult in Hamburg, Germany, where he is responsible for developing interregional projects in Northern Europe in the fields of social and circular economy and sustainable development. After graduating with a degree in History from UW in 2018, he went on to complete a Masters in Urban Studies at the Free University of Brussels, and has been guided by his liberal arts education in pursuing research and work in the realm of social and political geography.

Ben Green is a Travel Advisor and Speakers Bureau Coordinator for Rick Steves’ Europe. He advises European travelers on a myriad of topics, teaches classes on areas in Central Eastern Europe,  and currently moderates Monday Night Travel, a weekly travel webinar (ricksteves.com/mnt). Ben studied at Jagiellonian University in Krakow, Poland through an exchange with UW Study Abroad. 

Jerome Hunter is the co-founder and chief academic officer at Seattle School for Boys, which encourages and inspires students to become compassionate and intellectual leaders. Jerome believes that young men can move beyond the confines of traditional masculinity and toward a holistic version of themselves. After teaching humanities in Seattle Public Schools and volunteering with My Brother’s Keeper, Jerome was driven to address the unique challenges facing boys today. Seattle School for Boys serves a diverse community of middle-school-aged boys in the Central District.

Gennie Gebhart is an Activism Director at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, focusing on consumer privacy and security. Gennie was a Henry Luce Scholar in Laos and Thailand and earned degrees from the UW in International Studies, Economics, and MSLIS. At the UW, she also co-founded and led a successful initiative for a university open access policy. Her previous research includes work on public internet access in Laos, technology education in Myanmar, zero-rating in Ghana, and state censorship in Thailand.

Dan Lee is a Fullstack Software Engineer at AstrumU, a startup transforming the way that educational institutions and industry collaborate, by identifying talent development pathways for high-impact employment. Dan has degrees in Music and Informatics from the UW, and has experienced the uphill battles of trying to obtain software engineering internships as a music major, so he is empathetic for others pursuing unique goals.

Amandalynne Paullada is a Ph.D. student in Computational Linguistics whose work involves natural language processing for information extraction from scientific text, primarily in the biomedical domain. Amandalynne was a Fellow in the Data Science for Social Good program and has previously worked for the Allen Institute of Artificial Intelligence. 

Allexa Laycock is a filmmaker, editor, and a Creative Director at Rooted in Rights. Allexa has presented on accessible media at Netroots Nation, for the City of Seattle, and to non-profits and other organizations around Washington State. She also leads training on creating self-produced, accessible advocacy videos. She has degrees in Dance and CHID from the UW.

Deb Warren is an Account Executive at Quinn Thomas, a marketing communications and brand strategy agency. She is also an art enthusiast with a specialty in health care communications. Deb is passionate about public relations, integrated marketing, brand management, and community affairs. 

 Erika Arias is a Ph.D. student at Syracuse University focusing on comparative politics, social movements, public opinion, and state violence. Her regions of interest are Latin America and the Middle East. Previously, Erika has worked on academic and NGO projects exploring conflicts and the role of collective action. Erika was also involved in digital humanities research at the UW and graduated with degrees in International Studies and Law, Societies, and Justice.

Sarah Faulkner is the Instructional Designer for Saint Martin’s University and faculty at UW. She completed her PhD in English and Textual and Digital Studies in June 2020, focusing on eighteenth- and nineteenth-century women’s writing and print culture. Sarah collaborated on multiple interdisciplinary events, including JaneFest 2017, Frankenreads, and Rare Books @ UW. She also received the 2018 Excellence in Teaching Award and numerous fellowships to perform archival research across North America and the UK. 

Grace Elizabeth Dy is a researcher, educator, and office manager at UW’s College of Education. Their research interests focus on public literacy in science and religion, as well as education about the intersection and perceived conflicts between these fields. Their current work examines LGBTQ+ linguistic developments in the Seattle Jewish community and equitable pedagogical practices in the field of biology education.

Sabrina Bolieu is a Business Liaison for the Office of the Mayor of Seattle. Sabrina’s work involves community outreach, public policy, program development, and grassroots organizing. Previously, Sabrina worked for the Seattle City Council and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. Sabrina graduated from UW with degrees in history and political science.

Jion Yi is a Security Analyst at Accenture working on digital identities projects. She graduated from UW with degrees in International Studies (Human Rights) and Informatics (Information Assurance and Cybersecurity). Jion has extensive experience in digital humanities research, particularly in the cultural heritage of the late 19th century Middle East. She has also worked on policy research on topics such as blockchain, privacy, and cyber defense, and developing K-8th computer science curriculum.

Kelsey Utne is a historian, digital humanities scholar, prison educator, and doctoral candidate at Cornell University. Kelsey’s research is primarily driven by questions of how people interface with the past and construct ideas of heritage through commemorative sites (or lack thereof). Kelsey is also an alumna of the South Asia Studies Master’s program at the UW.

Grace Stephenson (she/her) is currently the Founder & CEO of a new company called Glimmer. Glimmer’s mission is to empower womxn, LGBTQIA+, and BIPOC communities through mental and sexual wellness. Grace received her B.A. from UW in 2019 in International Studies and Global Health, while doing the JSIS Honors Program. She has always been passionate about finding creative and innovative solutions to deep-rooted, systemic issues.