Hala Annabi, PhD

Dr. Hala Annabi is an Associate Professor in the Information School at the University of Washington. Her research focuses on creating and maintaining inclusive learning organizations. Dr. Annabi investigates diversity and inclusion interventions in the technology industry aimed at retaining and advancing women, as well as recruiting, retaining, and advancing individuals with autism. She also investigates the design, development, deployment, and assessment of asynchronous learning networks, distributed work, open source software groups, and virtual communities of practice. While at Ohio University, Dr. Annabi held academic leadership positions and co-founded the Select Leadership Development Program, and founded Women in Information Systems and the OU College of Business Honors Program. In addition to her academic career interests, she is a partner in McGann Annabi Consulting, an independent consulting firm providing services in the areas of system strategy, diversity and inclusion interventions, and leadership development. Dr. Annabi earned a B.S. in Business Administration and Management Information Systems and an MBA from Le Moyne College. She earned a Ph.D. in Information Science and Technology from The Information School at Syracuse University in 2005.

 

Michelle H. Martin, PhD

Michelle H. Martin is the Beverly Cleary Endowed Professor for Children and Youth Services in the Information School at the University of Washington, and from 2011-2016, she was the inaugural Augusta Baker Endowed Chair in Childhood Literacy at the University of South Carolina. She published Brown Gold: Milestones of African-American Children’s Picture Books, 1845-2002 (Routledge, 2004) and co-edited (with Claudia Nelson) Sexual Pedagogies: Sex Education in Britain, Australia, and America, 1879-2000 (Palgrave, 2003). She is currently co-editing with Tammy Mielke and Sarah Hardstaff Song of the Land, Critical Perspectives on the Works of Mildred D. Taylor, a collection of 14 essays and 3 poems, forthcoming from University Press of Mississippi (tentatively in 2023). Martin has been a part of the research teams for Project LOCAL and is currently working with Project VOICE and Autism-Ready Libraries—all IMLS-funded projects. She is the co-founder of Read-a-Rama (www.Read-a-Rama.org), a non-profit that uses children’s books as the springboard for year-round and summer camp programming, and she and Liz Mills are currently collecting data for “Camp Read-a-Rama Goes Virtual,” a project funded by the UW iSchool’s Strategic Research Fund, to learn how Read-a-Rama’s virtual programming from March 2020 through December 2022 impacted family literacy engagement.