Deepa Iyer is an activist, writer, and lawyer with a strong commitment to intersectional, community-based, racial justice issues in the United States. Deepa is currently the Senior Fellow at the Center for Social Inclusion where she provides analysis, commentary and scholarship on how to build equity and solidarity in America’s changing racial landscape. Deepa’s first book, We Too Sing America: South Asian, Arab, Muslim and Sikh Immigrants Shape Our Multiracial Future, was published by The New Press in November 2015.
Eddy Zheng (鄭小飛), has a passion and lifelong commitment to serving high need youth and communities in the greater San Francisco Bay Area and beyond. A Project Director at the Community Youth Center of San Francisco (CYC), he oversees the agency’s Special Projects component and the branch office in Bayview Hunters Point.
Dr. Sumun Pendakur is Associate Dean for Institutional Diversity at Harvey Mudd College. Sumi is a scholar-practitioner, whose research interests include Critical Race Theory, Asian American and Pacific Islander students, and institutional transformation. She directs HMC's social justice education center, the Office of Institutional Diversity, and is invested in climate shift and culture change.
Prior to Harvey Mudd College, Sumi spent 7.5 years at the University of Southern California, where she served as the director for Asian Pacific American Student Services. In 2011, she won the USC Remarkable Women Award and the USC Rossier School of Education Dissertation of the Year Award. In 2014, she won the Outstanding Mid-Level Professional Award from the NASPA Asian Pacific Islander Knowledge Community. Sumi serves as a consultant, speaker, and facilitator regionally and nationally, helping campuses and other organizations build capacity for cultural competence, social justice, and equitable practices.