Charles Doolittle is currently a Senior Policy Advisor in the Office of Planning, Evaluation, and Policy Development (OPEPD). He covers a range of issues pertaining to teachers and principals, most recently including the development of Title II, Part A Guidance and final release of the teacher preparation regulations. He also covers special populations: homeless youth (participating in the U.S. Interagency Council on Homelessness), neglected and delinquent youth, disconnected youth, and youth involved in juvenile justice and correctional education; in other words, students most likely to fall prey to the School-to-Prison Pipeline. Charles has dedicated his career to supporting efforts that increase equitable access to educational opportunity, what many have called one of the great civil rights issues of our time. In the words of Lerone Bennett, Jr., "An educator in a system of oppression is either a revolutionary or an oppressor."

Image Description: Charles Doolittle, a white man with light blue eyes, smiles and looks directly into the camera while leaning against a tan wall.

Taylor Johnson is from Washington, DC. They are the author of Inheritance (Alice James Books, 2020), and their work appears in The Paris Review, The Baffler, Scalawag, and elsewhere. Johnson is a Cave Canem graduate fellow and a recipient of the 2017 Larry Neal Writers’ Award from the DC Commission on the Arts and Humanities. They live in New Orleans where they listen.

Image Description: Taylor Johnson stands outside under leafy green tree branches which are blurred in the background and foreground, and looks slightly down toward the camera. He wears a black graphic t-shirt with a white design under a dark red striped flannel rolled up to the elbows. 

Photo by Sean D. Henry-Smith.

Danielle Badra is a queer Arab-American poet from Michigan who currently resides in Virginia. Her manuscript, Like We Still Speak, was selected by Fady Joudah and Hayan Charara as the winner of the 2021 Etel Adnan Poetry Prize and published through the University of Arkansas Press. She was the 2022-2024 Fairfax County Poet Laureate and created a community poetry project called Poetry in the Parks during her tenure. Danielle Badra received her BA in Creative Writing from Kalamazoo College and her MFA in Poetry from George Mason University. Her poems have appeared in Mizna, Cincinnati Review, Duende, The Greensboro Review, Split This Rock, Beltway Poetry Quarterly, and elsewhere.

Image Description: Danielle Badra, an olive tan woman with dark brown hair and a short haircut, wears dangly earrings, a coral red necklace, and a v-neck tank top. She stands outside in front of vines and trees. Danielle has a tattoo on her right arm and on her chest.

Alexa Patrick is a vocalist and poet from Connecticut. Her debut collection Remedies for Disappearing was published by Haymarket Books in 2023. Alexa holds fellowships from Cave Canem, Obsidian, The Watering Hole, and the DC Commission on the Arts and Humanities. Alexa has held teaching positions through Split This Rock, The University of the District of Columbia, and the Center for Creative Youth at Wesleyan University. Alexa is currently the Programs Director for non-profit writing program and publishing house Shout Mouse Press. She has performed at The Schomburg Center, The Kennedy Center, and the Lincoln Center. Previous artistic partnerships of Alexa’s include Meta, Microsoft, the National Museum of Women in the Arts, and more. In spring 2023, Alexa made her stage production debut in the opera We Shall Not Be Moved directed by Kennedy Center honors and Tony Award recipient Bill T. Jones. You may find Alexa's work in publications including Adroit, The Rumpus, CRWN Magazine, and The BreakBeat Poets Vol. 2: Black Girl Magic. To learn more, visit Alexa's website.

Image Description: Alexa Patrick sits on a low stone wall in front of a tree in a park. She leans forward and smiles, resting her chin in her right hand. Alexa wears a jean jacket cuffed at the forearms with a black long-sleeved shirt underneath and dusky pink slacks. 

Born in Puerto Rico, Tatiana Figueroa Ramírez graduated with a B.A. in English Literature from UMBC and an M.A. in Public Management with a focus on Nonprofit Management and Leadership at UMD. She has received fellowships from VONA Voices, Anaphora Arts, and Letras Boricuas, having worked with award-winning poets Willie Perdomo and Danez Smith. Tatiana has previously been featured at local, national, and international events as a poet, panelist, host, and keynote speaker. She performs, facilitates workshops, and hosts events in the DC area, having previously done so across the United States and the Dominican Republic at venues including The Kennedy Center and New York University. She currently serves as the Senior Program Director of Poetry & Community Arts at DC SCORES working to implement and improve free after-school poetry, service learning, and arts programming to over 3,000 DC students in a given year. She also serves as a teaching artist for organizations, such as Shout Mouse Press, with much of her community and poetic efforts being dedicated to amplifying marginalized voices and empowering young women of color. Tatiana was the 2020 Burns Whiskey Poetry Slam Champion and is the inaugural 2023 CFA Practitioner Award Winner. Her work has been featured in MSNBC’s “Leguizamo Does America,” the Giant Food “This is Home” marketing campaign, and The Acentos Review, among other publications. Tatiana is the author of Coconut Curls y Café con Leche (2019) and Despojo (2020).

Image Description: Tatiana is outside in front of green plants and pink flowers. She wears a light pink high neck top and gold necklaces. Tatiana has black curls out just past her shoulders and she is looking at the camera with her head tilted.