Keynote Speakers

Trudy Arriaga earned her Bachelor and Master degrees, teaching credentials and ultimately a Doctorate from USC in 1993...Fight On! She began her employment in Ventura Unified School District in 1974 as a bilingual paraeducator and has enjoyed 40 years of service to the district. Her journey toward the role of superintendent included paradeducator, teacher, assistant principal, principal and director. Dr. Arriaga is the first woman superintendent of the Ventura Unified School District.

Dr. Gail L. Thompson, the Wells Fargo Endowed Professor of Education at Fayetteville State University, has written six books: A Brighter Day: How Parents Can Help African American Youth Have a Better Future; The Power of One: How You Can Help or Harm African American Students; Up Where We Belong: Helping African American and Latino Students Rise in School and in Life; African American Teens Discuss Their Schooling Experiences; What African American Parents Want Educators to Know; and Through Ebony Eyes: What Teachers Need to Know but are Afraid to Ask About African American Students, a book that has received a considerable amount of attention from educators, talk show hosts, and news reporters across the nation. This book is also used in numerous Teacher Education courses and professional development programs. Dr. Thompson co-wrote a seventh book, Exposing the Culture of Arrogance in the Academy: A Blueprint for Increasing Black Faculty Satisfaction, with Dr. Angela Louque.
Dr. Thompson has written chapters that were published in three edited books, From Work-Family Balance to Work-Family Interaction: Changing the Metaphor, Narrowing the Achievement Gap: Strategies for Educating Latino, Black, and Asian Students, and. Adolescent Literacy: Field Tested Effective Solutions for Every Classroom. One of her essays was published in USA Today, and her work has been published in numerous academic journals. She has served as a co-host of “Elevate,” and a frequent guest on WIDU Radio, appeared on PBS television’s Tony Brown’s Journal, WCIA-3 News, National Public Radio, Tavis Smiley’s radio show, KJLH, WAMO, WURD, KPCC, WBAI, WSOU, WFSS, and KXAM. She has been interviewed for Scholastic Instructor and Inside Higher Education, and has been quoted in numerous newspaper articles. She has served as a reviewer for the Educational Broadcasting Network, Millmark Education, Houghton Mifflin, and several academic journals, and has done presentations, keynote addresses, workshops, and consultant work throughout the U.S. and two presentations in Canada. In 2009, Claremont Graduate University awarded her its “Distinguished Alumna Award,” and in 2008, the Black Graduate Students’ Association gave her an “Award of Distinction.” In May 2009, the California Department of Education selected her to be a member of its newly formed “African American Advisory Committee.”

Kikanza J. Nuri-Robins, Ed.D. is an organizational development consultant. She has spent her career working with schools, churches, hospitals and not-for-profit organizations helping them to become healthy, productive, diverse and inclusive.Since 1978 she has worked with businesses like IBM and Baskin-Robbins, school districts from New York to California, and nonprofit organizations such as United Way and Girls Scouts of America. The connecting thread is her passion for working with people who care about the quality of their work, who have compassion for their clients and colleagues, and who understand the importance of appropriate responses to the cultural context when doing their work. She has taught elementary school, secondary reading and in schools of education and public administration. She is currently consulting with the nursing faculty at the University of Texas Health Sciences Center, the Oxnard, CA Police Department , and a domestic violence family center. Read more about Kikanza and the titles she has authored at http://www.corwin.com/authors/524991.

Raymond D. Terrell, EdD, served as special assistant to the dean for diversity initiatives in the School of Education and Allied Professions at Miami University in Oxford, Ohio. A former secondary English teacher, elementary school principal, professor of educational administration, and dean of the School of Education at California State University, Los Angeles, he has more than 40 years of professional experience with diversity and equity issues.