Blacks in Boston Conference

Aminah Fernandes Pilgrim

Aminah Fernandes Pilgrim is a mother, an artist, author, community organizer and award-winning educator. She is a faculty member at UMass Boston who teaches in Women’s, Gender & Sexuality Studies, the Critical Ethnic & Community Studies MS Program, and Africana Studies. In addition, she is an affiliate of Africana Studies at Berklee College of Music. She has contributed to public history initiatives such as the Providence Black Studies Freedom School and the City of Brockton Community Black History Course. Her community organizing and advocacy focuses on children, youth/gang violence, the school to prison pipeline, immigrant transitions and women’s empowerment. She is a frequently solicited speaker, trusted advisor and well-known leader in the region. She is co-editor and contributing author of numerous publications.

Cynthia Young

Cynthia Young is an associate professor of African American Studies, English and Women's, Gender and Sexuality Studies at the Pennsylvania State University. She is the former Director of African and African Diaspora Studies at Boston College and the former Department Head of African American Studies at Penn State. She is currently completing her book manuscript Terror Wars, Culture Wars: Race, Popular Culture and the Civil Rights Legacy after 9/11. 

Darcel Denise Clark ('83), Bronx County District Attorney, Member of Boston College Board of Trustees

Darcel Denise Clark became the 13th District Attorney for Bronx County on January 1, 2016. She is the first woman in that position and the first African-American woman to be elected District Attorney in New York State. Prior to her election, District Attorney Clark served as an Associate Justice for the NYS Supreme Court Appellate Division, First Department; a NYS Supreme Court Justice in Bronx County; and a Criminal Court Judge in Bronx and New York Counties. She received her bachelor’s degree in Political Science from Boston College, where she was the first recipient of the Martin Luther King Jr. Scholarship. She earned her law degree at the Howard University School of Law in Washington, D.C. District Attorney Clark has a long-standing commitment to her alma mater where she serves on the Boston College Board of Trustees, is a founding member of the Council for Women of Boston College (CWBC) and founding Co-Chair of the Boston College AHANA (African American, Hispanic, Asian, Native American) Alumni Advisory Council (AAAC). 

Faith Smith

Faith Smith is an Associate Professor of African and African American Studies, and of English, at Brandeis University. Her book “Strolling in the Ruins: The Caribbean’s Non-Sovereign Modern in the Early Twentieth Century” is forthcoming from Duke University Press. Her new project, “DreadKin,” is  a study of 21st-century literary and visual culture and its mappings of pasts and futures, as well as genealogies of kinship and intimacy, in the context of the Caribbean’s complex experiences with sovereignty in our current global moment.

Juan Alexander Concepción

Juan Alexander Concepción is Director, Senior Legal Counsel at Boston Scientific, where he guides compliance and strategic workforce management. Before joining Boston Scientific, Juan served in various leadership roles at MassDOT/MBTA and was Assistant General Counsel at a marketing tech corporation in California after practicing law for years at two prestigious law firms.

Concepción is a long-serving director of Lawyers for Civil Rights (LCR-Boston), a legal engine for racial equity and social justice. In June 2020, he joined other leading executives to establish the New Commonwealth Fund (NCF), which raised $30M+ in its initial year to help combat systemic racism through corporate, non-profit and government partnerships in Massachusetts.

A rare BC “Quadruple Eagle,” Juan serves with distinction on the Board of Trustees and is a member of the AADS faculty. An avid supporter of educational opportunities, he is also a trustee of Saint Columbkille and Cardinal Hayes in the Bronx, NY.

Dr. Régine Michelle Jean-Charles

Dr. Régine Michelle Jean-Charles is the Dean’s Professor of Culture and Social Justice, Director of Africana Studies, and Professor of Women, Gender and Sexuality Studies at Northeastern University. A Black feminist scholar who works at the intersections of race, gender and justice from a global perspective, her scholarship and teaching include subjects and areas such as rape culture, Black France, African diasporic literatures, Caribbean Studies, Haiti and the Haitian diaspora. She is the author of Looking for Other Worlds: Black Feminism and Haitian Fiction (2022), The Trumpet of Conscience Today (2021) and Conflict Bodies: The Politics of Rape Representation in the Francophone Imaginary (2014). She has written numerous publications that have appeared in books, edited volumes, and peer-reviewed journals. She is also a regular contributor to media outlets like Ms. Magazine, The Boston Globe, WGBH, and Cognoscenti, where she has weighed in on topics such as #metoo, Black girlhood, and issues affecting the Haitian diaspora.

Rui Manuel Monteiro Gomes

Rui Manuel Monteiro Gomes was born in 1973 in Angola to Cape Verdean parents who relocated to Angola in search of a better life. At the age of five, Rui's family sought refuge from the civil war in Angola and found themselves in the United States. Rui is the first in his family to graduate from high school and college. He proudly graduated from Boston College in 1996 with a Psychology Degree and a minor in African American History. In 2015, Rui graduated from Harvard University Graduate School of Education with a Master’s Degree in Educational Leadership and a Principal's License. He is currently employed by the Boston Public Schools as an Operational Leader. He has positioned himself to have a direct impact on the school to prison pipeline. Mr. Gomes is privileged to have the distinct duty of overseeing the district's Code of Conduct processes and making sure that our youth are treated with due process, respect and dignity.

Dr. Ufuoma C. Abiola

Dr. Ufuoma C. Abiola is the inaugural Executive Director for Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) at Columbia Business School (CBS).  Dr. Abiola provides strategic vision, leadership, and direction for all DEI initiatives involving students, faculty, staff, alumni, and community at CBS; and she leads a full-time staff of Directors for DEI.  She is also an Adjunct Assistant Professor at University of Pennsylvania.

With expertise in DEI in higher education, Dr. Abiola has founded and created award-winning innovative institutional change programs and initiatives to increase underrepresented students’ persistence and success.  She has published numerous scholarly works, presented at many national conferences, and received multiple institutional and national awards.

Dr. Abiola earned an Ed.D. and M.S.Ed. in Higher Education from University of Pennsylvania; received an M.A. in Clinical Psychology from Roosevelt University; and earned a B.A. in Psychology with a minor in African and African Diaspora Studies from Boston College (‘06).

Zebulon Vance Miletsky

Zebulon Vance Miletsky, Ph.D. is an Associate Professor in the Department of Africana Studies and History at Stony Brook University (SUNY) specializing in recent African-American History, Civil Rights, Black Power, Urban History, Mixed Race, Biracial identity, and Hip-Hop Studies. Originally from Boston, Miletsky received his Ph.D. in African American Studies with a concentration in History from the W.E.B. Du Bois Department of Afro-American Studies at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst in 2008. In addition to his work on Mixed Race, Miletsky is also interested in the Boston School Desegregation Crisis and the parent-led civil rights movement in Boston. He has recently completed a manuscript on the Black freedom movement in Boston, entitled “Before Busing: A History of Boston's Long Black Freedom Struggle” to be published by the University of North Carolina Press, as part of its award-winning Justice, Power and Politics Series, in 2022.