Tending to the Future of Violence Transformed
Banner Art detail: Shea Justice
In 2022, a nine-member Advisory Board was convened for the purpose collectively planning for the future of Violence Transformed. Founding Director Mary Harvey is preparing to retire as Director no later than December 31, 2023. While she plans to remain available to Board and staff as a “strategic advisor”, the Advisory Board will take the lead as VT moves forward!
Advisory Board members are presently working with Mary, with other VT staff members, with each other, and with all VT supporters to create a new "Sustainability Fund" to seed ongoing staffing and the continuation of VT's programming and advocacy into the future.
We are honored to have the following Advisory Board members join us in our succession planning effort.
Anne V. Hernandez, Co-Chair
I am a proud immigrant Afro-Latina from the Dominican Republic. As a social worker in the Boston Public Schools for the last 15 years and a former Coordinator of the Victim’s Violence Community Crisis Response Team, I am well aware of how pervasive interpersonal and community violence are. And how they permeate the lives of its victims, loved ones and communities for generations to come. I am a strong believer that the arts are a powerful antidote to violence and its effects. It is for this reason that I hold Violence Transformed, and the work it does in the highest of regards and see it as such important work. I am honored to co-chair its Advisory Board.
Phillip Harvey, Co-Chair
Phillip Harvey has over 25 years of experience in developing arts education curriculum and African diasporic curatorial content for local, national and international institutions as well as independently produced projects. Programs have served audiences in Tokyo, Japan; London, UK; Hong Kong, China; the Republic of Palau and a host of American cities. He is a Fellow of the National Endowment of the Arts (NEA) and US State Department International Visual Arts Institute as well as a JP Morgan Fellow in Arts Management. Currently, Harvey is the producer and host of C3Arts Radio, a global arts and culture talk show that broadcasts weekly on WHCR 90.3FM radio station in New York, NY.
George Greenidge
George R. Greenidge, Jr. is a visiting fellow at the Ash Center for Democratic Governance and Innovation at the Harvard Kennedy School. He is a Ph.D. candidate in Sociology at Georgia State University, where his current research focuses on the economic development of urban cities and the impact of displacement and gentrification on its residents. Greenidge has served in several capacities throughout his career in the nonprofit, government, philanthropy, and education fields. Among other research positions, Greenidge was recently appointed as an Affiliate Faculty/Researcher at Boston University's Center for Antiracist Research by the Founder and Director Ibram X. Kendi. The recipient of numerous distinguished awards and recognitions in convening and advocacy, diversity, equity and
inclusion programming efforts in urban communities/cities, and mentorship, Greenidge holds a master’s degree in Human Development and Psychology from Harvard University Graduate School of Education and a bachelor’s in Political Science/International Studies from Morehouse College. He is founder and executive director of the Greatest MINDS/National Black College Alliance, Inc., a nonprofit focused on providing alumni mentors to college and high school students.
Eric Harvey
Eric Harvey is a Global Program Director for SAP. With 20+ years experience in the digital media and technology spaces, he is passionate about using the power of video to help others tell engaging stories and to collaborate and engage utilizing innovative virtual technology.
Shea Justice
Shea Justice grew up in Roxbury, Massachusetts. As a child he developed a passion for art from watching Drawing From Nature with Captain Bob Cottle and reading comic books. He earned a BFA in Art Education from Boston University, and an MFA in Art from the Art Institute of Boston at Lesley University. Justice has taught in Fort Lauderdale, FL, in the Boston Public school system, and currently teaches at Lincoln Sudbury Regional High school. As an artist, Shea Justice prefers to work on editorial illustrations and political imagery. He gains inspiration from the works of Sue Coe, Dana Chandler, Thomas Nast, Andy Warhol and the Pop Art movement. In addition to research and studying American
history, he also gains ideas by attending ComicCon annually, and from traveling to various foreign countries with his sketchbook in tow. Recently Justice’s work has taken a gradual shift in media and materials he uses, using replicas of historical documents such as the Constitution as a basis on which to create his own political commentary, especially as it relates to people of color. He has participated in art exhibitions throughout the Boston area. He has work permanently on display at the Sudbury Public Library and the Grove Hall Library in Boston. He was an Artist/Living Room Host at the Gardner Museum, and gave an artist talk at the DeCordova museum. For the last twenty years he has been a member of Northeastern University's AAMARP group (Afro-American Master Artist in Residency Program). His most recent 2022 exhibition, “History is No Mystery,” is a solo retrospective at Fountain Street Gallery in Boston.
Yvette Modestin
Yvette Modestin - Lepolata Aduke Apoukissi - Empress Modest-I is a writer, activist, poet, storyteller born and raised in Colon, Panama. She is Founder/Executive Director of Encuentro Diaspora Afro in Boston, MA. Ms. Modestin has been recognized both domestically for her work in bringing the Latin American and African American community together and for her activism in building a voice for the Afro Latino Community; and in Panama for her advocacy in bringing attention to the struggle of the black communities in with a focus on her home province of Colon. Ms. Modestin is the Diaspora Coordinator of the Red de Mujeres Afrolatinoamericanas, Afrocaribeñas y de la Diáspora, an international network of Afro descendent women. Ms. Mosestin is co-founder of The HairStory Project, co-curator of the production “ReRooted,” and the founder of #MyCrownSpeaks Street Stories. In 2021 Ms. Modestin testified before the Massachusetts Senate on behalf of the Crown Act, legislation that specifically prohibits discrimination based on "natural and protective hairstyles
such as braids, locks, twists, Bantu knots and other formations,” which passed in March 2022. Ms. Modestin is also co-author of the Boston City Council ordinance to create a Reparations Commission. Widely recognized by awards and distinctions for her activism, ambassadorship, poetry, writing and storytelling, Ms. Modestin received the ‘Lifetime Achievement Award’ from El Mundo Boston newspaper, one of the oldest Latino newspapers in New England, in October 2021.
Jules Rochielle Sievert
Since 2013, Jules Rochielle Sievert has been working at the NuLawLab, the interdisciplinary innovation laboratory at Northeastern University School of Law, where their practice is centered at the intersection of art, advocacy and activism. Jules is currently an Ambassador for Health Equity at Policy Link.
Jonathan Shirland
Jonathan Shirland received his PhD in Art History from University College London in 2002, and has taught at University College London, the University of York, and Lasell College, Newton, MA and served as the Curator of Public Programmes at the Royal Academy of Arts, London. His scholarship includes contributions to Art History, Visual Culture in Britain, Aries and African Arts. He is currently an Associate Professor of Art History and coordinator of the Art History Program at Bridgewater State University. Professor Shirland has been involved with Violence Transformed since its inception in 2007, co-curating many exhibitions including in Doric Hall at the Massachusetts State House, Boston City Hall, Northeastern University, Copley Mall Plaza, and the Museum of the National Center of Afro-American Artists. He leads an annual Art History study tour to Tanzania and regularly teaches the second year seminar class ‘Transforming Violence’ connected to the Violence Transformed project.
Usha Tummala-Narra
Usha Tummala-Narra, Ph.D. is a clinical psychologist and the Director of Community-Based Education at the Albert and Jessie Danielsen Institute and Research Professor in the Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences at Boston University. Her research and scholarship focus on immigration, trauma, race, and culturally-informed psychoanalytic psychotherapy. Her publications include over 90 peer-reviewed articles and chapters in books. She is also in Independent Practice, and works primarily with survivors of trauma from diverse sociocultural backgrounds. Dr. Tummala-Narra is an Associate Editor of Psychoanalytic Dialogues and the Asian American Journal of Psychology. She is the author of Psychoanalytic Theory and Cultural Competence in Psychotherapy (2016) and the editor of Trauma and Racial Minority Immigrants: Turmoil, Uncertainty, and Resistance (2021), both published by the American Psychological Association Books.