Reparations and global development

Panelists

Prof. Cécile Accilien

Cécile Accilien is Professor of French and Francophone Studies at the University of Maryland. Her area of studies are Francophone African and Caribbean Literatures and Cultures, Gender and Sexuality Studies, and Film and Media Studies. She has co-written and co-edited several books including Teaching Haiti: Strategies for Creating New Narratives, The Antiracism World Language Classroom and the English-Haitian Creole Phrasebook. She recently published Bay lodyans: Haitian Popular Film Culture with SUNY Press.  Since 2019 she has been serving as chair of the editorial board for Women, Gender and Families of Color. She currently serves as president of the Haitian Studies Association. She has written for Truthout and Latin American Commentator.  Prof. Accilien is also co-founder (with Jessica Adams) of Soley Consulting, LLC.

Dr Lerby Exantus

Lerby Exantus is a Haitian radiologist at the State University Hospital of Haiti (HUEH). He teaches medical imaging at the State University Medical School and runs a private practice in Port-au-Prince. Born and raised in Haiti, he has assisted several organizations in the areas of education, health care and leadership. Thus, he has worked as a consultant and ultrasound trainer across the country for USAID’s Project Santé, aimed at reducing maternal death using ultrasound technology. Dr Exantus is also part of a Haiti telemedicine research project by the University of Florida called MotoMeds and serves as the in-country lead for the NYAGI project, a US based ultrasound teaching organization.

Amber Rose Heimann

Rose grew up in Decatur, Indiana, graduated from Purdue University and went on to become a social worker. Rose founded PeaceCycle, a small startup business that aims to provide dignified employment for people in Haiti, promote eco-friendly practices, and enable individuals and families to be self-sufficient. Located in Delmas 33, Port-au-Prince, PeaceCycle works to collect and upcycle the 4-ounce water bags that litter the streets of Haitian cities, transforming them into durable products.

Dr Regine O. Jackson

Dr Regine O. Jackson is the Dean of the Humanities, Social Sciences, Media, and Arts Division and Professor of Sociology at Morehouse College in Atlanta, Georgia. Jackson specializes in Haitian migration and diaspora studies, sociology of race and place, American immigration, and spatial inequality. She is the editor of Geographies of the Haitian Diaspora (Routledge, 2011) and The Context of Black Lives: Race and Space in Two American Cities; and author of Boston Haitians: Navigating Race, Place and Belonging in a Majority-Minority City. Other work has been published in interdisciplinary journals and edited volumes. She has received grants and awards from the American Sociological Association, Social Science Research Council, Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, Ford Foundation, Spencer Foundation, National Endowment for the Humanities, the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston, and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. Before joining the leadership team in Academic Affairs at Morehouse, she taught at Agnes Scott College, Emory University, and the University of Richmond. And in 2022, she was the President of the Haitian Studies Association (HSA). Regine was born in Brooklyn, New York, and was raised in the Boston Haitian community in the late 1970s and 1980s. She is a proud mother of three who currently resides in Atlanta, Georgia. 

Arsheley Mondesir

Arsheley Mondesir is Operations Director at Haiti Communitere (HC). HC supports local community-based organizations through its Community Resource Center near Port-au-Prince’s international airport. HC has provided space and equipment to hundreds of local organizations in and around Port-au-Prince since 2010. In the past HC has also provided language and sexual and reproductive health education, and served as a hub for vulnerable children and young people. Arsheley coordinates with local organizations that HC partners with, and leads HC’s staff in their daily activities. She was born in a provincial town called Petit Trou de Nippes. She studied Administratives Sciences at the Universites D'Études Internationales (UDEI) and is currently a student at the English In Mind institute.