Dr. Ann Martin is an Associate with Praxis Consulting Group. She has facilitated dialogue, conflict resolution, and organizational development using knowledge of these fields as a resource whether a client organization’s needs are for better communication, strategic planning, leadership development, or the productive use of conflict. She has taught high school students, school leaders, and graduate students.
For over 25 years Ann has worked inside public and private organizations to help them become more efficient and effective. This work has included guiding manufacturing companies in problem solving and work redesign, helping leaders build organizational learning practices, and teaching and facilitating labor-management cooperation processes designed for organizational improvement. An essential element in Ann’s organizational improvement consulting has been skill in facilitating conversations among people who hold different perspectives. Recent assignments have been at Teachers College, Columbia University, the Norwegian Technical University, Cooperative Home Health Care Associates in the South Bronx, and the Elmira City School District.
Ann was an extension faculty member at Cornell University’s School Industrial and Labor Relations for 19 years, where, in addition to organizational change work, she taught and led interest-based negotiations with unions and managers throughout the country. She has run large group processes for future planning and decision making inside organizations and communities. She is a long time mediator for the Community Dispute Resolution Center in Ithaca, NY and, most recently, a Research Fellow in the Dorothy Cotton Institute based in Ithaca.
Ann has a BA from Middlebury College, an MAT from the Harvard Graduate School of Education, an MILR from the Cornell School of Industrial and Labor Relations, and an EdD in Adult and Organizational Learning from Teachers College, Columbia University.
Dr. Sofia A. Villenas is associate professor in the Department of Anthropology and Director of the Latino Studies Program at Cornell University. She was born and raised in Los Angeles, a daughter of immigrant parents from Ecuador. Her teaching experiences as an adult educator and as a Spanish bilingual school teacher in Los Angeles inspired her to pursue a doctoral degree from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill with a focus on the social, cultural and political dimensions of education.
Sofia has worked in the field of education as a teacher educator and researcher. Across three universities in Utah, Texas and New York, she has engaged prospective and practicing teachers in examining the role of race, culture and language in teaching and learning. As a researcher, Sofia’s interests encompass the areas of anthropology of education, multicultural teacher education, ethnography, and Latina feminist thought. Her focus on issues of equity, social justice and diversity in education has informed three current research projects. They include 1) an ethnographic study inquiring into the challenges, barriers and opportunities for achieving educational equity within the particular dynamics of a college town school district, 2) an ongoing study of how immigrant Latina mothers navigate parenting and schooling in diverse communities, and 3) a conceptual project involving the question of how to think through educational problems with Latina/Chicana feminist thought, and more generally with the theories emanating from communities of color.
Sofia is co-editor of Race is . . . Race isn’t: Critical Race Theory and Qualitative Studies in Education (with L. Parker and D. Deyhle, 1999), and most recently, the Handbook of Latinos and Education: Theory, Research, and Practice (with E. Murillo Jr., R. Trinidad Galvan, J. Muñoz, C. Martinez, and M. Machado-Casas, 2010). She is a mother of four children and lives in Ithaca with her family.
Dr. Nia Nunn-Makepeace – Nia joined the team in the spring of 2012. She is currently a school psychologist with the Ithaca City School District and the interim director of the Southside Community Center.