Black Tennessee Voices Storytellers Go to Meharry Medical College

Meet the five storytellers who will share part of their lives with the public on September 17, 2024 at Meharry Medical College in North Nashville.

The third installment of Black Tennessee Voices Storytellers Live will take place at Meharry Medical College on the night of September 17. As in previous years, the evening will feature Black speakers from the Nashville area and beyond, each sharing the experiences and connections that have shaped their past and define their present, and that will continue to impact our future collective.

Speakers at previous events have included self-proclaimed Homeless CEO Kennetha Patterson, who advocates for families facing housing insecurity through her organization Vision Heirs INC; Ashford Hughes, executive director of diversity, equity and inclusion for Metro Nashville Public Schools; Jill Fitcheard, executive director of the Metro Nashville Community Review Board; and others.

The diversity of the speakers is a key part of what makes Black Tennessee Voices Storytellers Live so compelling. Black Tennesseans — Blacks people – are not a monolith, and all perspectives contribute to creating a deeper understanding of the broader Black community. That said, we have adopted a vague theme for the 2024 event.

This year, on the campus of one of Nashville’s renowned HBCUs, each of the storytellers will share their experiences in and around the field of education. This is an important topic for Black people as we continue to work to improve dismal statistics on a range of measures, from public school literacy rates to the percentage of Black teachers in schools and districts with diverse student populations. Drawing on their varied expertise, speakers will detail the paths that led to their current work as well as their efforts to bring about change for all those who follow them.

Below you will find the biographies of each of this year’s speakers. Read them and be sure to join us on September 17 for Black Tennessee Voices Storytellers Live.

The presenting sponsor of this event is BlueCross BlueShield of Tennessee. Click this link for tickets.

Diarèse Georges

Dr. Diarese George is the founder and CEO of the Tennessee Educators of Color Alliance (TECA), an organization that envisions a future where the diversity of Tennessee’s educators reflects the diversity of students across the state.

TECA provides high-quality programs and networking opportunities to support and retain educators of color throughout the state of Tennessee; Leadership development and advocacy-focused civic engagement are two essential elements of the work.

Previously, he served as Director of Recruitment for the Nashville Teacher Residency, where his primary focus was recruiting more people of color into the education profession. Before that, he taught for five years as a high school teacher, specializing in business. Additionally, he has completed several educational leadership fellowships focused on the intersection of policy and advocacy, and serves on several boards, boards, and committees throughout the state. Dr. George holds a bachelor’s degree in business administration and a master’s degree in corporate communications from Austin Peay State University.

He also holds an MBA and a PhD in Educational Leadership from Trevecca Nazarene University. He is married to Brittenee, an elementary school teacher, and together they share five beautiful children. Dr. George is also a life member of Kappa Alpha Psi Fraternity Incorporated.

Déranique Jones

Deranique Jones is currently in her second year of medicine at Meharry Medical College and is driven by a deep commitment to promoting health equity, improving access to health care for underserved populations, and serving the community.

Coming from a military family, she has had the opportunity to live in many places, but has called Nashville home since 2017. Prior to attending Meharry Medical College, she attended Lipscomb University where she co-founded and served as president of the Black Student Union, worked in service. project manager in the SALT office and has served on several committees dedicated to pursuing equity within the institution. She graduated cum laude with a Bachelor of Science in Biology with a minor in Spanish in fall 2020. Meharry’s commitment to service and alignment with the motto “Worship of God through service to humanity” led her to set her sights on Meharry, where she earned her master’s degree in health sciences in spring 2023.

Deranique believes in the transformative power of health care as a tool for social justice and devotes her studies to understanding the intersections of medicine, policy, and human rights. This summer, Deranique spent time conducting research with Dr. Michael Caldwell, where she studied the impact of the Mature Minor Doctrine Clarification Act on pediatric health care. Looking ahead, Deranique plans to pursue an OBGYN residency with an emphasis on serving underserved populations and eventually transition into academia, hopefully at her alma mater, Meharry Medical College. Beyond her studies, Deranique is the eldest of three girls and believes that being a big sister is her most important and rewarding job.

Deranique is also a member and vice-president of the Meharry Gospel Choir. When she’s not studying, she enjoys trying new coffeeshops in Nashville, hiking, hanging out with friends, and cooking.

Nicole Joseph

Nicole M. Joseph is a tenured associate professor of mathematics education in the Department of Teaching and Learning at Vanderbilt University. She also serves as associate dean for equity, diversity, and inclusion at Peabody College.

She directs the Joseph Mathematics Education Research Lab (JMEL), an intergenerational lab that focuses on training and mentoring its members on Black feminist and intersectional epistemological orientations. Using critical perspectives, JMEL produces theoretical and methodological studies that challenge hegemonic notions of objectivity to emphasize more humanizing, empowering, and transformative research.

Dr. Joseph’s research explores two lines of inquiry: (a) Black women and girls, their identity development, and their experiences in mathematics; and (b) gendered anti-blackness, whiteness, white supremacy, and how these systems of oppression shape Black girls’ learning, access, underrepresentation, and retention in mathematics across the pipeline. His scholarship is published in leading journals such as Educational Researcher, Review of Educational Research, Teachers College Record, Harvard Education Review, and Journal of Negro Education.

Her new book with Harvard Education Press is “Making Black Girls Count in Math Education: A Black Feminist Vision of Transformative Teaching.” She is also founder and director of the Black Girls Becoming Summer Research Institute, a two-week residential program at Vanderbilt for rising Black girls in 7th and 8th grade focused on a holistic STEAM curriculum. Her most recent funded project includes the co-design and validation of a mathematical identity measure that includes the barriers and strengths of intersectionality.

Dr. Joseph designed this measure with Black adolescent girls ages 8 to 13 and worked with districts to support math achievement and identity for all Black girls.

Sonya Thomas

Sonya Thomas is one of the founding parent activists of the first parent movement of its kind in Nashville, Tennessee. She leads Nashville PROPEL, an organization whose mission is to organize and train powerful parent leaders to ignite a movement that demands equitable policies and practices in Nashville public education.

This group of powerful parents aims to end educational inequality. Joining founding leaders in Memphis, St. Louis, San Antonio, Oakland, Atlanta and Dallas Fort Worth, Sonya is contributing to the growing national Powerful Parents movement. She believes that when children are inspired and given what they need, every child will reach their greatest potential. Sonya has served as an educational advisor to mayoral candidates and education-focused groups in Tennessee and challenged 2020 presidential candidates on their education plans.

She is the recipient of the 2023 Women Who Rock Education Award and was recognized in the 2023 and 2024 Nashville Power Poll as one of the Most Powerful People. Despite her accomplishments, she considers her most important role to be mother to her beloved sons, Jordan and CJ, and daughters, Sarah and Trinity. In her free time, she enjoys watching college football (Roll Tide), reading, and sewing.

Sonya fights for change in school systems and understands that partnerships between parents and educators play a critical role in improving educational outcomes for Black and Brown students, with literacy being key to this work. Her story, featured in APM reporter Emily Hanford’s “What the Words Say,” serves as a call to action to improve student literacy. Sonya and Nashville PROPEL’s work were featured in BET’s documentary series “Disrupt and Dismantle” by Executive Producer Soledad O’Brien. In 2023, their work was also highlighted in the Telly Award-winning “The Truth About Reading” from executive producer Nick Nanton.

Chezare A. Warren

Chezare A. Warren, Ph.D., is an accomplished author, artist, and intellectual. He is an associate professor of education policy at the Peabody College of Education and Human Development at Vanderbilt University. Dr. Warren is also an Associate Professor of Teaching and Learning, Affiliate Professor of African American and Diaspora Studies, and Principal Investigator of PROJECT POSSIBILITIES – an “arts-informed knowledge hub” committed to advancing solutions for evidence-based black education.

A racial and intersectional justice specialist and former high school mathematics teacher in Chicago, Dr. Warren is a 2019 Ford Postdoctoral Fellow of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine and the recipient of numerous national honors for his scholarship, including two early career awards from the American Educational Research Association. He is a 2023-24 TED-Ed Fellow, culminating in a widely viewed TED talk published in May 2024 on empathy – an area of his work committed to making education a more humanizing social enterprise for Black youth .

Author of “Centering Possibility in Black Education” (Teachers College Press, 2021) and the award-winning “Urban Preparation: Young Black Men Moving from Chicago’s South Side to Success in Higher Education” (Harvard Education Press, 2017), Dr. Warren . has written more than 40 peer-reviewed articles, reports and book chapters. He is a highly sought-after consultant on educational equity issues and has held visiting professorships at Stanford University, the University of Pennsylvania, and New York University. For more information, visit www.chezarewarren.com.

Andrea Williams is an opinion columnist for The Tennessean and curator of the Black Tennessee Voices initiative.