THE PTP
TEAM

Marisa Tirado,
Co-Founder & Curator

        Marisa Celina Tirado (she/her/hers) is a Latinx poet from Chicago and New Mexico. Currently an MFA student at the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, she studies poetry and translation. She has previously worked at 826CHI and University of Chicago, and continues to pursue a career furthering representation and activism in the creative classroom. She has received fellowships from Image Journal and Kenyon Review, and can be read in Colorado Review, Michigan Quarterly Review, and elsewhere. Marisa’s poetry is influenced by Terrance Hayes, Ishion Hutchinson, Shane McCrae, Fatimah Asghar, and Natalie Diaz. Follow @marisatirado on Instagram.

Anna Li Bryant,
Co-Founder & Curator

        Anna Li Byrant is a high school writing teacher at a public charter in Chicago. She teaches because it intersects all her passions: stories, students, and social justice. Anna is experienced in organizing and facilitating justice-centered learning experiences, including professional development for teachers and community-based events at her school. In addition to teaching, she is a part of the Hollyhock Program through Stanford University's CSET. In her spare time, Anna loves to write and has been the recipient of the Lowell-Grabill award for her poetry, non-fiction, and fiction.

Pam Segura,
Event Facilitator

        Pam Segura (she/her/hers) is an Afro-Latinx educator, facilitator, writer, and musician from the Bronx. Her education, writing, and music are driven by a commitment to collective healing, love, and peace. Some of her pedagogical and artistic influences include Jesmyn Ward, Toni Morrison, Lightnin' Hopkins, Alice in Chains, and Amy Goodman. Pam's facilitation experience has been shaped by her work at the Institute for Teachers of Color at the University of Riverside, California; the Hollyhock Teaching Fellowship at Stanford University; on the anti-gentrification curriculum committee for the Decade of Fire film; and with the New York Collective of Radical Educators (NYCoRE), a group of educator-activists based in New York City. Most importantly, though, Pam channels the wisdom and liveliness of her mother Francisca — an immigrant from the Dominican Republic  — when bringing people together. She understands facilitation as a social, emotional, and political technology that can invite folks to co-generate a response to our current material conditions. She is a recipient of a Fulbright-Hays scholarship to study literacy with the University of Massachusetts, Amherst and the University of Accra, Ghana; she will travel with other educators to Ghana (and no doubt reimagine her facilitation skills) in the summer of 2021.

Jacque Baker,
Event Consultant

        Jacquelin Baker is an avid writer and poet with nearly 20 years of experience in education and uses her background as a former teacher and her expertise in race and identity theory, systems thinking, and culturally responsive pedagogy to coach and develop teachers, school leaders, and professionals in various fields across the city. She is also the co-founder, along with Kelli Hobson, of Liberating Leaders, a consulting organization dedicated to developing culturally responsive leaders who dismantle inequitable systems and empower others to do the same. Jacque is currently pursuing her doctorate in education, specializing in curriculum and instruction, and designs curricula for children and adults for organizations seeking to strengthen the cultural competency of their stakeholders. Inspired by writers like Sandra Cisneros, Nikki Giovanni, Zora Neal Hurston, Du Bois, Maya Angelou, Toni Morrison, and countless others, Jacque seeks to use her platforms and love of poetry and prose to amplify and celebrate the invaluable stories, lives, and contributions of BIPOC.

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