People

Angie Liou has worked in the community development and affordable housing field since 2004. Before assuming the position of Executive Director of Asian Community Development Corporation (ACDC) in Boston, she served as ACDC’s Director of Real Estate, overseeing the asset management of ACDC’s portfolio of 300+ units, shepherding projects in development, and was responsible for developing a pipeline of new projects. She previously worked as a consultant and project manager in Seattle and Philadelphia assisting nonprofits in creating affordable housing and community spaces. She has served as the project lead on over $150 million worth of projects. Angie received a Master of City Planning from the University of Pennsylvania with a concentration in Community Development. She received a Bachelor of Arts in Sociology at the University of Pennsylvania.

Angus Aynsley is the producer of *Waste Land*. Photo courtesy of Bruce Gilbert/Provincetown International Film Festival.

Ani Gjika is the author of Bread on Running Waters, a finalist for the 2011 Anthony Hecht Poetry Prize and 2011 May Sarton New Hampshire Book Prize. A native of Albania, Gjika moved to the U.S. at age 18 and earned an MA in English at Simmons College and an MFA in poetry at Boston University. Her translation of Luljeta Lleshanaku's Negative Space, for which she received an NEA and English PEN award, was published in 2018 from Bloodaxe Books in the UK and New Directions in the US. Her other honors include awards and fellowships from the Robert Pinsky Global Fellowship, the Banff Centre International Literary Translators Residency, and the Robert Fitzgerald Translation Prize. Gjika's own poetry has appeared in Seneca Review, Salamander, Plume, From the Fishouse, and elsewhere. Her translations from the Albanian have appeared in World Literature Today, Ploughshares, AGNI Online, Catamaran Literary Reader, Two Lines Online, From the Fishouse, and elsewhere.

Since graduating from HGSEs Arts in Education program in 2003, Anika has continued to dedicate her career to promoting arts education through nonprofit work in New York City. In 2003, she interned at the Studio Museum in Harlem. Following her internship, she next worked for Cool Culture, an urban nonprofit organization that partners with cultural institutions to provide education and free admission to families of Head Start students. At Cool Culture, Anika devoted her time toward developing education and outreach programs; of her accomplishments there, she is most proud of the fairs she organized, putting museums and Head Start representatives in direct contact with each other in order to generate new partnerships aimed at promoting arts education. Anika now serves as the School Programs Director at City Lore, a nonprofit organization focused on conveying the richness of New York Citys cultural heritage through educational programs and publications. Demonstrated by the fact that it is a research site for Project Zeros Qualities of Quality: Excellence in Arts Education and How to Achieve It study, City Lore is notable for its long history of bringing high-quality arts experiences to the community.

Anika Singh Lemar is a Clinical Professor at Yale Law School where she teaches the Community and Economic Development clinic (CED). CED’s clients include affordable housing developers, small businesses, community development financial institutions, farms and farmer’s markets, fair housing advocates, cooperatives, and neighborhood associations. Professor Lemar writes about land use, zoning, and affordable housing. She is currently the Editor-in-Chief of the American Bar Association’s Journal of Affordable Housing & Community Development Law and a Non-Resident Fellow at the Brookings Institute’s Metropolitan Policy Project. Professor Lemar previously practiced real estate law at a Connecticut law firm. She began her career as a Law Clerk for the Honorable Janet C. Hall of the U.S. District Court for the District of Connecticut and, later, as a Skadden Fellow and Staff Attorney at the Community Development Project of the Urban Justice Center in New York. Professor Lemar received her B.A. from Yale University and her J.D., from New York University School of Law, where she was a Root-Tilden-Kern Scholar.

Dr. Anila Asghar is an assistant professor at the School of Education, The Johns Hopkins University. She received her doctorate from Harvard University and carried out postdoctoral research at McGill University, focusing on the intersections among Islam, science, culture, and education. She has been working in the areas of education reform, peace studies, and conflict transformation in Pakistan and the US.

Anissa Dickerson is a midwife who works in Boston and Western Massachusetts. She went on her first MSF mission in 2015 to Bentiu, South Sudan. The project was based in a Protection of Civilians Camp where 120,000 Internally Displaced People live. She helped run the maternity unit and was part of the team that built up the sexual violence program.

Anissa Durham is an award-winning independent health care journalist. In 2026, she won the inaugural NAACP Image Award for Outstanding Literary Work – Journalism for her series "On Borrowed Time." Her reporting expertise includes racial justice, government accountability, investigative work, data, explanatory journalism, and infrastructure.

Anissa Gardizy (pronounced Ah-knee-sah Gar-dee-zee) is a technology and innovation reporter at the Boston Globe. She focuses on emerging industries and trends, culture, and breaking news involving both startups and publicly traded tech firms. She joined the Globe's business desk in January 2020. Anissa's byline has appeared in The Information, STAT, and the Telegram & Gazette. She graduated from Emerson College with a degree in journalism and has taken economics classes at Framingham State University.

Anita Berrizbeitia is Professor of Landscape Architecture and Director of the Master in Landscape Architecture Degree Programs at the Harvard University Graduate School of Design. Her research focuses on design theories of modern and contemporary landscape architecture, the productive aspects of landscapes, and Latin American cities and landscapes. She was awarded the 2005/2006 Prince Charitable Trusts Rome Prize Fellowship in Landscape Architecture.

Anita Diamant is an award-winning journalist and author of five books about contemporary Jewish life including *The New Jewish Wedding* and *Choosing a Jewish Life: Guidebook for People Converting to Judaism and for their Family and Friends.* She lives in Newton, Massachusetts, with her husband and daughter.

Anita Harris is the author of the New Cambridge Observer blog, president of the Harris Communications Group, and a former PBS journalist.

On October 6, 1991, Anita Hill's life was dramatically and irrevocably changed when her charges of sexual harassment against a former employer, Clarence Thomas, were made public on the eve of his confirmation as a Supreme Court justice. In the ensuing days, Hill was grilled by the Senate Judiciary Committee about the graphic details of the alleged harassment and about her personal life. Her compelling testimony before the committee was broadcast live around the globe, sweeping her from the quiet obscurity of her life as a professor of law at the University of Oklahoma. Her charges produced a stunning collision of race and gender issues, and reactions to her and her story were highly polarized; some viewed her as a hero and a martyr, while others vilified her as mentally unstable, a liar, and even a racist. An internship with a local judge had turned her ambitions to the field of law, and she sought and won admission into Yale University's demanding School of Law, where she was one of 11 black students in a class of 160. After graduation, she took a full-time job as a professional lawyer with the Washington law firm of Ward, Harkrader, and Ross.

Anita Metzler has worked at the New England Aquarium since 2004. She started her Aquarium career as a Program Educator where she attained many unique and fantastic skills before moving on to manage the Lobster Facility in 2005. Her prior research experience includes crab ecology, plant genetic variation, and zebrafish developmental biology.

**Anita P. Sharma, Esq.,** is the Executive Director of the PAIR Project. She serves as co-chair of the Liaison Committee on Asylum for the New England Chapter of the American Immigration Lawyers Association and is a steering committee member of the Boston Bar Association's (BBA) Delivery of Legal Services Section. She co-chaired the BBA's Immigration Section and is currently a steering committee member. Anita received the Unsung Heroine of Massachusetts Award from the Massachusetts Commission on the Status of Women, and BBA's John G. Brooks Public Service Award for outstanding representation of asylum-seekers and mentorship to hundreds of pro bono attorneys. PAIR, the Political Asylum/Immigration Representation Project (PAIR) is a nationally recognized pro bono model that works to secure safety and freedom for asylum-seekers who have fled from persecution throughout the world and to promote the rights of immigrants unjustly detained. PAIR provides hope and a new beginning to asylum-seekers, torture survivors and immigration detainees.