People

Ashley-Rose is an internationally acclaimed Haitian-American poet, performer, and playwright from Boston Massachusetts. She has received numerous accolades during her career, including Urban Music Award Poet of the Year, the City of Boston’s Extraordinary Woman of the Year, and the ONEin3 Impact Award for being one of the most influential people in the City of Boston. Her poetry and storytelling has appeared on stages and in magazines across the globe, including but not limited to, the NAACP National Convention, Boston’s TEDx Roxbury, World Channel’s Stories From the Stage, Boston’s Opera Collaborative, Dutch Public TV, The American Repertory Theatre, Performer Magazine, Boston Center for the Arts, Abuja Literary Festival of Nigeria, BAM Festival, MusiConnects, American Theatre Magazine, Museum of Science, Boston, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, San Diego CityWorks Journal, Thalia Magazine, and numerous other media outlets. She has been selected to pen poems for companies including CHASE Bank, LISC, Americorps, ABCD, and many more non-profits organizations. Poetry is Ashley-Rose’s gift, but her passion is using the arts as a tool for education, community development, and collective healing. Currently, she works as a race and restorative justice specialist at Suffolk University, where she creates and leads trainings centering on diversity and inclusion, conflict transformation, racial healing, and truth-telling. She also teaches poetry as a Poet-in-Residence in Suffolk’s Theatre Department. Her play Roslindale Love Canal will premiere at the BCA in June 2022 and her highly anticipated book Zip Your Own Dress will be released in Winter 2021.

Senior historian and curator of social history, New York State Museum, and former museum educator with the Columbia County Historical Society. Ashley Hopkins-Benton is the author of Breathing Life Into Stone: The Sculpture of Henry DiSpirito and an avid photographer. Ashley earned a BA in art education and art studio from SUNY Potsdam and an MA in history museum studies from Cooperstown’s Graduate Program.

Ashley Judd is an actor, author, and humanitarian activist. She serves as a board member and global ambassador for YouthAIDS, a prevention program of Population Services International. As an activist, Judd has addressed the General Assembly of the UN, spoken at the National Press Club, testified before the Senate Foreign Relations, and served as an expert panelist at the Clinton Global Initiative. She is also active with Women for Women International, Equality Now, and other non-governmental organizations that focus on multi-faceted support for underserved populations. Judd is the author of *All That is Bitter and Sweet.*

Ashley Ramsden is the founder of the School of Storytelling. His unique methods of teaching voice and the skills of the storyteller have received international acclaim. He runs workshops, tours with his one man shows and is a speaker of sacred poetry.

Ashley Soebroto is the Fall 2023 intern at GBH’s Under the Radar.

Dr. Ashton Carter, is a nominee for Under Secretary of Defense for Acquisition, Technology and Logistics, Department of Defense. Carter, a physicist and current chair of the International & Global Affairs faculty at the Kennedy School, served as Assistant Secretary of Defense for International Security Policy from 1993 to 1996. He directed military planning during the 1994 crisis over North Korea's nuclear weapons program; was instrumental in removing all nuclear weapons from the territories of Ukraine, Kazakstan, and Belarus; directed the establishment of defense and intelligence relationships with the countries of the former Soviet Union when the Cold War ended; and participated in the negotiations that led to the deployment of Russian troops as part of the Bosnia Peace Plan Implementation Force. Dr. Carter managed the multi-billion dollar Cooperative Threat Reduction (Nunn-Lugar) program to support elimination of nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons of the former Soviet Union, including the secret removal of 600 kilograms of highly enriched uranium from Kazakstan in the operation code-named Project Sapphire. Dr. Carter also directed the Nuclear Posture Review and oversaw the Department of Defense's (DOD's) Counterproliferation Initiative. He directed the reform of DOD's national security export controls. In 1997 Dr. Carter co-chaired the Catastrophic Terrorism Study Group with former CIA Director John M. Deutch, which urged greater attention to terrorism. From 1998 to 2000, he was deputy to William J. Perry in the North Korea Policy Review and traveled with him to Pyongyang. In 2001-2002, he served on the National Academy of Sciences Committee on Science and Technology for Countering Terrorism and advised on the creation of the Department of Homeland Security. Dr. Carter was twice awarded the Department of Defense Distinguished Service Medal, the highest award given by the Department.

Ashwat is the executive director of Our Streets Minneapolis, an organization dedicated to improving walking, biking and rolling infrastructure in the city. He is a nationally recognized expert on building more just, sustainable and resilient transportation infrastructure. He represents District 8 (much of Minneapolis) on Metropolitan Council’s Transportation Advisory Board (TAB). He was appointed to Minnesota Department of Transportation’s Sustainable Transportation Advisory Committee (STAC). Ash has authored or co-authored numerous reports, including The Road to Clean Transportation: A Bold, Broad, Strategy to Cut Pollution and Reduce Carbon Emissions in the Midwest, and Arrive Together: Transportation Access and Equity in Wisconsin. He also authored the transportation section of St. Paul’s Climate Action Plan. Ash serves on the advisory board of Move Minneapolis, the steering committee of the Twin Cities Shared Use Mobility Center and on the Board of Directors of The Alliance for Metropolitan Stability.

Askia Muhammad Abu Bakr el Touré is one of the founding members of the black arts movement of the 1960s and 1970s. As a poet, editor, and activist, Touré helped define a new generation of black consciousness that sought to affirm through the arts the community's African heritage as a means to create an uplifting and triumphal identity for the modern black experience. Touré is the author of several books of poetry and has been published in numerous anthologies.

Askold Melnyczuk is Associate Professor for Creative Writing at UMass Boston. His publications include Ambassador of the Dead (Counterpoint Press, 2001), What Is Told, Blind Angel (novella, 2002); Short Fiction, Poems and Reviews in The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, The Boston Globe, The Nation, The Partisan Review

Asra Q. Nomani is an Indian-American journalist, author and activist known for her controversial work in the Islamic feminism and reform movements. She currently co-leads the Pearl Project at Georgetown University in Washington, D.C., investigating the murder of Daniel Pearl, a close friend and colleague her's. There she teaches investigative journalism while working with students to uncover the full truth behind Pearl's kidnapping and murder. The project's findings will be published by the Center for Public Integrity in early 2010. Nomani worked for 15 years as a correspondent for the Wall Street Journal. She is the author of two books, Tantrika: Traveling the Road of Divine Love and Standing Alone: An American Woman's Struggle for the Soul of Islam, and her work and life are featured in the documentary The Mosque in Morgantown. Nomani was born in Bombay, India and raised in Morgantown, West Virginia. She graduated from West Virginia University with a degree in journalism.

**Athena Z. Peters** is an Executive Producer at Warner Bros. Games-Turbine running Lord of the Rings Online. She has been in the online games business for over fifteen years contributing to multiple games such as City of Heroes, Guild Wars, and Dungeons and Dragons Online, as well as many others. She has a BFA in Directing Theatre from Texas State University. Her passion is telling truly immersive and connected stories and the tech space is the perfect place to push the boundaries of those experiences.