Giavanna Munafo
Giavanna Munafo has designed and delivered training and professional development programs for over thirty years. Her work is dedicated to advancing excellence through diversity and inclusion. Giavanna assists organizations, departments, work groups, and individuals who seek to achieve more just and equitable environments.
Giavanna has developed and facilitated strategic planning, programs, and training initiatives for clients such as The Vermont Studio Center, American Jewish World Service, the National Women’s Studies Association, Phillips Exeter Academy and Emory University. She also has conducted benchmarking research and provided external review services to a variety of educational and non-profit organizations.
Prior to becoming a consultant, Giavanna served as director for training and educational programs in the Office of Institutional Diversity & Equity at Dartmouth College. There, she provided a wide-ranging menu of educational curricula, programs, and services for academic and administrative departments at every level of the institution. Through strategic partnerships, Giavanna advanced institutional goals related to equal opportunity and affirmative action, inclusion, respect, and workplace effectiveness.
Giavanna began her professional career leading college women’s centers – first as program coordinator of the University of Virginia Women’s Center, and then as director of the Center for Women & Gender at Dartmouth College. As founding chair of the women’s centers division of the National Women’s Studies Association, she created WRAC-L, the national list-serve dedicated to furthering women’s center networking and resource sharing.
Giavanna is certified to deliver national workplace effectiveness and diversity curricula from Franklin Covey (The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People), the Collaborative Solutions Group (From Debate to Dialogue), and the Anti-Defamation League (Campus of Difference). She is a trained mediator and is skilled in conflict resolution, crisis intervention, and campus/workplace policy and protocol design, review, and revision. A certified domestic and sexual violence crisis counselor and advocate, Giavanna served on the Board of Directors at WISE of the Upper Valley. She currently serves as an equity and inclusion advisor to The Family Place, a parent child center in Norwich VT.
Giavanna holds a BA and a PhD from the University of Virginia and an MFA from the University of Iowa, and she has been teaching writing, literature, and women’s, gender and sexuality studies courses to undergraduate students since 1983. She has published scholarly work in the fields of feminist and critical race studies and is the founding coordinator of the MeToo Teaching Collaborative. Giavanna is also a poet whose work has appeared in various literary journals.
Rachel Edens
Rachel Edens is an advocate, activist, educator, writer, and organizer dedicated topromoting equity for under-represented, non-dominant, and marginalized communities and individuals. Rachel believes in ensuring access to education and resources to individuals of all backgrounds. Her work focuses on advancing equity across all intersections of identity, educating for civic engagement ,and community asset building. For over a decade , Rachel has consulted professionally in the areas of social justice education, restorative justice, and cultural sensitivity, particularly advocating for the rights of the chronically ill and differently-abled. A native North Carolinian, Rachel served as the inaugural Chief Equity and Human Rights Officer in Buncombe County, North Carolina. In her nine years as a relocated Vermonter Rachel has worked as Assistant Dean and Advisor to First Generation and Low-Income Students and to Black Students at Dartmouth College and held community outreach and programming roles with Meeting Waters YMCA and the Vermont Humanities Council. In March of 2023 she joined the State of Vermont Department for Children and Families in the inaugural position of Director of Race, Gender, Equity, and Accessibility.
Rachel holds a BA in English and African American Studies from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, a Masters of Public Administration from East Tennessee State University, and is currently a doctoral student at the University of Massachusetts-Boston.
Sandy Spiegel
For sixteen years, Sandy Spiegel has held positions of increasing leadership at educational institutions in VT and NH. In each role, she worked to further diversity and inclusion on campus and in the workplace. At the University of Vermont she served as Director of ALANA (the African, Latino, Asian, Native American Student Center; currently, The Mosaic Center for Students of Color) and the Director of Strategic Programs. At Dartmouth College, Sandy first served a counselor in the student health center, then as Assistant Director of the Office of Affirmative Action, and finally as the Director of Recruiting and Diversity in Graduate Studies. While at Dartmouth, Sandy also provided leadership as interim director of both the Center for Women and Gender and the Office of Pluralism and Leadership. She has consulted independently at the New Hampshire Charitable Foundation in Concord, NH and is the co-author with Timothy Shiner of “Ally Immersion: A New Look at Anti-Racist Work” (The Vermont Connection 2003.1).
In all these positions, Sandy worked with graduate and undergraduate students, faculty and staff facilitating groups and serving on campus wide committees focused on diversity and inclusion. Sandy’s ongoing professional development in this area includes: the Social Justice Training Institute, the Association of American Colleges and Universities, and the President’s Leadership Series. She also represented Dartmouth in the Leadership Alliance, a partnership between Historically Black Colleges and Ivy League institutions.
Sandy retired in 2010 from Dartmouth College and now focuses on volunteerism in her community, which includes serving on the board of Safeline, Inc. In 2016 she became a registered yoga teacher and has taught yoga to children for the past four years. Before working in higher education, Sandy was an early childhood educator and school counselor. She holds a degree in Home Economics and Early Childhood Education from Spelman College and a Masters in Counseling Psychology from Antioch New England University.
Semi-retirement has offered Sandy the opportunity to return to her old love of weaving, showing her work for the first time in a community gallery in August 2017. She is also a gardener and outdoor enthusiast. Sandy has lived in Vermont for forty-seven years, where she and her spouse raised two children, and she would be happy to show you pictures of their four year-old granddaughter.
Nora Yasumura has an extensive professional background and expertise in understanding student development, social identity and equity, community organizing, inclusive leadership, and mindfulness practice. As a multiracial woman, she has been inspired to build cross-group coalitions, expand cultural competency, and affirm intersections of identity. Her passion for facilitating productive discussions on sensitive topics related to race, culture, sexuality, gender, ability, nationality, and socioeconomic class is evident from the moment you meet her.
Nora has served as an independent diversity consultant and trainer since 2012 and has worked with such institutions as Wellesley College, Harvard University, Tufts University, Bennington College, Boston College, Hotchkiss School, Berkshire School, IvyLeader, NAAAP, Iora Health, and New Sector Alliance. She has presented at NCORE (National Conference on Race and Ethnicity), ECAASU (East Coast Asian American Student Union) Conference, and the Let’s Talk: Asian American and Mental Health Conference at the Harvard School of Education.
Prior to consulting, Nora served as Dartmouth College’s Assistant Dean of Student Life and Advisor to Asian and Asian American Students for over 12 years. Under her leadership, Dartmouth was named one of the best colleges and universities for Asian Pacific Americans. She also founded several innovative collegiate level resources such as the Diversity Peer Leadership Program (DPP), the First Generation College Student Network, the Inter-Community Council, and the Pan Asian Wellness Initiative. In addition to her administrative role, she worked for two years as a part-time additional reader for the Dartmouth College Admissions Office.
Nora also has experience working with K-12 independent day and boarding schools. She was the founding Director of the Global Community Initiative at the Cardigan Mountain School in New Hampshire and served as a Life Skills teacher and diversity consultant at the Indian Mountain School in Connecticut. Currently, she is a Class Dean and Director of Student Clubs and Affinity Groups at the Hotchkiss School in Connecticut.