We are happy to announce the 2023 HOPE Fair Housing Month Event – Choices for All Voices: Building an Equitable Future

Tuesday, April 25, 2023, 10am – 12pm EDT on Zoom

Please join us as our speakers cover wide-ranging topics concerning fair housing, civil rights, and justice!

Featured speakers (speaker bios are below):

Tim Wise, Anti-racism writer and educator

Pages Matam, Poet and multidisciplinary artist

Charles President, Programs & Compliance Director, US Department of Housing & Urban Development

Ayako Marsh Miranda, Appraisal bias expert

Please register now at this link: https://us02web.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_qoEr3nmGQOGBHj4FrmNbaQ (or please e-mail Rob Collins at [email protected] for the link)

For more information or for reasonable accommodations for people with disabilities, please call (305) 651-4673 or e-mail [email protected]

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Tim Wise is among the most prominent anti-racist writers and educators in the United States. He has spent the past 25 years speaking to audiences in all 50 states, on over 1500 college and high school campuses, at hundreds of professional and academic conferences, and to community groups across the country. Wise has also trained corporate, government, entertainment, media, law enforcement, military, and medical industry professionals on methods for dismantling racial inequity in their institutions, and has provided anti-racism training to educators and administrators nationwide and internationally, in Canada and Bermuda. Wise is the author of nine books, including his latest, Dispatches from the Race War (City Lights Books). Named one of “25 Visionaries Who are Changing Your World,” by Utne Reader, Wise has contributed chapters or essays to over 25 additional books and his writings are taught in colleges and universities across the nation. His essays have appeared on Alternet, Salon, Huffington Post, Counterpunch, The Root, Black Commentator, BK Nation and Z Magazine among other popular, professional and scholarly journals.

From 1999-2003, Wise was an advisor to the Fisk University Race Relations Institute, in Nashville, and in the early ’90s he was Youth Coordinator and Associate Director of the Louisiana Coalition Against Racism and Nazism: the largest of the many groups organized for the purpose of defeating neo-Nazi political candidate, David Duke.

Wise also appears alongside legendary scholar and activist, Angela Davis, in the 2011 documentary, “Vocabulary of Change.” In this public dialogue between the two activists, Davis and Wise discussed the connections between issues of race, class, gender, sexuality and militarism, as well as inter-generational movement building and the prospects for social change. More recently, he appeared in Chelsea Handler’s Netflix documentary Hello Privilege, It’s Me Chelsea on white privilege and racism in the United States.

Wise appears regularly on CNN and MSNBC to discuss race issues and was featured in a 2007 segment on 20/20. He graduated from Tulane University in 1990 and received antiracism training from the People’s Institute for Survival and Beyond, in New Orleans. He is also the host of the podcast, Speak Out with Tim Wise.

Pages Matam (They/He) is a genderqueer award-winning multi-hyphenate and agent of imagination born and raised in Cameroon, Central Africa, blossomed in the DMV and currently resides in Los Angeles.  They hold over a decade of experience in creative programming, performance art, as well as writing and directing with social justice lens. A pleasure advocate with work centering Black Queer liberation, Immigrant stories and aspects of African Futurism, they are a recipient of the DC Commissions Arts and Humanities Fellowship, a Callaloo Fellow, Internationational Poetry Slam Champion, author of the award-winning full-length collection The Heart of a Comet (Write Bloody, 2014), and Cultural Ambassador for the National Fair Housing Alliance.

Charles President currently serves as Director for the Programs and Compliance Program for Florida & Kentucky with the Office of Fair Housing & Equal Opportunity of the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), located in the Jacksonville Field Office. The Programs and Compliance Division is responsible for enforcing civil rights compliance of HUD-funded recipients such as states, cities, counties, and public housing authorities. Mr. President belongs to a select group of HUD employees who came to the Department with the distinction of being a public servant in state and local government, as well as the non-profit arena.  Prior to joining HUD in 2008, Mr. President served as a human services planner with the City of Jacksonville, Housing and Neighborhoods Department; as a fair housing specialist with a Fair Housing Assistance Program, Tallahassee, FL; and as a budget analyst with the State of Florida Justice Administrative Commission.  Mr. President also holds a Bachelor of Science in Political Science and a Master of Public Administration from Florida A & M University. 

Ayako Marsh Miranda, SRA is the principal consultant for A&B Real Estate Group. Based on over 22 years of experience, Ayako became an accidental advocate and a subject matter expert in appraisal, consulting, training, appraisal bias, diversity, public speaking, and litigation support. Her consulting practice focuses on the three pillars of appraiser diversity, homeowner education and appraisal bias solutions. Ayako is a public speaker in diversity and appraisal bias and clients include Appraisal Institute, Department of Housing and Urban Development, PAVE Interagency Task Force, National Fair Housing Training Academy, Congressional Black Caucus and WUSA9DC. Ayako was recently named a change agent by The New York Times and was featured in NPR, All Things Considered. Ayako recently completed Combating Appraisal Bias Roundtable/Webinars and Learning Pathway: Understand Racial Appraisal Bias located on the HUD Exchange. Ayako is the Past President (2023) of the AIDC Metropolitan Washington DC Chapter. She also served on the Appraisal Institute Teams: McKinley DEI Project, Bias Research-Solutions Project, Ambassador to the AUC Consortium Spelman, Morehouse and Clark Atlanta and AI Representative to The Appraisal Foundation Advisory Committee. Ayako was a subject matter expert on a yearlong investigation on appraisal bias in minority communities for WUSA9DC. Ayako holds a B.A. in economics from Howard University.