Meet the Faculty Webinar Series

Representative Michele K. Rayner-Goolsby
District 70 Florida House Rep & Friend of SJCO

MICHELE RAYNER MADE HISTORY IN FLORIDA — AND SHE’S JUST GETTING STARTED.

Civil rights and social justice attorney Michele Rayner (she/they) made history in 2020 when she was elected as the first openly queer Black member of the Florida legislature and immediately established herself as one of the strongest advocates for underserved communities. In her first term, Rep. Rayner has brought back resources to communities in the Tampa Bay Area by making legislative alliances across the aisle while challenging the Governor and her colleagues in the Florida Legislature. Now, she’s ready to do more for her constituents by bringing their fight back to Tallahassee.

Michele was raised by a family of changemakers in Pinellas County. Her parents both integrated the University of South Florida in the early 1960s, with her mother going on to become one of the first Black social workers in St. Petersburg and her father successfully putting himself through engineering school while working in a warehouse. Her parents established themselves as community leaders and set an example for Michele with their dedication to service.

After law school, Michele joined the Hillsborough County Public Defender’s office, a position she was drawn to because she felt it was where she could do the most good for the most vulnerable in her community. While serving as a public defender, she learned the importance of truly listening to and steadfastly advocating for clients who have limited agency.

Michele was called to ensure justice again when she became an attorney for Markeis McGlockton’s family, working alongside civil rights attorney Ben Crump. Markeis was shot and killed in an altercation in a Clearwater parking lot, reigniting the debate over Florida’s controversial “Stand Your Ground” law 6 years after the death of Trayvon Martin. During the 2019 trial, the killer was found guilty of manslaughter and sentenced to 20 years in prison. The experience made it clear to Michele that running for the legislature could help her do more to fight unjust laws like Stand Your Ground and prevent future tragedies from occurring.

Growing up, Michele’s father always told her: “Help others, do the right thing and most of all, always keep your head up high.” To this day, Michele keeps her head up and will continue to do so as a leader for her constituents, ensuring an equitable recovery from COVID, protecting voting rights, and demanding real justice for underserved communities.

Michele currently lives in St. Petersburg with her wife Bianca and their dogs.

To find out more about Michele visit: micheleforflorida.com/

Margo Hinton '22
Radio Host and SJCO Alumna

Margo Hinton (she/her) is an author, entrepreneur, teacher and coach on a mission to transform the lives of young people. She has been a teacher and a Coach for 28 years inspiring children to find and follow their passion. Margo has coached basketball, softball and volleyball. She’s helped her student’s dance, sing, draw, run, drum and shoot their way toward success.

Under Margo’s leadership and guidance her school has been able to donate over $100,000 to local and national charities. Her ability to motivate children and lead them in philanthropic endeavors has been recognized by the Pennsylvania Middle Level Educators Association with the Ann Monoit Award for community service.

Margo is a three time Hall of Fame Inductee. She was inducted into the Indiana University of Pennsylvania Athletic Hall of Fame in 2002. She was inducted into the South Hills High School All-Sports Hall of Fame and the Pittsburgh City League Hall of Fame in 2018. Margo continues to play basketball and has no plans of slowing down.

Margo has a book, a blog and a podcast which all highlight her desire to inspire others. Her children’s book is titled Lailah’s Lesson: You Can Do Anything! The book encourages our youth to believe in themselves. Her blog is called Best Thing I Heard Today, where her goal is to infuse positive messages around every day conversation. Her podcast is called Give It Up. Margo and her guests discuss sports, education and community engagement and leave the listener with actionable steps to be applied in their own lives. The Give It Up Podcast will celebrate its one-year anniversary in October.

Margo Hinton is a lifelong City of Pittsburgh resident. She attended the Pittsburgh Public Schools. She received a basketball scholarship to Indiana University of Pennsylvania. Margo has a Bachelor’s of Science Degree in Health and Physical Education. She loves God, her family, her dog and Allen Iverson.

Margo’s Motto is Live To Give.
For more information, go to https://margohinton.com/

Sebastian Stewart '23
Community Health Worker and

SJCO Alumni

Sebastian (they/them) is a graduate student at Prescott College in Social Justice and Community Organizing. They earned their undergraduate degree in Women and Gender Studies from UNCG, in Greensboro, NC. They live in Goose Creek, SC, where they are a Community Health Worker. Identifying as a Disruptor, they work with social justice organizations including AFFA, South Carolina. United for Justice and Equality, and Transgender Awareness Alliance. They strongly believe we live on stolen land, black lives matter, no human is illegal, everyone deserves health care, love is love, and science is real. They identify as pro-choice, anti-racist, and a Democratic Socialist.

Celia Robidoux '22
Director of LGBTQ+ Services, Arizona SAAF, and SJCO Alumna

Values-based leadership is at the core of who Celia (she/they) is. She has worked in her community advocating for social justice on various issues since they were 12 years old. Service means a lot to them, and she sees it as a great responsibility toward a better community for all.

In Tucson, they serve with community-based campaigns and coalitions such as Youth on the Rise, a local collaborative to engage opportunity youth, as well as nationally with Opportunity Nation, which is a national network of advocates who have personal experience with barriers to advancement in America. They also serve on Pima County’s first Safety + Justice Community Collaborative as part of the MacArthur Foundation-funded effort to safely reduce the local jail population and are a current member of class Nine of the American Express Leadership Academy at the ASU Lodestar Center.

Cirien Saadeh, Ph.D.
Faculty, Ph.D. in Sustainability Education Alumna, Radio Host

Dr. Cirien Saadeh (she/they) is an Arab-American journalist and educator who works at the intersections of journalism, social movement development, experiential education, and sustainability. She was trained as a community organizer by the former Organizing Apprenticeship Project (now Voices for Racial Justice). She has written for local, national, and international publications and is committed to using journalism as a tool in the pursuit of justice for all historically disenfranchised communities. Saadeh produces and hosts the Radical News Radio Hour and the new podcast, At the Intersections, and is the founder of the Journalism of Color Training Center. Saadeh is the outgoing Executive Director for The UpTake - a community news organization - and Associate Faculty at Prescott College where she received her PhD in Sustainability Education in 2019.

As part of her doctoral program, she developed a theory “Journalism of Color,” which asks, in short: how do we develop sustainable journalism platforms and spaces in historically-marginalized communities and how do we create journalism methodologies which build community power and resilience? Saadeh is currently conducting research at the intersections of journalism, social movements, and cooperative sustainability, as well as the applications of racial equity impact analyses to the practice of community journalism.

More information on Saadeh’s work can be found at www.journalismofcolor.com and in her resume.

April Ruth Hoffmann (she/ella), PhD
Faculty, Master of Arts in Social Justice & Community Organizing

Ruth is a Prescott College Associate Faculty for our Masters of Arts in Social Justice & Community Organizing program! The subjects that she teaches are cultural geography, decolonizing methodologies, community-centered fundraising, abolition discourse, antiracist social and political organizing, Capstone projects, and geographies of violence and injustice in 20th-century US history. Ruth's teaching approach/pedagogy is student-centered, antiracist liberation-aligned affirming practices; qualitative methodologies, critical ethnography, community-aligned advocacy research; praxis-based experiential learning.

Outside of the classroom, Ruth prioritizes volunteering for grassroots organizations founded and led by currently and formerly incarcerated colleagues. Her research illuminates the impact of ethically driven scholar-activism across multiple geographic scales. She is the founder of Mindful Networks and facilitates affirming online community engagement for higher education graduate school communities!

Her decade in the classroom is coupled with over 30 years of community organizing, mainly focused on hunger relief, antiprison activism, resource-sharing libraries, mutual aid solidarity efforts, and education policy reform. Her scholarly work as a biomedical inequality ethnographer uses a critical geography framework to analyze narratives of health geographies. Namely, she examines the impacts of powerful stories that people tell about their healing work and the worlds created and dismantled through those stories. She also made over 2,500 homemade dishes for community meetings and enthusiastically stuffed tens of thousands of envelopes in solidarity with causes large and small. She loves teaching, and her goal is to educate and create opportunities for the next generation of social and political movement leaders.