Fluency: The Lost Files, Ep. 4 w/ Dr. Rhianna Rogers

In this specially commissioned series with Grantmakers in the Arts, The Lost Files, Dr. Durell Cooper invites artists, community organizers, researchers, cultural and racial studies experts, and scholars to think about the narratives driving the arts and cultural sector – as it intersects with systems of structural racism and economic exclusion – and what opportunities for narrative change exist.  In this episode Dr. Cooper speaks with Dr. Rhianna Rogers. Rhianna C. Rogers is the inaugural director of the Center to Advance Racial Equity Policy (CAREP) and a policy researcher at the RAND Corporation. Rogers is an expert on cultural and ethnic studies, intercultural competencies and diversity education, cultural mediation, and virtual exchange programmatic development and implementation. Her approach centers on participatory action research and community engagement processes. Before RAND, Rogers has held administrative appointments and taught in Higher Education spaces (2002–present). She was most recently an associate professor of interdisciplinary studies (history and anthropology) and the coordinator of the Global Indigenous Knowledge program at State University of New York (SUNY), Empire State College. At SUNY, Rogers held two systems appointments, one as the Ernest Boyer Presidential Fellow at the Rockefeller Institute of Government (2019–2020) and the other as a SUNY Center for Online Teaching Excellence Fellow (2014–2021). Rogers was also a Stevens Initiative Visiting Professor of Anthropology at the American University of Technology in Kaslik, Lebanon (2017–2018) and served two terms as the SUNY Empire State College Coordinator of Interdisciplinary and Multidisciplinary Studies (2017–2019 and 2014–2017). Rogers developed and codeveloped several successful DEI initiatives in her career, including SPEC/Buffalo Project, a grant-funded and award-winning action-based diversity program focused on the development of culturally inclusive programming and upskilling populations to inform solution-making efforts in college and community environments (2010–present). Rogers holds a Ph.D. in comparative area studies from Florida Atlantic University.

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