Camille A. Brown was named the Claude and Alfred Mann Endowed Artist in Dance at the University of Southern California Glorya Kaufman School of Dance. A five-time Tony Award nominee, Brown is the artistic director and founder of Camille A. Brown & Dancers. She made history as the first Black artist to direct on the Metropolitan Opera’s main stage with Fire Shut Up in My Bones, and became the first Black woman to direct and choreograph a Broadway play since Katherine Dunham in 1955 with her revival of for colored girls who have considered suicide/when the rainbow is enuf. Brown is currently slated to direct and choreograph an upcoming Broadway revival of Dreamgirls.
Brown received her bachelor of fine arts degree in dance from the University of North Carolina School of the Arts.
Lauren Massimo is the Anthony Buividas Chair in Gerontology at the University of Pennsylvania School of Nursing. Dr. Massimo, an associate professor of nursing in the department of biobehavioral health sciences, is known for her research in gerontological nursing. Her work centers on neurodegenerative diseases, particularly frontotemporal degeneration, and the cognitive, behavioral, and caregiver challenges associated with aging and dementia. She currently serves as co-director of the Penn Frontotemporal Degeneration Center.
An alumna of Pennsylvania State University, Dr. Massimo earned her master’s degree and Ph.D. from the University of Pennsylvania School of Nursing.
Ashley Valanzola has joined the faculty of Clark University in Massachusetts as the David P. Angel Endowed Professor in Holocaust Pedagogy and Antisemitism Studies in the university’s Strassler Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies. Dr. Valanzola is a historian of Holocaust studies and modern France, whose research focuses on memory, women’s and gender history, and museums. She is the author of When She Remembered: Seven Women Who Transformed French Holocaust Memory (Indiana University Press, 2026) and the forthcoming Afterlife of the Sacred: Holocaust Museums and American Jewish Identity (Purdue University Press).
Dr. Valanzola earned her bachelor’s degree in history from the United States Naval Academy. She holds a master’s degree in diplomacy from Norwich University in Northfield, Vermont, and a Ph.D. in history from George Washington University.