Joy Ann Weaver Havran, a native of Center, Texas, earned a BBA and an MBA in accounting from Texas Christian University (TCU). She is a self-employed CPA who manages family business interests. She was the first woman hired by the Fort Worth firm of KPMG (then Peat, Marwick and Mitchell) and later taught accounting at TCU. Her interests then turned to the volunteer community, where she has served on numerous boards, including the Fort Worth Symphony Orchestra, Dallas/Fort Worth Ballet, Shakespeare in the Park, Casa Mañana Theatre, the Junior League, the University Christian Church Board of Deacons, Cook Children's Medical Center, Texas Health Foundation, Trinity River Vision, the TCU College of Fine Arts, and Humanities Texas. Among other activities, she has served as president of Jewel Charity, the Junior Woman's Club of Fort Worth, and the Fort Worth Country Day (FWCD) Parent Faculty Association. She chaired the community-wide fundraising effort to endow the FWCD Track and Field in memory of her late son. She also chaired the Barrett Havran Memorial Big Taste of Fort Worth, benefiting Big Brothers Big Sisters, and was later named Honorary Chair Emeritus of the annual event. She has chaired the March of Dimes Gala, the Arts Council Gala, the Van Cliburn Closing Gala, Mayfest, the Event Committee for the Commissioning of the USS Fort Worth, and the Steering Committee for the Statewide Lonesome Dove 20th Anniversary Gala. She has received numerous awards, including the Fort Worth Business Press Legacy Award for Lifetime Volunteerism; Volunteer of the Year and Individual Partner of the Year for Big Brothers Big Sisters (BBBS) Lone Star; the Texas State Alumnae of Alpha Delta Pi Service to Community Award; Historic Fort Worth Patron Dinner Honoree; Junior League Sustainer of the Year; Cook Children's Medical Center Volunteer of the Year; and induction into the Center High School Hall of Honor. She currently serves as financial advisor to the Junior League of Fort Worth; serves on the board of the Greenwood Mount Olivet Cemetery Association; is a member of Leadership Fort Worth and the TCU Fine Arts Gala Committee; and chairs the boards of Humanities Texas and the TCU College of Fine Arts. Joy Ann and her husband, Robert (Bob), reside in Fort Worth.
Board of Directors
Biographies
Sean P. Cunningham is professor of history and associate dean for administrative affairs in the College of Arts and Sciences at Texas Tech University (TTU). A recipient of Texas Tech’s President’s Excellence in Teaching Award and a member of its Teaching Academy, he specializes in twentieth-century U.S. political history, with a particular focus on Texas and the American Sunbelt. He is the author of Cowboy Conservatism: Texas and the Rise of the Modern Right (Kentucky, 2010), American Politics in the Postwar Sunbelt: Conservative Growth in a Battleground Region (Cambridge, 2014), and Bootstrap Liberalism: Texas Political Culture in the Age of FDR (Kansas, 2022). In addition to his responsibilities as a university administrator, Cunningham serves on TTU’s Chair Mentoring Committee in collaboration with the university’s National Science Foundation ADVANCE Grant; is TTU’s Title IX liaison for academic affairs; is chair of the editorial board for Texas Tech University Press; was on the advisory board for Civil Counterpoints, a campus conversation series designed to stimulate thoughtful and respectful dialogue on volatile issues; and worked for the Provost’s Faculty Success Advisory Committee from 2017–2022. He also proudly serves on the Historical Advisory Board for TX4T, a non-profit organization that provides social studies teachers and students in K–12 schools with access to evidence-based historical content and best-practices pedagogy resources related to the teaching of Texas history. Cunningham received his PhD in American history from the University of Florida in 2007 and now lives in Lubbock with his wife and two daughters.
Daniel J. Gelo is dean and professor of anthropology emeritus and former Stumberg Distinguished University Chair at The University of Texas at San Antonio (UTSA). He holds PhD, MPhil, MA, and BA degrees in anthropology from Rutgers University. As a professor, he taught thirteen courses, including folklore, ethnographic film, and the history of anthropological theory. As dean of UTSA’s largest college for seventeen years, Gelo led eleven departments in the arts, humanities, and social sciences. He established new degree programs or independent departments in English, medical humanities, global affairs, museum studies, and philosophy and classics, among others. Gelo is an active researcher in the field of American Indian studies, specializing in the Indians of Texas and the Southern Plains. His publications include the public television documentary People of the Sun: The Tiguas of El Paso (1992) and the books Comanche Vocabulary (University of Texas Press, 1995), Comanches in the New West, 1896–1908 (with Stanley Noyes, University of Texas Press, 1999), Texas Indian Trails (with Wayne L. Pate, Republic of Texas Press, 2003), Comanches and Germans on the Texas Frontier: The Ethnology of Heinrich Berghaus (with Christopher J. Wickham, Texas A&M University Press, 2018), and Indians of the Great Plains (Second Edition, Routledge, 2019). He has won the UTSA President's Distinguished Achievement Award, the University of Texas System Chancellor's Council Outstanding Teaching Award, and the Presidio La Bahia Award for best book on early Texas history.
Todd Romero received his BA from the University of Colorado at Boulder and his MA and PhD from Boston College. He is an associate professor of history and associate dean of undergraduate studies in the College of Liberal Arts and Social Sciences at the University of Houston, where he teaches and researches colonial, Native American, public, and, increasingly, food history. Devoted to public education, he was the faculty director for five Humanities Texas summer teacher institutes held at the University of Houston. For his work in the classroom, Romero won the 2012 UH Provost Core Teaching Excellence Award and the 2016 Ross M. Lence Teaching Excellence Award in the humanities. In addition to a number of articles, Romero is the author of Making War and Minting Christians: Masculinity, Religion, and Colonialism in Early New England (University of Massachusetts Press, 2011). His research has been supported by fellowships or grants from the Newberry Library, the John Nicholas Brown Center for American Civilization at Brown University, the Huntington Library, the American Philosophical Society, the Massachusetts Historical Society, and the National Endowment for the Humanities.
San Antonio native John Phillip Santos is a freelance filmmaker, producer, author, and journalist. His articles on Latino culture have appeared in the Los Angeles Times, The New York Times, The Guardian, and the San Antonio Express-News. He is writer and producer of more than forty television documentaries for CBS-TV and PBS-TV, two of which received Emmy nominations. He has authored three books, including Places Left Unfinished at the Time of Creation: A Memoir, which was a finalist for the National Book Award. After receiving his BA degree in philosophy and literature at Notre Dame, he became the first Mexican American Rhodes Scholar and thus had an opportunity to earn his MA in English literature and language from St. Catherine’s College at Oxford University. In 1997, he joined the Ford Foundation as an officer in the Media, Arts, and Culture Program. After living in New York City for twenty years, he returned to his hometown in 2005. He has served on the President’s Advisory Commission on Educational Excellence for Hispanic Americans. He is presently professor of Borderlands humanities and creative nonfiction at The University of Texas at San Antonio and was the recipient of the 2017 Texas Medal of Arts for Literary Arts.
Born and raised in the small town of Freer, Texas, in a family of schoolteachers, Carlos Kevin Blanton is the Barbara White Stuart Professor of Texas History in the Department of History at The University of Texas at Austin. Blanton holds a PhD from Rice University, an MA from Southwest Texas State University (now Texas State University), and a BA from Texas A&I University (now Texas A&M University–Kingsville). He previously held faculty positions at Portland State University and Texas A&M University in College Station before joining UT Austin in fall 2024. Blanton’s books and articles examine the intersection of Chicana/o history with education, civil rights, immigration, politics, and Texas history. His George I. Sánchez: The Long Fight for Mexican American Integration (Yale University Press, 2014) won the NACCS Best Book Award; The Strange Career of Bilingual Education in Texas, 1836–1981 (Texas A&M University Press, 2004) won the Coral Horton Tullis Memorial Prize from the Texas State Historical Association; and his article “The Citizenship Sacrifice: Mexican Americans, the Saunders-Leonard Report, and the Politics of Immigration, 1951–1952,” published in Western Historical Quarterly (2009), won the Bolton–Cutter Award. Blanton also edited A Promising Problem: The New Chicana/o History (University of Texas Press, 2016) and has published additional articles in journals such as the Journal of Southern History, the Pacific Historical Review, Teachers College Record, and the Journal of American Ethnic History, as well as pieces for Texas Monthly.
Deborah Chadwick considers herself an East Texan, having lived in Center for thirty-three years. She was born in Salt Lake City, Utah, attended high school overseas, and is a graduate of Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois. Before moving to Texas, she lived in New York City for seven years, working with an advertising company. She met her husband, a native of Center, Texas, shortly after moving to Center. Chadwick and her husband have two daughters, Caroline and Elizabeth. Chadwick worked as community relations director for the local hospital before going into retail in 1998. She owned her retail shops until June 2024. Chadwick has been the president of the Shelby County Chamber of Commerce since 2017. Chadwick is a long-term member of the Center Woman’s Reading Club and stays active volunteering at the library, in the school system, and anywhere she is needed.
Elizabeth Chapman is an International Baccalaureate English teacher at Bellaire High School in the Houston Independent School District. As an Engaging Eurasia Fellow with the Davis Center for Russian and Eurasian Studies at Harvard University, she developed curriculum to teach about the Chernobyl disaster. She was awarded grants by the English-Speaking Union of the United States to participate in the Teaching Shakespeare Through Performance program at Shakespeare’s Globe in London as well as from the National Endowment for the Humanities to study the literature and history of the Great Plains at North Dakota State University. She was a Fulbright-Hays scholar to India and studied the German education system with the Goethe-Institut. She received the Linden Heck Howell Award for Outstanding Teacher of Texas History from Humanities Texas, the Outstanding Teacher Award from the Daughters of the Republic of Texas, and the Region 4 Outstanding Teacher of the Gifted Award from the Texas Association for the Gifted and Talented. She has been published in Southwestern Historical Quarterly, English in Texas, and the Houston Chronicle.
Trasa Cobern grew up in a military family and lived in West Germany when the Berlin Wall fell, leading to a lifelong passion for history and politics. She is a proud honors graduate of Texas A&M University, which she attended on a President’s Endowed Scholarship. She currently serves as the chief development officer for the faith-based nonprofit 6Stones Mission Network in the Dallas-Fort Worth area. Previously, she taught U.S. history for nine years and was the social studies department chair at Euless Trinity High School, named “Most Diverse High School in Texas.” There she won multiple recognitions: second place in 2018 for Outstanding American History Teacher in Texas by the Daughters of the American Revolution, the 2019 national Harold Simmons Excellence in Constitutional History Award from Constituting America, and others. She published two articles on the Medal of Honor and consulted with the new National Medal of Honor Museum on national educational resources. She has written over one hundred and twenty historical-themed social media blog posts for the Texas Veterans Land Board. As a teacher, she participated in many workshops hosted by Humanities Texas. She is a former city council member in Hurst, Texas. She is involved in local Chambers of Commerce and the 2023 Leadership Colleyville cohort and serves on the Mid Cities Women’s Clinic Board in Euless and the Hurst Parks and Recreation Board. She is married to Kyle Cobern, who also teaches history, and they have four adult sons.
Stacey Combest served as chair of the Texas Commission on Special Education Funding. She is a parent and guardian of a son with severe Intellectual Developmental Disabilities (IDDs). She currently serves as legislative director of Parents and Allies for Remarkable Texans, as a Texan advocate for Voice of Reason, and, formerly, as president of Texans for State Supported Living Centers. She also served on the Long-Term Care Subcommittee reporting to the Committee for Children with Special Needs (SB 643). She remains an ongoing educational resource for state legislators to rely on to help enact pro-disability legislation. She is an ADR Certified Mediator and a member of the Texas Association of Mediators. She received her BA in political science from the University of Houston and her JD from the University of North Texas at Dallas College of Law. She has three young adult children (Megan, Andrew, and Aaron) and is married to Bill Combest. They reside in Elkins Lake in Huntsville, Texas.
Yvonne Clement Cormier is a graduate of Southern Methodist University with a degree in biology. At SMU, she was the recipient of the SMU “M” Award, named to Mortar Board, and designated a Dedman Scholar. She attended graduate school as a Ford Foundation Fellow at Brown University in the Department of Biomedical Sciences and completed her PhD dissertation research in biochemical pharmacology at the Yale University School of Medicine. As a graduate student, she received the Ford Foundation Dissertation Award, the Citation Index Award, and the Pharmaceutical Association Young Investigator Award. She completed a postdoctoral research fellowship in biochemical pharmacology at the University of Texas Medical School in Houston where she also held a teaching appointment in autonomic pharmacology. She has published thirty-six scientific abstracts, twenty-six research papers, and eight book chapters. She is a graduate of Baylor College of Medicine and completed the Anesthesia Residency Program at the Baylor College of Medicine affiliated hospitals in the Texas Medical Center where she served as chief resident. Currently, she is a practicing anesthesiologist in Houston and, in 2021, was recognized by Texas Magazine as a top anesthesiologist in the Houston area. She is very active in the Houston philanthropic community where she serves or has served on the boards of the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, the Glassell School, the SMU Alumni Association, the Houston Area Parkinson's Society, Houston Parks, and Bayou Bend and on the advisory boards of the Houston Endowment, the Houston Junior League, and the Houston Ballet. She has chaired numerous community projects for charitable organizations, including Memorial Hermann Foundation’s Outreach for Breast Cancer Awareness, Child Advocates, United Cerebral Palsy, Aid to Victims of Domestic Abuse, March of Dimes, Legacy Community Health, and the Museum of Contemporary Arts. In recognition of her community service, she was selected as one of Channel 13's Women of Distinction, honored by the Social Book as a Houston Treasure, named to the Houston Chronicle’s Best Dressed Hall of Fame, selected as a 2021 Woman of Substance, and awarded the Park People’s Gia Award. She is married to Rufus Cormier and they have two adult children, Geoffrey Cormier and Claire Cormier Thielke.
Walter Díaz is the founding dean of the College of Liberal Arts at The University of Texas Rio Grande Valley (UTRGV) in Edinburg and Brownsville. He served a critical role in the establishment of a new interdisciplinary college that combined the resources and academic strengths from three legacy institution colleges. From 2011–2015, he was the dean of the College of Social Sciences at UTRGV legacy institution The University of Texas-Pan American. Prior to this, he was a full professor of political science in the Department of Social Sciences at the University of Puerto Rico at Mayagüez (UPRM). As a UPRM faculty member he served in various capacities such as interim chair of the Department of Social Sciences and director of its Center for Applied Social Research. His primary research interests have centered on the social roots and consequences of extreme events; the implications of technology on political participation and access (and success) to higher education; and other areas in which the application of social science methodology could be useful. He has served on the US Army Corps of Engineers Island Task Force and the Puerto Rico Tsunami Hazard Mitigation Program and with NOAA’s National Tsunami Hazard Mitigation Program. The research findings generated have been published in a wide variety of professional journals and have helped to inform the development of relevant public policy.
Austin Dickson is the chief executive officer of the Community Foundation of the Texas Hill Country. Originally from Waco, Dickson graduated from Texas Christian University and earned master’s degrees in religion from Emory University and the University of Edinburgh, Scotland. He also holds a master’s in public policy from Georgia Tech. In addition to his civic role, Dickson has been a university professor since 2007. He currently teaches nonprofit leadership in the Candler School of Theology at Emory as well as in the public administration department at The University of Texas at San Antonio. Dickson serves on the board of Philanthropy Southwest, an association of philanthropic organizations across seven states. He is also on the board of directors for the Upper Guadalupe River Authority, Texas Public Radio, and the KLRN Endowment Fund, which supports San Antonio's PBS station. Dickson and his family live near Kerrville, Texas.
Amy E. Earhart is associate professor of English and affiliated faculty of Africana studies at Texas A&M University. A 2020 Texas A&M University Presidential Impact Fellow and a 2019 Texas A&M University Arts and Humanities Fellow, Earhart has participated in grants and fellowships received from the National Endowment for the Humanities, American Council of Learned Societies, National Science Foundation, and the Mellon Foundation. In 2020, Earhart received a NEH-Mellon Fellowship for Digital Publication for her book length digital project "Digital Humanities and the Infrastructures of Race in African-American Literature." She has also won numerous teaching awards, including the University Distinguished Achievement Award from The Association of Former Students and Texas A&M University. Earhart’s scholarship has focused on examining infrastructures of technology and their impact and replication of "race," building infrastructure for digital humanities work, embedding digital humanities projects within the classroom, and tracing the history and futures of digital humanities, with a particular interest in the way that digital humanities and Black studies intersect. Her digital projects are constructed to expand access to Black humanities materials, as is the case with projects The Millican Massacre, 1868, DIBB: The Digital Black Bibliographic Project, and “Alex Haley’s Malcolm X: ‘The Malcolm X I knew’ and notecards from The Autobiography of Malcolm X” (a collaborative project with undergraduate and graduate students published in Scholarly Editing). Earhart has published scholarship on a variety of digital humanities topics, with work that includes a monograph Traces of Old, Uses of the New: The Emergence of Digital Literary Studies (U Michigan Press, 2015), a coedited collection The American Literature Scholar in the Digital Age (U Michigan Press, 2010), and a number of articles and book chapters in volumes including the Debates in Digital Humanities series, DHQ, DSH: Digital Scholarship in the Humanities, Digital Studies/Le champ numérique, The Bloomsbury Handbook to the Digital Humanities, and Textual Cultures. Her current book, A Compromised Infrastructure: Digital Humanities, African American Literary History and Technologies of Identity, is under advance contract with Stanford University Press. She also sits on a number of boards including the Project of the History of Black Writing, Journal of Computational Literary Studies, and Scholarly Editing.
Michael Fischer is the Janet S. Dicke Professor in Public Humanities at Trinity University. From 2000 to 2016, he served in a range of administrative positions at Trinity, including vice president for academic and student affairs and interim president. He is the author of numerous books and articles on literary criticism and aesthetics, including most recently How Books Can Save Democracy (Trinity University Press, 2025). Fischer holds a PhD and an MA from Northwestern University.
April Graham is a retired high school teacher. She volunteers with numerous organizations, including Memorial High School and St. Cecilia Catholic Church. She graduated from Texas Tech University with a bachelor’s degree in psychology with a minor in dance. She then went to the University of Houston where she received a bachelor’s degree in dance along with a secondary teaching certificate. She has served as the first vice president for Dance/Drill Team Directors of America and was a member of the Texas Dance Educators’ Association.
Francisco Guajardo is the chief executive officer of the Museum of South Texas History in Edinburg, a position he has held since September 2019. Previously, he was a professor and administrator at The University of Texas–Rio Grande Valley. He began his professional career as an English and history teacher at Edcouch-Elsa High School in his hometown of Elsa. Guajardo earned a BA in English, an MA in history, and an interdisciplinary PhD from The University of Texas at Austin. He has authored or coauthored three books and more than seventy articles.
Becky McKinley is a professional caterer and owner of Dining by Design, a catering company through which she dedicates a portion of her time serving nonprofit functions in the Amarillo area and working with culinary arts programs at local high schools. She is also an author and food journalist. She served on the Governor’s Commission for Women for five terms and was appointed by First Lady of Texas Anita Perry to the Advisory Council for the Texas Conference for Women. She was honored in 2010 as Silent Samaritan of the Year and is the recipient of the 2010 Amarillo Area Women’s Forum Distinguished Service Award and 7 Who Care Award. She has previously served on several boards in Amarillo. She received a bachelor of fine arts degree from Texas Tech University.
Amanda S. Nobles retired in June 2020 after thirty years with the Kilgore Economic Development Corporation (KEDC) and thirty-three years with the City of Kilgore. As KEDC’s executive director, she led all aspects of economic development for Kilgore, initially in a one-woman office and eventually managing a staff of four. Working for boards made up of industrial CEOs and plant managers, she learned business decision-making from expert practitioners and servant leaders. Adding economic development education to that, she acquired the skills and tools she needed to lead KEDC for thirty years. She is a longtime member of the Texas Economic Development Council, an IEDC Certified Economic Development Professional, and a certified Economic Development Finance Professional. She serves as a fellow of the Industrial Asset Management Council and received its Mary Jo Hannover Award for service by an economic developer. Her civic volunteer experience includes serving many years as president of the Gregg County Historical Commission, on the board and as an officer of Kilgore Historical Preservation Foundation, and as a member of the Texas Shakespeare Festival Guild organizational committee and charter member. She also serves on the Kilgore College Foundation Board of Directors and the REEL East Texas Film Festival Board of Directors. She is a past member of the Junior League of Longview, Leadership Longview, and Leadership Kilgore. A graduate of The University of Texas at Austin with a BA degree, she has been a teacher, a petroleum land manager, and an economic developer and is now a mentor to new economic development professionals. She lives at Lake Cherokee, Texas (near both Longview and Kilgore). She has three children, Shannon Hood, Jason Pratt, and Seth Nobles, and is grandmother to Darby Hood and Josie Nobles. She enjoys traveling, reading, spending time with her dog Ace, and hosting gatherings of family and friends at her home. She attends Crossroads Methodist Church.
Kirsten Ostherr is the Gladys Louise Fox Professor and founding director of Rice University’s Medical Humanities Research Institute. She holds a PhD from Brown University and an MPH from the UTHealth School of Public Health. Ostherr is the author of Medical Visions: Producing the Patient through Film, Television, and Imaging Technologies (2013), Cinematic Prophylaxis: Globalization and Contagion in the Discourse of World Health (2005), and Virtual Health (under contract with MIT Press). Her research on trust and privacy in digital health ecosystems has been featured in Marketplace Tech, The Atlantic, and STAT. Her work on humanistic AI and health equity includes “Artificial Intelligence and Medical Humanities,” “Patient Participation in AI for Health Curriculum,” the “Responsible AI for Health” curriculum (supported by the National Humanities Center), and the Center for Humanities-based Health AI Innovation (supported by the National Endowment for the Humanities). She received the Health Humanities Visionary Award from the International Health Humanities Consortium in 2024.
Carol Peterson is the retired general manager of the historic Gage Hotel in Marathon, Texas, where she worked for more than twenty-one years in senior leadership roles. During her tenure, the hotel was placed on the National Register of Historic Places and became a nationally recognized destination, named one of Condé Nast Traveler’s Top 10 Hotels in Texas. Her work at the Gage reflected a commitment to preservation and the role of historic places in sustaining rural communities. Peterson was appointed by Governor Rick Perry to the Governor’s Commission for Women, where she served two terms as chair. Her volunteer work has included many years with Frontier CASA, where she served as a special advocate for children in the foster care system. She continues to serve on the Brewster County Tourism Council, promoting tourism, economic development, and cultural vitality in the Big Bend region of Texas. She holds a BS from Texas Tech University and a culinary arts degree from the French Culinary Institute in New York City. She resides in Alpine, Texas, with her husband, Pete Peterson.
Sally Prater spent her last thirteen career years as the documents historian at the Association of Professional Flight Attendants (APFA) union headquarters overseeing the archives department. Representing over 25,000 American Airlines flight attendants, APFA is the largest flight attendant union in the U.S. Since the 1960s, the APFA archives preserved contracts, negotiations documents, lawsuits, NTSB investigations, and flight attendant memorabilia. In 2016, Prater initiated and coordinated a digitization project to preserve nearly one million document pages. In 2017–18, Prater worked with American Airlines corporate headquarters, the Federal Aviation Administration, Historic Fort Worth, and Gensler Contractors to provide input for the preservation of the 1950s stewardess college and lodge history as related to the new American Airlines corporate campus near Dallas-Fort Worth.
Ellen K. Ramsey is partner of Ramsey Petroleum LP and civic volunteer. She is a 2016 Gubernatorial appointee to the Humanities Texas Board and was reappointed in 2023 and 2024; she serves as chair of the Public Programs Committee and is a member of the Grants Committee and the Legislative Committee. She also serves on the boards of the Midland Chamber of Commerce and Midland Memorial Hospital and is a Junior League of Midland Sustainer and PTA Lifetime member. Ellen was featured in the 2017 Midland Reporter Telegram "52 Faces," 2018 recipient of the Centers for Children and Families "Ibby" award and 2022 recipient of the Rosalind Redfern Library Benefactor Award, all of which are recognitions for community service. She has previously served on the boards of the Midland County Public Library Foundation, Midland Habitat, George W. Bush Childhood Home, Pink the Basin, the Midland County Republican Party, the I-20 Wildlife Preserve, the City of Midland Hotel/Motel Tax, and 2023-24 Women for Nikki Haley state chair team. She was previously executive director of the Permian Road Safety Coalition, community relations director for Norfleet Strategies, and district director for State Senator Kel Seliger. Ramsey attended Baylor University and earned a BA in sociology from The University of Texas Permian Basin. She and her husband Scott Ramsey, managing partner of Ramsey Petroleum LP and former Midland County commissioner, have four children, Rachel and Daren Hallman and Mikayla and Tucker Ramsey.
Lt. Col. Kerry Reyna is a retired military officer who currently resides in San Antonio. She received her bachelor's degree in teaching from Sam Houston State University with an all-level teaching certificate in physical education. She has taught at the elementary, high school, and collegiate levels. She volunteers with numerous organizations, including the Texas Paralyzed Veterans of America.
Julie Ruehle is the CEO of the Ruehle Family Office. She serves on the board of the Austin AI Hub and actively supports early-stage innovation through her investing and advisory work. As a TEDx speaker, she has had her talk reach more than 250,000 views. She also serves as a Student Board Executive Committee mentor for the Kendra Scott Women’s Entrepreneurial Leadership Institute (KS WELI) at The University of Texas at Austin and is a frequent guest speaker in graduate-level business and entrepreneurship courses. Ruehle has also served on the boards of large nonprofit organizations, including the San Diego Humane Society, where she chaired the finance committee, and the Arthritis Foundation in Canada. She holds a BA in accounting from the University of Houston and an MBA from the Pepperdine Graziadio Business School. She also completed a Columbia University executive program in venture capital and private equity. Ruehle is involved with the WIN Angel Network and Ligo Partners.
Kathryn Vomero Santos is associate professor of English and affiliated faculty in women’s and gender studies, medieval and Renaissance studies, and global Latinx studies at Trinity University, where she served as codirector of the Humanities Collective from 2020–2024. She is a cofounder of the Borderlands Shakespeare Colectiva (BSC), a group of scholars, educators, artists, and activists who engage with Shakespeare in ways that reflect the lived realities of the U.S.-Mexico Borderlands. With the BSC, she has received major grants from the Mellon Foundation and the National Endowment for the Humanities as well as the Shakespeare Publics Award from the Shakespeare Association of America. Santos is also the coeditor of several books, including The Bard in the Borderlands: An Anthology of Shakespeare Appropriations en La Frontera, The Ethical Implications of Shakespeare in Performance and Appropriation, and Arthur Golding’s A Moral Fabletalk and Other Renaissance Fable Translations. Her forthcoming book, Shakespeare in Tongues, shows how contemporary artists and activists reimagine Shakespeare to explore the complex relationships between language and identity and to grapple with the ongoing legacies of settler colonialism, linguistic imperialism, and racism in the United States. In addition to her role on the board of Humanities Texas, Santos currently serves on the editorial boards of Shakespeare Bulletin and ACMRS Press and on the board of directors for the Friends of Friendship Park.
William Serrata was named president of the El Paso County Community College District in August 2012. He holds a bachelor’s degree from Texas A&M University, a master’s degree from The University of Texas at Brownsville, and a PhD in educational human resource development from Texas A&M University. During his career, he has fostered enrollment growth as well as increases in student retention, dual credit enrollment, and graduation rates with an emphasis on first-generation and Hispanic populations and establishing a college-going culture. He is an active member of the El Paso community and currently serves as a board member of Workforce Solutions Borderplex, the Greater El Paso Chamber of Commerce, and the El Paso Branch of the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas. He is chair of the board for the El Paso Collaborative for Academic Excellence. At the state level, he serves as the chair for the Texas Association of Community Colleges (TACC), co-chair of the TACC Business Advisory Council, chair of the TACC Texas Success Center Advisory Committee, and past chair of the Texas Student Success Council convened by Educate Texas. On the national level, he serves on the board of directors for the Lumina Foundation, as the immediate past chair of the board of directors for the American Association of Community Colleges (AACC), immediate past chair of the board of directors of Excelencia in Education, and advisory board member of the Higher Education Research and Development Institute (HERDI). He previously served on the National Student Clearing House Advisory Council and was a member of the 2015 class of the Aspen Institute Ascend Fellows. In 2019, he was selected as the Western Region Chief Executive of the Year by the Association of Community College Trustees (ACCT) and subsequently received the Marie Y. Martin Chief Executive Officer Award during the national conference. He and his wife Jessica have been married for twenty years and are blessed with two wonderful sons, Nathan and Joshua. He enjoys fishing, reading, and spending time with his family.
Hilary Haglund Walker is the regional president of wealth management and trust at Southside Bank. Walker is a native of Lufkin and a graduate of Lufkin High School. She is a former member of the world-famous Kilgore College Rangerettes dance/drill team, where she learned the values of commitment and hard work. She earned a bachelor of arts in English from The University of Texas at Austin and a doctor of jurisprudence from South Texas College of Law in Houston. Prior to her career in banking, Walker practiced law in Houston and Lufkin focusing on estate planning, education law, and litigation. Walker is very passionate about her East Texas community and has served on many nonprofit boards. Currently, she is a member of the Angelina College Board of Trustees, treasurer of the Angelina County Bar Association, treasurer of the Museum of East Texas Board, and she is a past president of the Junior League of Lufkin and the Lufkin Rotary Club. Walker is also a director of the Texas Lyceum, a group of statewide leaders with diverse opinions and expertise who focus on national and state issues. She and her husband have two boys. In her time away from work, she enjoys dance fitness, watching her boys excel in baseball and martial arts, and volunteering at her church, Lufkin’s First United Methodist Church.