1959 Highlander Way · New Market,
TN 37820 · phone: (865) 933-3443 · fax: (865) 933-3424
e-mail: hrec@highlandercenter.org
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1959 Highlander Way · New Market,
TN 37820 · phone: (865) 933-3443 · fax: (865) 933-3424 |
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StaffDirector | Administration Team | Buildings & Grounds Team DirectorPam McMichael
Pam is a Kentucky native and long time social justice activist in her home community of Louisville. She is a co-founder of SONG, Southerners on New Ground and for eight years served as co-director of the organization. For two decades now, Pam’s organizing and cultural work have focused on connecting people and issues across difficult divides with particular focus on helping build a strong anti-racist movement. She has extensive nonprofit administrative and management experience in both social change and social service organizations, and is a national fellow with the Rockefeller Foundation’s leadership project to address the growing crisis in U.S. democracy. Administration TeamKristi Coleman Kristi is Highlander's Office Manager and We Shall Overcome Fund administrator. She handles the day-to-day tasks of managing the office and also handles requests from groups and individuals who want to rent the Workshop Center and/or Horton House for day visits or overnight stays. As the We Shall Overcome Fund administrator, she processes applications and answers questions for people who want to apply to the We Shall Overcome Fund. Kristi is also the contact person for our Children's Justice Camp. Rob Reining Rob Reining has been with Highlander since May 2007 as Bookkeeper/Financial officer, and in 2007 he accepted the position of Operations Coordinator. Rob has primary responsibility for coordinating all organizational financial objectives and obligations, including developing budgets for annual and interim periods, developing cash management investment strategies, and maintaining a financially solvent organization. He is also responsible for personnel/Human Resource management and for coordinating the administrative, financial, workshop center, and building and grounds functions of Highlander so that time and resources are utilized to their maximum potential. He focuses on planning, fiscal management, Human Resources and personnel management, policies and procedures, and the daily operations of a place-based center. Prior to joining Highlander, Rob served as bookkeeper and financial manager for Appalachian Community Fund. He has served on the Board of Community Shares of Tennessee and on the Finance Committee of Oak Ridge Environmental Peace Alliance. Rob grew up at Highlander, moving here with his family in 1978, and so has really just returned home. His mother, Nina Reining, has been the Workshop Center Coordinator for over 30 years. Buildings and Grounds TeamJohnny Bailey Johnny is Highlander's farm manager. He is from Tennessee and did odd jobs at Highlander in the 1980s and early 1990s. Johnny oversees the hay fields, orchards, and lawns and the maintenance of the workshop center, office, library and resource center, barn, and five residences on the Highlander farm. Development & Communications TeamJardana Peacock Jardana Peacock incorporates a social justice analysis and grassroots and cultural organizing philosophies into her development work with community groups. Most recently Peacock served as the Community Education Coordinator for the Anne Braden Institute for Social Justice Research at the University of Louisville. She has a M.A. in Pan African Studies from the University of Louisville (2008). Her thesis is titled, “Geographies of Mentorship: Black Women and the Civil Rights Movement, a case study of Ella Baker and Septima Clark,” and focused on the mentoring philosophies and participatory leadership styles of Black women in the Civil Rights Movement. Peacock organizes around issues of economic human rights, art and social change, anti-racism, intergenerational movement building, youth leadership, queer rights and spirituality/health. She is a founding creator, performer and director of S.H.E.! a feminist choreo-poetry group and led a project for the Kentucky Foundation for Women facilitating art making with families of the incarcerated. Marquez Rhyne Marquez Rhyne has worked as a nonprofit administrator serving as the Managing Director of Jump-Start Performance Co. (San Antonio, TX), The Carpetbag Theatre (Knoxville, TN), and Operations/Education Director for the Bijou Theatre (Knoxville, TN.) In these roles, Rhyne held responsibility for grant writing, cultivation of individual donors, and oversight of resource development including planning, acquisition, evaluation, financial tracking and reporting. He served in multiple capacities including Board Chair for the Executive Committee of Alternate ROOTS, a regional organization of cultural workers in the U.S. South committed in social and economic justice and protection of the natural environment. Rhyne has served as an independent consultant for diversity training, workforce development, and cultural facilitation for such organizations as Seton Homes and St. PJ’s Children’s Homes in San Antonio, TX; Brushy Fork Institute in Berea, KY; Tennessee Department of Transportation; Leadership Knoxville; and the Highlander Center prior to joining the staff. Education TeamMónica Hernández Monica is the lead person on Highlander's Pueblos de Latinoamérica project, which seeks to develop Latino grassroots leadership and organizations in the Southeast. She was the founding Board Chair for the Tennessee Immigrant and Refugee Rights Coalition and played a critical role in the development of the coalition. A native of Mexico with roots in both countries, Mónica joined the Highlander staff after working at the Northern California Coalition for Immigration Rights in San Francisco for 13 years. At the Coalition, Mónica worked in various capacities: as a hotline operator, HIV prevention educator/program coordinator, community education and action team member and co-director, and executive director. Tufara Waller Muhammad Tufara coordinates Highlander's Cultural Program and supports the work of the "We Shall Overcome" Fund. She is an organizer and artist with over 14 years of organizing experience. She has worked with the Arkansas Equality Network on their "Safe Schools Campaign," with ACORN on housing and Community Reinvesment Act issues, and with the Women's Project on the "Hate Free Arkansas Campaign." She is also a certified HIV/AIDS Peer Counselor who had done youth training throughout the South. Elandria Williams Elandria has been involved in activism and organizing since she was a youth herself, starting out organizing around getting rid of the Confederate flag and trying to end the race riots in East Tennessee high schools. As an African American and Indigenous differently-abled young person, she has spent the better part of three years working with youth and young adults of color from traditional families of color, multi-racial families of color, including transracial adopted folk, and transient youth both in foster care and emancipated. Before coming to Highlander she has been most involved in popular education and organizing around anti-oppression, anti-racism, nonviolence, education reform, the prison military industrial complex, and intergenerational education and organizing with many different organizations including the Fellowship of Reconciliation, the Unitarian Universalist Association, and the Unitarian Universalist Service Committee. She is proficient in Portuguese and speaks some Spanish. Susan Williams Susan is coordinator of the Highlander Education Team and the Highlander Library/Resource Center. Susan grew up in East Tennessee, and before coming to Highlander she worked for ten years as a community organizer for Save Our Cumberland Mountains. In 1979 she was a researcher for the Appalachian Land Ownership Study. Susan came to Highlander in 1989 to coordinate the Environmental/Economic Program and worked with the Tennessee Industrial Renewal Network, organizing around fair trade and coordinating worker-to-worker exchanges between Mexico and Tennessee factory workers. In the 1990s, she led economy schools and coordinated Highlander's Across Races and Nations project. Susan has served on the steering committee of the Economic Literacy Action Network and the Board of United for a Fair Economy. She is currently working on a historical timeline book about Highlander. Workshop Center TeamNina Reining Nina coordinates Highlander's Workshop Center. She is a former furniture factory employee and union member from Tennessee who came to Highlander as the result of an employee strike against the factory. Nina purchases food and supplies and cooks meals for workshop participants and groups that utilize Highlander as a meeting space. ConsultantsGuy and Candie Carawan Guy and Candie Carawan have been associated with Highlander for more than forty years. Guy came first as a volunteer in 1959, offering his musical skills at workshops and community events. Candie came as a student participant to the first gathering of students involved in the Sit-In movement in April 1960. Throughout the 60s, 70s, 80s and 90s, the Carawans organized cultural workshops at Highlander and in the field, focused on civil rights, citizenship education in the Sea Islands, and coalfield and environmental organizing in Appalachia. They documented in recordings and in books Southern and Appalachian musical traditions -- especially as they related to community struggles for justice -- and helped infuse a cultural component into all Highlander workshops and programs. In the 1990s Candie also served as residential education coordinator. The Carawans live next door to Highlander and currently serve as consultants to the school. You can learn more about their cultural work by visiting their Web site at http://digitalstudio.ucr.edu/studio_projects/carawan/default.html |
