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. She welcomes callers and visitors and maintains the office equipment in addition to assisting the staff with various tasks. Kristi is also the contact person for our Children's Justice Camp and editor of Highlander Reports. She is a native of Morristown, Tennessee, and has a BS degree in Organizational Management. Rob Reining Rob Reining joined the Highlander staff in May 2007. As Bookkeeper/Financial officer, he has primary responsibility for coordinating all organizational financial objectives and obligations including developing budgets for both annual and interim periods, developing cash management investment strategies, and maintaining a financially solvent organization. He also is responsible for all bookkeeping and personnel/ Human Resource management. 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 Oakridge Environmental Peace Alliance. Rob grew up at Highlander, and so has really just returned home. His mother, Nina Reining, is the Workshop Center Coordinator. 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 TeamCharlie Biggs Charlie is Highlander's capital campaign coordinator and Webmaster. His experience includes writing, editing, fundraising, foundation consulting, and college teaching. He has also worked as a freelance Web designer, creating Web sites for non-profit organizations and educational insitutions. Tami Newman Tami is a member of Highlander's development team. She maintains Highlander's donor database and helps coordinate house parties and other fundraising event.. Before coming to Highlander, Tami worked as a credit manager/secretary and store clerk. She is a life-long resident of Tennessee. Anasa Troutman Anasa is the coordinator of Highlander's development team. She has spent her life growing into an artist, producer, strategist and activist-organizer, developing her personal mission to use arts, entertainment and mass media for issue awareness, social change and personal transformation. She began her career working with soul music singers, writers and musicians in Atlanta. Among her first group of clients was an unknown singer/songwriter named India Arie, whose simple combination of voice and guitar was meant for personal healing and social change. Anasa’s work with India led to a platinum-selling album and an international concert tour, proving to Anasa that her vision of using art and mass media to create global and personal change was real. In the years that followed, Anasa has served as a member of the National Coordinating Committee for the National Hip Hop Political Convention, as a member organizer for the Institute for Policy Study’s Cities for Progress Program, as the Urban Marketing Strategist for the Dennis Kucinich campaign for the 2004 Democratic Presidential nomination, as Consulting Producer for the Young Peoples Project’s “Finding Our Folk” Tour, and as an organizer with the Progressive Majority’s Racial Justice Campaign. In all her work, Anasa uses arts and culture to create justice, opportunity and compassion. 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 is also Chair of the Board of the Tennessee Immigrant and Refugee Rights 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. Roberto Tijerina Roberto is the lead person in Highlander's Multilingual Capacity Building program, which provides interpretation, translation, and training services to help Highlander and other social justice organizations work across language to support and build coalitions with immigrant activists and organizations. Before coming to Highlander, Roberto worked as an activist in the Chicago area for 18 years; his three mainstays being LGBT, immigrant, and disability rights. His experience includes working as an Outreach Associate for Lambda Legal Defense and Education Fund, supporting diverse LGBT communities around civil rights issues. He has also worked as a freelance sign-language interpreter, with a focus on the Deaf Latino community in Illinois. In addition to English, he is fluent in Spanish and American Sign Language. Throughout his activist career, he has maintained close ties to the immigrant community in which he was raised, working on issues of literacy, second-language learning, immigrant discrimination, and preparation for citizenship exams. 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 the lead person on Across Race and Nation and coordinator of the Education Team and the Highlander Library/Resource Center. She was coordinator of Highlander's former Economic Education Program (EEP). She is also part of the Grassroots Think Tank project. Susan worked for ten years as a community organizer for Save Our Cumberland Mountains (SOCM) and for several years with the Tennessee Industrial Renewal Network organizing around fair trade and coordinating worker-to-worker exchanges between Mexico and Tennessee factory workers. She is on the steering committee of the Economic Literacy Action Network and the board of United for a Fair Economy. 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 |
