2024 Black Tennessee Voices Storytellers Live: Meet the Speakers

The third installment of Black Tennessee Voices Storytellers Live will be held at Meharry Medical College on the night of Sept. 17. As in years past, the evening will feature Black speakers from the Nashville area and beyond, each sharing the experiences and connections that shaped their pasts and define their present, and that will continue to impact our collective future.

Speakers at previous events have included Kennetha Patterson, the self-described Homeless CEO, who advocates for families experiencing housing insecurity through her organization Vision Heirs INC; Ashford Hughes, executive officer for Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion for Metro Nashville Public Schools; Jill Fitcheard, executive director of the Metro Nashville Community Review Board; and others.

The diversity of the speakers is a key part of what makes Black Tennessee Voices Storytellers Live so compelling. Black Tennesseans — Black people — are not a monolith, and all perspectives help create a deeper understanding of the wider Black community. That said, we’ve adopted a loose theme for the 2024 event.

This year, while on the campus of one of Nashville’s famed HBCUs, each of the storytellers will share their experiences in and around the field of education. It’s an important topic for Black folks as we continue to work to improve dismal statistics across a slew of metrics, from public school literacy rates to the percentage of Black teachers in schools and districts with diverse student populations. With their varied expertise, the speakers will be detailing the paths that led to their current work as well as their efforts to affect change for everyone following behind them.

Below, you’ll find the bios of each of this year’s speakers. Give them a read and be sure to join us on Sept. 17 for Black Tennessee Voices Storytellers Live.

The presenting sponsor for this event is BlueCross BlueShield of Tennessee. Click this link for tickets.

Diarese George

Dr. Diarese George is the founder and CEO of the Tennessee Educators of Color Alliance (TECA), an organization that envisions a future where the diversity of Tennessee educators reflects the diversity of students across the state.

TECA provides high quality programming and networking opportunities to support and retain educators of color across the state of Tennessee; leadership development and advocacy focused civic engagement are two core components of the work.

Previously, he served as the director of recruitment for the Nashville Teacher Residency where his primary focus was recruiting more people of color to the education profession. Prior to that, he taught for five years as a high school teacher, with a focus on business. Additionally, he has completed several education leadership fellowships that focused on the intersection of policy and advocacy, and serves on several councils, boards, and committees statewide. Dr. George holds a Bachelor’s degree in Business Administration and a Master’s degree in Corporate Communications from Austin Peay State University.

He also received an MBA and a Doctorate in Education Leadership from Trevecca Nazarene University. He is married to Brittenee, an elementary school teacher, and together they share five beautiful children. Dr. George is also a lifetime member of Kappa Alpha Psi Fraternity Incorporated.

Deranique Jones

Deranique Jones is currently in her second year of medical school at Meharry Medical College and is driven by a profound commitment to promoting health equity, improving healthcare access for underserved populations, and serving the community.

Coming from a military family, she has had the opportunity to live in many places but has called Nashville home since 2017. Before attending Meharry Medical College she attended Lipscomb University where she cofounded and served as president of the Black Student Union, worked as a service project leader in the SALT Office, and served on several committees devoted to pursuing equity at the institution. She graduated cum laude with a Bachelor's of science in biology and minor in Spanish in the fall of 2020. Meharry’s commitment to service and her alignment with the motto “Worship of God Through Service to Mankind” led her to set her sights on attending Meharry, where she graduated with her Master of Health Science in the spring of 2023.

Deranique believes in the transformative power of healthcare as a tool for social justice, dedicating her studies to understanding the intersections of medicine, policy, and human rights. This summer, Deranique spent time conducting research with Dr. Michael Caldwell, where she studied how the Mature Minor Doctrine Clarification Act impacted pediatric healthcare. Looking forward, Deranique plans to pursue an OBGYN residency with a focus on serving underserved populations and eventually transition into academia, hopefully at her alma mater, Meharry Medical College. Beyond her academic pursuits, Deranique is the eldest of three daughters and believes being a big sister is her most important and rewarding job.

Deranique is also a member and vice president the Meharry Gospel Choir. When she is not studying, she enjoys trying new coffeeshops in Nashville, hiking, spending time with friends, and baking.

Nicole Joseph

Nicole M. Joseph is an associate professor with tenure of mathematics education in the department of Teaching and Learning at Vanderbilt University. She is also the associate dean of equity, diversity, and inclusion at Peabody College.

She directs the Joseph Mathematics Education Research Lab (JMEL), an intergenerational lab that focuses on training and mentoring its members on Black Feminist and intersectional epistemological orientations. Using critical perspectives, JMEL produces theoretical and methodological scholarship that challenges hegemonic notions of objectivity to emphasize more humanizing, empowering, and transformative research.

Dr. Joseph’s research explores two lines of inquiry: (a) Black women and girls, their identity development, and their experiences in mathematics; and (b) gendered anti-blackness, whiteness, white supremacy, and how these systems of oppression shape Black girls’ learning, access, underrepresentation, and retention in mathematics across the pipeline. Her scholarship is published in top-tiered journals such as Educational Researcher, Review of Educational Research, Teachers College Record, Harvard Education Review, and the Journal of Negro Education.

Her new book with Harvard Education Press is called "Making Black Girls Count in Math Education: A Black Feminist Vision of Transformative Teaching." She is also the founder and director of Black Girls Becoming Summer Research Institute, a two-week residential program at Vanderbilt for rising 7th and 8th grade Black girls focused on a holistic STEAM curriculum. Her most recent funded project includes co-designing and validating a measure of mathematics identity that includes intersectionality-barriers and intersectionality-assets.

Dr. Joseph designed this measure with adolescent Black girls ages 8-13 and has worked to collaborate with districts to support the mathematics achievement and identity of all Black girls.

Sonya Thomas

Sonya Thomas is one of the founding parent activists for the first-of-its-kind parent movement in Nashville, Tennessee. She leads Nashville P.R.O.P.E.L, an organization with a mission to organize and develop powerful parent leaders to ignite a movement that demands equitable policies and practices in Nashville public education.

This group of powerful parents aims to disrupt inequities in education. Joining founding leaders from Memphis, St. Louis, San Antonio, Oakland, Atlanta, and Dallas Fort Worth, Sonya contributes to the growing national Powerful Parent Movement. She believes that when children are inspired and given what they need, every child will reach their greatest potential. Sonya has served as an education adviser to mayoral candidates and education-centered groups in Tennessee and has challenged 2020 presidential candidates on their education plans.

She is a recipient of the 2023 Women Who Rock Education award and has been recognized in the 2023 and 2024 Nashville Power Poll as one of the most powerful people. Despite her achievements, she considers her most important role to be a mother to her beloved sons, Jordan and CJ, and daughters, Sarah and Trinity. In her spare time, she enjoys watching college football (Roll Tide), reading, and sewing.

Sonya fights for change in school systems and understands that parent partnerships and educators play a vital role in improving the educational outcomes of Black and Brown students, with literacy being key to this work. Her story, featured in “What the Words Say” by APM Reporter Emily Hanford, serves as a call to action to improve literacy instruction for students. Sonya and the work of Nashville P.R.O.P.E.L have been featured in BET’s docuseries "Disrupt and Dismantle" by executive producer Soledad O’Brien. In 2023, their work was also highlighted in the Telly Award-winning "The Truth About Reading" by executive producer Nick Nanton.

Chezare A. Warren

Chezare A. Warren, Ph.D., is an accomplished author, artist, and intellectual. He is an associate professor of education policy at Vanderbilt University’s Peabody College of Education and Human Development. Dr. Warren is also associate professor of teaching & learning, affiliated faculty in African American and Diaspora Studies, and principal investigator of THE POSSIBILITIES PROJECT — an “arts informed knowledge hub” committed to advancing evidence-based Black education solutions.

A scholar of race and intersectional justice and former secondary math teacher from Chicago, Dr. Warren is a 2019 National Academies of Science, Engineering, and Medicine Ford Postdoctoral Fellow and recipient of numerous national recognitions for his scholarship including two early career awards from the American Educational Research Association. He is a 2023-24 TED-Ed Fellow, which culminated with a widely viewed TED talk published in May 2024 on empathy — an area of his work committed to making education a more humanizing social enterprise for Black youth.

Author of "Centering Possibility in Black Education" (Teachers College Press, 2021) and the award-winning "Urban Preparation: Young Black Men Moving from Chicago’s South Side to Success in Higher Education" (Harvard Education Press, 2017), Dr. Warren has written more than 40 peer-reviewed articles, reports, and book chapters. He is a widely sought-after consultant on issues of education equity, and has held visiting faculty appointments at Stanford University, University of Pennsylvania, and New York University. For more information, visit www.chezarewarren.com.

Andrea Williams is an opinion columnist for The Tennessean and curator of the Black Tennessee Voices initiative.

This article originally appeared on Nashville Tennessean: Black Tennessee Voices Storytellers goes to Meharry Medical College