President: Dr. Victoria K. Malaney-Brown

Dr. Victoria K. Malaney-Brown is a scholar-practitioner at Columbia University where she serves as the Director of Academic Integrity for undergraduates at Columbia College and Columbia Engineering. In 2020, Victoria graduated from the University of Massachusetts Amherst with a PhD in Higher Education. Victoria’s dissertation explored critical consciousness in the narratives of multiracial collegians at a historically white institution. Her research interests focus on the racialized experiences of students in higher education, intergroup dialogue, and college student activism. Victoria is a research affiliate at Center for Student Success Research at UMass Amherst. Victoria recently co-edited a book, Preparing for Higher Education’s Mixed Race Future: Why Multiraciality Matters and is a former past Chair of the Multiracial Network (MRN) and is Assembly Coordinator elect for Coalitions & Networks through the American College Personnel Association. Victoria attended CMRS in 2012 for the first time and has been a member ever since.

Vice-President: Joe Holt

Joe Holt is the Development Director at ArchCity Defenders, Board member at the Council of American Islamic Relations – Missouri, and Treasurer of Top Dog Studios, a non-profit Black owned and operated film studio. He first joined CMRS in 2010 when he presented his first paper at the inaugural CMRS conference at Depaul University. He felt he finally found his community and has been following CMRS ever since. Prior to CMRS Joe was the Regional Chief Development Officer at the Missouri-Arkansans Red Cross in 2019 to 2020 and an International Union Organizer with over 10 years experience in over 3 countries and dozens of US States. Joe has also taught Sociology as an adjunct professor at Lewis and Clark Community College in Illinois.

Secretary: Alma Villanueva

Alma Villanueva is a doctoral candidate in the English Department at Texas A&M University. Her dissertation, Photographing Mixed-Raced Bodies: An Artistic and Scientifc Visual Culture, is an interdisciplinary and intersectional analysis of how mixed-race photo projects have historically been constructed at the intersections of settler colonial, anti- Black, and anti- immigrant (Latinx, Asian American, and Muslim) racisms. She is dedicated to an intersectional critical mixed-race/multiracial praxis that fosters collaborative community and critical diversity.

Treasurer: Jamie Currier

Jamie Currier is a Cancer Support Strategic Partnerships Manager at the American Cancer Society. She was born in Seoul, Korea and through the process of adoption was brought to the United States before the age of one. Her parents were already raising two biological sons when they welcomed Jamie to the family. It was much later in life that Jamie began to question her identity and place, not only in the family but also in the world. Intercultural studies and a Communication degree later Jamie began to understand the intersectionality of her identities, which turned into a professional passion for diversity, equity and inclusion. Prior to joining American Cancer Society, Jamie was an educator in the St. Louis and Metro East community for over 15 years. Most recently, in her role with American Cancer Society, Jamie was accepted into a Fellowship with University of Illinois Chicago working on PSE change in rural communities. 

Graduate Student Representative: Lisa Delacruz Combs

Lisa Delacruz Combs (she/her/siya) is currently a third year doctoral student at The Ohio State University in the Higher Education and Student Affairs program. She identifies as a Multiracial Filipina Woman of Color. Lisa’s research interests include identity interconnections, multiraciality in higher education, Filipinx identity development, poststructural feminist perspectives, and deconstructing social constructs around race. Though newer to the publishing process, Lisa has already published about multiracial topics including a co-edited New Directions Student Services volume titled Beyond the Box: Connecting Multiracial Identities, Oppressions, and Environments and a volume about the future of higher education. She has published articles in the Journal of College Student Development and Cultural Studies Critical Methodologies. She received her B.A in Political Science and English from The Ohio State University and her M.S. in Student Affairs in Higher Education from Miami University in Oxford, Ohio. Outside of her role as a graduate student, Lisa is a fitness instructor and loves watching new tv shows and eating desserts.

Graduate Student Representative: Kevin Kandamby

Kevin Kandamby is a first-generation MexiLankan (Mexican and Sri Lankan) heading into his fourth year in the Chicana/o and Central American Studies Ph.D. Program at UCLA. Growing up as so, he never saw anyone that could relate to his lived experiences as a child of immigrants from two different countries who married in the United States. His upbringing informs his research interest in dual minority children of immigrants. His research interests include understanding the identity formation processes of AsianLatinx mixed people in the United States and how the community navigates a dual minority identity in the United States. He is also interested in the visual representation of AsianLatinx identities and how the community defines that for themselves through their cultural identity to understand the nuances of the growing AsianLatinx community. Through his research, he hopes to create more conversations at the intersection of mixed children of immigrants and nonwhite mixed people in the United States to develop further and enrich the growing Critical Mixed Race Studies discipline.

Caucus Coordinator: Dr. Maïko Le Lay

Dr. Maïko Le Lay is a postdoctoral fellow affiliated with the Franklin Humanities Institute. She is an interdisciplinary scholar, practitioner, mentor from France and Japan whose research bridges the fields of performance, education, digital humanities, and African and Asian diasporic studies. Her current research examines the identities and embodied and digital practices of Black and Japanese people globally. Her ethnographies are augmented by social media analysis of influencers and public figures, such as Naomi Osaka. In terms of her academic background, Le Lay received her PhD in Critical Dance Studies from the University of California, Riverside in 2020. After her doctoral studies, Le Lay completed a postdoctoral scholarship in the Connected Learning Lab at the University of California, Irvine. Le Lay possesses a MA in Political Sciences from the Université Catholique de Louvain (UCL, Belgium) and a MA in Media and Cultural Studies from the Université Paris III Sorbonne Nouvelle (France).

Community Art Liaison: alejandro t. acierto

alejandro t. acierto is an artist, musician, and curator whose work is largely informed by legacies of colonialism found within human relationships to technology and material cultures. He is Assistant Professor of Interdisciplinary Arts and Performance at Arizona State University, New College, a 3Arts awardee, and has shown work internationally at the Havana Biennial in Matanzas, Cuba, Yerba Buena Center for the Arts (San Francisco), ISSUE (NYC), Radialsystem (Berlin), and MCA Chicago among others. He is a co-author of the artist book CQDE: A Feminist Manifestx of Code-ing with KT Duffy and facilitates the hybrid curatorial project TWOSIXTEEN.

Global Representative: Anne Coker

Anne Coker is of mixed African and Celtic heritage. She is a retired Medical Doctor, now retrained as a Psychotherapist. She feels passionately about the historic and current injustices, prejudice, ignorance and microaggressions experienced by people of mixed ‘race’ and believes these can be improved by greater research and dissemination of knowledge and would love to be part of a community that brings about positive change.

Social Media Coordinator: Rahul Yates

Rahul Yates is a rising senior in high school from Los Angeles, California. His mother is of North Indian (Punjabi) descent and his father’s family traces its lineage back to the early settlers from Britain. Rahul has gotten very involved in diversity, equity, and inclusion both in and out of school. He has presented at many different events and panels regarding his experience being a multiracial individual and his perspective on advancing racial equity as a youth leader. He is also involved in the peer tutoring and mentoring programs, orchestra, debate team, and musicals, and maintains a strong academic standing. Outside of school, he passionately advocates for multiracial and multicultural teenagers through his platform, HumSub GlobalTEEN, and is also a Bharata Natyam (classical Indian dance form) dancer with over 12 years of training.