People
KAMELA HEYWARD-ROTIMI
EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR/PRINCIPAL RESEARCHER
Kamela Heyward-Rotimi is an anthropologist committed to research affecting change. Her study of African diaspora communities’ access to, and creation of, digital knowledge spans decades. Particularly people of color and global Black communities’ navigation of the Internet and new media technologies. A researcher and policy strategist, her policy work and engaged research addresses but is not limited to equitable digital access, Black digitality, higher education, environmental social justice, and advocacy for LGBTQI+ rights. Heyward-Rotimi consults with international NGOs and serves on local and national boards. She holds a Senior Research Scholar affiliation at Duke University in the Department of Cultural Anthropology and Visiting Research Scholar affiliation in the Department of Sociology and Anthropology at Obafemi Awolowo University in Nigeria. She received her B.A. from Spelman College and her M.A. and Ph.D. from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst. Her philosophy is that imagining sustainable technological futures requires resilience and hope with a good dose of solid research findings.
RESEARCH COMMUNITY
Our research community includes a network of scholars and practitioners representing various backgrounds and disciplines.
Conal Ho
Conal Ho has been part of The KERG since its inception. Trained as a cultural anthropologist from the University of California, Santa Cruz, his research focused on how Chinese migrants in Ghana lived and understood the geopolitical and social predicaments they faced as sojourners trying to make a sense of “home”. He has worked for the education research non-profit Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching in its research team Integrative Learning Project focusing on ways to create intentional structures that linked domains of knowledge and practice together in ways that are not usually connected. He was also the Program and Membership Coordinator for the Consortium of Humanities Centers and Institutes (CHCI), a global membership organization of humanities institutions that fosters cross-disciplinary and global conversations. One of his major projects at CHCI was building the incipient African Humanities Consortium, a project that started when humanities institutions in Africa expressed strong interest for CHCI to help them build an intra-African network that would share its knowledge and resources with each other. He is currently the Senior IRB Specialist at Duke University where he coordinates and manages the Institutional Review Board (IRB) ethics review on research with human subjects.
Tayo Owoeye
Omotayo Owoeye is one of the few Anthropology Lecturers in Anthropology at Obafemi Awolowo University, Ile-Ife, Nigeria; he holds an MBA degree from the same University and is completing his Doctoral studies at the University of Pretoria in South Africa. His research focus is Economic Anthropology and Human Capacity Building; however, his work cuts across several disciplines. His recent project, designing an anthropology focus for the Department of Sociology and Anthropology at OAU, grew out of collaborative work with Kamela Heyward-Rotimi. Tayo has participated as a Research Facilitator on a World Bank directed research project on Maternal and Child Health Initiative (Midwife Recruitment and Retention) among Midwives in Nigeria and a Research Assistant conducting research on Health and MNCH Services for New Born Babies in Nigeria.
Leah Denise Wyatt
Leah Denise Wyatt is an experienced communication and knowledge network designer. She has specialized in change management and government affairs for 15 years. In her current role as a United States Agency for International Development (USAID) Learning Fellow in Uganda, she designs strategic, structural, and tactical dimensions for continuous organizational learning and coordination among a network of government officials and members of civil society. Ms.Wyatt’s work in Uganda was informed by her service to a $181M agreement between the USAID Bureau for Global Health and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill to strengthen health systems in more than 30 countries. Leah is well known for her interest in generating challenging questions, willingness to apply values, ethics and morals to situations, and ability to use diplomacy to build consensus. Ms. Wyatt has been assigned to work in the United States, Mexico, Barbados, Ghana, Nigeria, Ethiopia, Kenya, Tanzania, and Uganda. She received her Master of Science in Information and Knowledge Strategy from Columbia University and her Bachelor of Science in Journalism and Communication with a focus in Public Relations from the University of Oregon.
Vanessa R. Green
Alumni
Vanessa R. Green is a native of New Bern, NC. After graduating high school, she attended Spelman College (Atlanta, GA) and attained a Bachelor of Science in Mathematics. Upon completing her undergraduate work, she went on to attain a Masters of Operations Research from North Carolina State University (Raleigh, NC) and a Masters of Business Administration from Elon University (Elon, NC). Ms. Green presently works in the area of healthcare informatics and analytics for Duke University. She enjoys using her analytical background to support challenging problems that confront a variety of industries. In her free time, Vanessa enjoys spending time with close family and friends as well as engaging in her many artistic hobbies.
