This second session of the Skoll Foundation’s Racial Justice Town Hall series is a conversation grounded in the belief that authentic, representative storytelling is a pathway for increased racial justice and equity building for non-White communities and will ask among other questions: “What happens when historically underrepresented groups create space for their stories in the national narrative? What does it take to accomplish it?” “How can storytelling across media mitigate and heal racial trauma?”
Presented as part of the 2021 Sundance Film Festival.
Darius Simpson is an award-winning spoken word artist, writer, proud wearer of crocs, and social justice activist born in Akron, Ohio. He received his bachelor's degree in Political Science from Eastern Michigan University. During his time there, as a coach and participant, he led the EMU slam poetry team to consecutive championships at the College Unions Poetry Slam Invitational (CUPSI). He uses poetry as a tool with which to heal, inform, and challenge his audience in their awareness of social, political, and economic oppression.
Darius is featured as a protagonist in the film Finding the Gold Within, a documentary by Karina Epperlein on what it means to be a young black male in America. He has appeared on a wide array of stages and including ABC News (WXYZ-TV), University of Akron's Black Male Summit, TEDxDetroit, and Pacifica Graduate Institute. He has also been featured in online publications such as Huffington Post, Mic, Odyssey, and Worldstar Hip Hop. His work has been promoted by Hollywood stars such as Ashton Kutcher and Kerry Washington. Darius aims to leave his listeners feeling more equipped and inspired to speak to their own perspectives in any form they feel most drawn to. By intertwining personal narratives of life experience, humor, and historical events, he brings an invaluable and authentic voice to his poetry.
Board, NDN Collective, Creative Producer, Molly Of Denali
Princess Daazhraii Johnson is Neets’aii Gwich’in and her family is from Arctic Village, Alaska. Johnson is the former Executive Director for the Gwich’in Steering Committee and is a founding member of the Fairbanks Climate Action Coalition. She also has experience working on climate adaptation for tribes through her on-going work with the Cold Climate Housing Research Center. Johnson received a B.A. in International Relations from The George Washington University and a Masters in Education at the University of Alaska Anchorage with a focus on Environmental and Science Education. She has been a member of the SAG-AFTRA Native American Committee since 2007 and also serves on the Board of Dancing with the Spirit, a program that promotes spiritual wellness through music. In 2015 Johnson was appointed by President Obama to serve on the Board of Trustees for the Institute of American Indian Arts. She is based in Alaska and is currently creative producer of the PBS Kids series Molly of Denali.
When he joined the Foundation in 2020, he had more than two decades of experience as a journalist, author and activist. He was a co-founder and executive director emeritus of Man Up Campaign, a global initiative to activate youth to stop violence against women and girls. This led to his selection as the winner of the 2010 GQ Magazine “Better Men Better World” search, and as one of the Women’s eNews ‘21 Leaders for the 21st Century’. Jimmie has served as an adjunct professor of investigative journalism at the New School for Social Research and was a George A Miller Visiting Professor in the Department of African and African-American Studies at the University of Illinois: Champaign-Urbana. For a decade, he has been an adjunct teacher of documentary journalism at the International Center of Photography
As a journalist, he has written for scores of publications following staff tenures at The Washington Post, The Village Voice, LIFE magazine and others. The recipient of honors for his work as a journalist and advocate, he’s been a National Magazine Award finalist, recipient of honors from the Open Society Institute, National Association of Black Journalists, the Carter Center for Mental Health Journalism, the Congressional Black Caucus, Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism, and the Freedom Center in Cincinnati, among many others. His 2005 book Innocents Lost: When Child Soldiers Go To War took readers into the lives of war-affected children around the world in half a dozen countries. His next book project is an oral history of Ferguson, Missouri in the wake of Michael Brown’s death in 2014. He currently contributes to Vanity Fair magazine in addition to his role at the Skoll Foundation.
Jimmie holds a Bachelor of Arts degree with honors, in Philosophy, from Morehouse College in Atlanta, Georgia, as well as a Medal of Distinction from Barnard College. He lives in New York City.
Charles declared in his 1996 law school graduation year book that, one day, he would be the head of a diversified entertainment and media company. And a little over 15 years later, that proclamation became MACRO. As CEO, he casts the overall vision, mission and strategic goals for all things MACRO and its multiple business verticals. Before launching MACRO in 2015, Charles formerly was Partner/Agent in the Motion Picture Department at William Morris Endeavor (WME). He is the first and, to date, the only African-American to rise from the training program in the Beverly Hills office film and TV group to Partner in the company’s over 100+ year history. Known industry wide for his innovative deal-making, keen eye for talent and strategic long-horizon thinking, Charles has been recognized in Fortune, The New York Times Magazine, Fast Company, NPR, The Hollywood Reporter, Variety, Complex, Essence, and countless other publications. An active angel investor and dedicated philanthropist, he is a member of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences and sits on several nonprofit boards, including the Sundance Institute, the NBA Players Association, Think 450 and College Track, where he serves as National Vice President. Charles holds a BA from Vanderbilt University and a Juris Doctor from Howard University School of Law.
Director of Content: Race, Community and Our Shared Future, Smithsonian Institution
Dr. Ariana A. Curtis is the first curator of Latinx Studies at the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture. In this role she leads museum research and collections related to: U.S. Latinx, U.S. Afro-Latinx, African American & Latinx, the African Diaspora in Latin America, and African American migrations to and engagements with Latin America.
Ariana also serves as Director of Content for the Smithsonian’s Race, Community, and Our Shared Future initiative, announced in June 2020. This national initiative will confront the historical roots and contemporary impacts of race and racism in the United States and globally, in service of building a more equitable future. She is a curatorial advisor to the upcoming Molina Family Latino Galleries at the National Museum of American History opening in 2022 and has served on multiple committees for the Smithsonian American Women’s History Initiative. Additionally, Ariana is a founding member of the academic collective, the Black Latinas Know Collective.
Among her many conference presentations and keynote addresses, Ariana has spoken at SXSW, Chautauqua Institution, The Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, The Intercultural Leadership Institute, Politico Women Rule, and TED Women. Her TED talk has over 3 million views. She has published in The Public Historian, the anthology Pan African Spaces: Essays in Black Transnationalism and served as both author and editorial committee member for the publication Smithsonian American Women: Remarkable Objects and Stories of Strength, Ingenuity and Vision from the National Collection. Ariana has appeared in national media outlets including LatinoUSA and The Root and was featured in the 2020 exhibition Voices of Resilience at the Springfield Museums in her hometown of Springfield, Massachusetts.
Previously, Ariana was curator of Latino Studies at the Smithsonian Anacostia Community Museum. In addition to leading Latinx-centered public programming, she curated two bilingual exhibitions: Gateways/Portales, which received honorable mention in the 2017 Smithsonian Excellence in Exhibition Awards and Bridging the Americas, which was exhibited in both Washington, D.C. and in Panama City, Panama. She also organized Revisiting Our Black Mosaic, a 2014 symposium about race and immigration in the Washington, D.C. metro area, co-sponsored by the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars.
Ariana is a Fulbright scholar with a doctorate in Anthropology from American University, an MA in Public Anthropology from American University, and a BA from Duke University.
