Curriculum Development Team
We are a team of faculty and students associated with Suffolk University. We bring different perspectives to this work, but come together in our commitment to addressing causes, consequences, and responses to collective trauma.
Debra Harkins is Professor Emerita at Suffolk University, where she taught Psychology and Education for over 25 years. She has owned nonprofit and for-profit consulting firms and served as chief editor of the Journal of Pedagogy and Human Sciences. Her publications include Helping to Promote Social Justice, Researcher Race, Beyond the Campus, Alongside Community, and Class Identity, and Social Hierarchy, and Psychotherapy. Debra is founder and owner of Purple Owl Publishing.
Esta Montano began her career as an ESL and Spanish bilingual teacher and later served as Framingham Public Schools’ District Director of DEI and as Assistant Head of School / Director of Instruction at Boston Latin Academy. She has taught and consulted on race, culture, and language for numerous school districts, universities, and organizations. She currently teaches women incarcerated in the Massachusetts state prison.
Gabriella Priest Celestin is the Director of Operations at the New England Innocence Project and teaches at Suffolk University. Throughout her career, she has worked with nonprofits in the criminal legal system reform and reentry space, including Community Resources for Justice and Justice System Partners.
Susan Sered is Professor of Sociology and Criminal Justice at Suffolk University. Committed to both scholarship and social justice, she researches health, gender equity, and mass incarceration. Her publications include Uninsured in America: Life and Death in the Land of Opportunity and Can’t Catch a Break: Gender, Jail, Drugs, and the Limits of Personal Responsibility. Read more of her work here.
Suffolk University Students: Naiomi Arguelles, Eliza Iacobucci, Sadie Wood, Olivia McDonald, Sophia Marley, Leah Wagner, Ashlyn Conley, Madelyn Ferullo, Natalya O’Callaghan, Jacqueline Troast, Sydney Fox.