Loretta Ross

Loretta J. Ross is an Associate Professor at Smith College. As a 2022 recipient of the MacArthur Foundation "Genius" award, she is an activist, public intellectual, and scholar. Her passion is innovating creative imagining about global human rights and social justice issues. As the third director of the first rape crisis center in the country in the 1970s, she helped launch the movement to end violence against women that has evolved into today's #MeToo movement. She also founded the first center in the U.S. to innovate creative human rights education for all students so that social justice issues are more collaborative and less divisive. She has also deprogrammed members of hate groups leading to conceptualizing and writing a book on Calling In the Calling Out Culture to transform how people can overcome political differences to use empathy and respect to guide difficult conversations.

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Loretta started her career in activism and social change in the 1970s, working at the National Football League Players' Association, the D.C. Rape Crisis Center, the National Organization for Women (NOW), the National Black Women's Health Project, the Center for Democratic Renewal (National Anti-Klan Network), the National Center for Human Rights Education, and SisterSong Women of Color Reproductive Justice Collective, until retiring as an organizer in 2012 to teach about activism. 

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Her most recent books are Reproductive Justice: An Introduction, co-written with Rickie Solinger, and Radical Reproductive Justice: Foundations, Theory, Practice, Critique. Her forthcoming book, Calling In the Calling Out Culture, is due in 2024.

She has been quoted in the New York Times, Time Magazine, The Los Angeles Times, and the Washington Post, among others. In addition, she was inducted into the National Women's Hall of Fame in 2023.

Nicole Hager

Nicole Hager is the Director of School Partnerships at Authentic Connection. She joined the AC Team in July, 2023 after serving for nearly 30 years as an administrator, teacher, and coach in independent schools where her work focused primarily on student well-being. Nicole got her start in independent education at Deerfield Academy where she worked in admissions and the DEI office before moving into the Dean of Students office. After nine years at Deerfield, she spent the next 17 years as the Dean of Students at Northfield Mount Hermon (NMH) and for the last three years, Nicole was the Upper School Director at Kent Place School (KPS). Nicole graduated from Dartmouth College with a degree in English, Psychology and Education. She also has an MFA in Creative Nonfiction from Bay Path University and a Masters of Arts in Liberal Studies from Dartmouth. Her MALS thesis examined the opportunities and challenges of supporting transgender and non-binary students in independent boarding school, and her work in student life and well-being has had a particular focus on supporting students of color and LGBTQ+ students.