The Institute for Strategic and Equitable Development (ISED) is guided by the vision of its Board of Directors:
Celia E. Naylor - President
Barnard College and Columbia University
Celia E. Naylor is a professor in the Africana Studies and History departments at Barnard College, Columbia University. Before joining the Barnard College faculty in 2010, she started as an Assistant Professor and was promoted to a tenured Associate Professor of History at Dartmouth College (2002-2010).
Professor Naylor earned her B.A. in Africana Studies (Summa Cum Laude) with a concentration in Women's Studies from Cornell University, a M.A. in Afro-American Studies from UCLA, and a M.A. and Ph.D. in History from Duke University.
At Barnard College, she teaches a number of courses including Introduction to African-American History; Introduction to the African Diaspora; Remembering Slavery: Critiquing Modern Representations of the Peculiar Institution; Black Feminism(s)/Womanism(s) and "Black Sexual Politics" in Contemporary U.S. Popular Culture; and "Tongues on Fire": Caribbean Women's Articulations of Fracture(s), Freedom(s), and Futurities.
Most of her published work explores the multifaceted connections between African-Americans, Black Indians, and Native Americans in the U.S. She was one of the coordinators of the historic conference "'Eating Out of the Same Pot': Relating Black and Native (Hi)stories," held at Dartmouth College in April 2000. Her book, entitled African Cherokees in Indian Territory: From Chattel to Citizens, was published by the University of North Carolina Press in May 2008 (John Hope Franklin Series in African American History and Culture). This work charts the experiences of enslaved and free Blacks in the Cherokee Nation from the Trail of Tears to Oklahoma’s entry into the Union in 1907. Her interests include African-American and Caribbean history; Native American history; and women's history and literature in the African Diaspora.
Professor Naylor is currently working on a project centered on the Rose Hall Plantation in Montego Bay, Jamaica. The core objectives for this project are three-fold— (1) a microhistory of enslaved people’s experiences in the first decades of the nineteenth century at Rose Hall Plantation; (2) an interdisciplinary study of the ongoing legend of the “White Witch of Rose Hall” in selected twentieth- and twenty-first-century literary and cultural contexts in order to critique the racial, gendered, and classed politics of reconstructing slavery in the modern era; and (3) a public history and digital humanities project that will highlight archival materials related to the individual and collective lives of the enslaved people who lived and labored at Rose Hall.
Due to Professor Naylor's interest in, and commitment to, racial equity and social justice, over the past few years she has been working with the Institute for Strategic and Equitable Development (ISED). She has served as President of the Board of Directors of this non-profit organization since its establishment in 2015.
Amanda Storey - Vice president
Jones Valley Teaching Farm
Deryck ferrier - secretary and treasurer
Deryck has been in the tax business since 1978 and is a principal at ProTech Tax and Accounting LLC, in Birmingham, Ala. He has a B.S. in electrical engineering, is an enrolled agent, and National Tax Practice Institute Fellow. Deryck has been a regular on the local radio station WATV, providing tax information, and as a Live Line guest, answering tax questions. He has also served as the tax matters expert for a low-income tax clinic in Birmingham. Deryck is currently serving as president of The Alabama Society of Enrolled Agents and is a member of the National Association of Tax Professionals, for which he has also served as a past president of the Alabama chapter.