Dr. Krishauna Hines-Gaither
Dr. Krishauna Hines-Gaither is the Vice President for Equity, Diversity and Justice at Mount Saint Mary’s University, Los Angeles. Now residing in LA, she is a North Carolina native. She holds a PhD in Cultural Studies from the University of North Carolina at Greensboro where she focused her scholarship on Afro-Latinx cultural heritage. At university, she studied Spanish and French. Her first language was African American Vernacular English. Before entering administration, Dr. Hines-Gaither was a college professor of Spanish and Cultural Studies for over two decades. She is a past president of the Foreign Language Association of North Carolina, and she is the 2025 President-Elect of ACTFL, the first African American woman to hold this position. She was the inaugural co-chair of ACTFL’s Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) Committee. In service to the community, Dr. Hines-Gaither is a DEI advisor to the Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD). For excellence in DEI, she was named a “Voice for Change” by Spectrum News, voted the 2024 Woman of the Year for DEI by the LA County Board of Supervisors, and received the 2024 Legacy Award from the California Black Women’s Collective Empowerment Institute. Her work has been featured in major publications and on national television networks. She is the co-author of The Antiracist World Language Classroom (Routledge Press, 2023) and also co-author of Mastering Spanish through Global Debate by Georgetown University Press (2023). Dr. Hines-Gaither is a frequent speaker, trainer and facilitator.
Dr. L. J. Randolph Jr.
Dr. L. J. Randolph Jr. (he/any) is a linguist, educator, researcher, and social justice advocate. The youngest of eight siblings, he was born and raised in southeastern North Carolina and attended the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where he studied Romance Languages and Linguistics (B.A.), Language Education (M.A.T.), and Curriculum and Instruction (Ed.D.). Before transitioning to higher education, he worked for a decade as a Spanish and ESL teacher in North Carolina’s public high schools. Dr. Randolph’s scholarly work focuses on how language learning can be a liberating and inclusive experience for all learners, especially for students from minoritized and marginalized linguistic and racial identities. His research and teaching engage with justice-centered, antiracist, and anticolonial pedagogies; the teaching of Spanish as a heritage or community language; and the centering of Blackness and Indigenousness in language education. He is co-editor of the volume How We Take Action: Social Justice in PreK–16 Classrooms (Information Age/Emerald Publishing, 2023). He has also served in leadership roles in multiple professional organizations, including past president of ACTFL (formerly the American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages), Fostering Language Acquisition in North Carolina (FLANC), and the North Carolina Chapter of the American Association of Teachers of Spanish and Portuguese (AATSP). He currently resides in Madison, Wisconsin, where he is a faculty member in World Language Education and Second Language Acquisition at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He enjoys running, cycling, watching horror movies, reading horror and sci-fi novels, playing video/board games, studying languages, and spending time with his wife Davida and daughter Vada.
Tanner Ziegelman
Tanner Ziegelman is an Innovation and Technology Educator with the Palo Alto Unified School District, where he serves as an Innovation and Technology Teacher on Special Assignment (TOSA). Based in Silicon Valley, he brings a background in secondary English and literacy to his work at the intersection of emerging technology and human-centered pedagogy. Tanner is dedicated to fostering learning environments where innovation empowers teachers and students rather than replaces the human element of education.
In his current role, Tanner leads professional learning on the effective and ethical use of Artificial Intelligence in the classroom. His approach balances a critical lens with an openness to innovation, ensuring that developing minds are protected while embracing the transformative potential of technology‑enhanced learning. He designs curriculum for Innovation Design Labs that introduce career and technical education concepts to elementary learners and supports K–12 educators in creating instruction that is purposeful, reflective, and student‑centered.
Tanner has shared his expertise nationally, including at the 2025 Association for Career and Technical Education (ACTE) Conference in Nashville and at a student-led AI Day at Stanford University. His work is grounded in a belief that technology should amplify creativity, collaboration, and critical thinking in modern education.