The panel discussion is free to attend. Please RSVP by contacting the Box Office: 860-523-5900 Ext. 10 or BoxOffice@PlayhouseTheatreGroup.org
Moderator:
Jay Williams, President and CEO
Greater Hartford Gives Foundation
Since July 2017, Jay Williams has served as President and CEO of the Greater Hartford Gives Foundation (formerly the Hartford Foundation for Public Giving). He is currently leading the Foundation’s commitment to dismantle structural racism, achieve equity and improve social and economic mobility in our region, in partnership with nonprofit organizations and community stakeholders. In his role, Jay serves on the boards of the MetroHartford Alliance, AdvanceCT, as a member of the Governor’s Workforce Council, and as Chair of the Connecticut Community Foundation CEO Network. At the national level, he is the board chair for the Council on Foundations, board vice chair of the Center for Community Progress, and a member of the Community Foundation Opportunity Network. Prior to coming to the Foundation, Jay served as U.S. Assistant Secretary of Commerce for Economic Development where he led the federal economic development agenda for the United States. He also served as Deputy Director of the Office of Intergovernmental Affairs at the White House where he was the principal liaison between the President of the United States and local elected officials. Previously, Jay served as the executive director of the federal Office of Recovery for Auto Communities and Workers. He arrived in Washington, DC after serving as Mayor of the City of Youngstown, Ohio where he helped lead regional economic development initiatives to improve the city’s global competitiveness. Prior to being elected Mayor, Williams led a Community Development Agency in Youngstown.
Panelists:
Vanessa Roberts Avery, Partner
McCarter & English
Vanessa Roberts Avery, former United States Attorney for the District of Connecticut, draws on her extensive government experience to represent clients in high-stakes criminal and civil matters. Vanessa’s public service career includes a Presidential appointment as the US Attorney for the District of Connecticut, state service as an Associate Attorney General, and prior federal service as an Assistant US Attorney and a trial attorney with the US Department of Justice. Appointed as the US Attorney for the District of Connecticut in 2022, Vanessa brings decades of experience in both the public and private sectors to her representation of clients in a wide range of complex regulatory, commercial, and criminal matters. A seasoned litigator, she offers clients strategic guidance and insight into the litigation process and provides creative solutions to their legal challenges. At McCarter, she helps clients with federal and state government investigations and enforcement actions, the defense of high-stakes white collar matters, corporate investigations, and complex commercial litigation. As US Attorney, Vanessa exercised broad discretion and decision-making authority in a wide variety of challenging criminal and civil matters. She prosecuted cases related to violent crime and narcotics, child exploitation, human trafficking, environmental crimes, financial fraud, public corruption, cybercrime, and national security issues. She also spearheaded civil rights enforcement and hate crime prevention across the state while stressing the importance of community engagement. Prior to her appointment as US Attorney, Vanessa served as the Associate Attorney General and Chief of the Division of Enforcement and Public Protection at the Connecticut Office of the Attorney General. Her areas of responsibility included antitrust, opioids, government program fraud, consumer protection, child protection, civil rights, environment, energy, finance, and privacy. Before working in the Attorney General’s office, she served as an Assistant US Attorney in the Civil Division in Connecticut, prosecuting complex civil fraud cases under the False Claims Act, asset forfeiture cases, environmental violations, civil rights matters, and defending Bivens and medical malpractice cases. Vanessa also served as a trial attorney with the US Department of Justice in the Commercial Litigation Branch of the Civil Division.
Rev. Shawn Fisher, Pastor
Bloomfield Congregational Church
Pastor Shawn Fisher serves as the pastor of Bloomfield Congregational Church in Bloomfield, Connecticut, where faith and social justice are deeply intertwined. Before entering ministry, he spent more than two decades in executive leadership in the private sector after earning Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees in Economics from the University of Connecticut. Responding to a call from God that he could neither explain nor reject, Shawn left the corporate world to pursue full-time ministry rooted in community transformation. Since arriving in Bloomfield in 2018, he has helped lead the church into deeper partnership with the town through programs addressing food insecurity, community connection, as well as public dialogue and direct action around justice. Pastor Shawn is known for preaching that connects faith with the urgent questions of our time - challenging communities to move beyond comfort toward courage, compassion, and shared responsibility. His work focuses on building bridges across difference and helping people rediscover their shared humanity through both Grace and Accountability. He is a husband to the love of his life, Dr. Linda Fisher and proud father of his 25-year-old son Garrett.
Rev. Dr. Barbara E. Headley, Pastor
Zion Community Baptist Church in Springfield, MA
Rev. Dr. Barbara E. Headley is pastor of Zion Community Baptist Church in Springfield, MA and former Executive Director of ACTS Tutoring & Mentoring services in Springfield, Ma. Dr. Headley served for eleven years as the Senior Pastor of Faith Congregational Church in Hartford, CT, the third oldest African American congregational church in the U.S and 17 years as the first African American and the first female Deputy Chaplain of the Connecticut State Senate. She is the founder and consultant of Impart Leadership Ministries in Middletown CT and a founding partner and certified trainer with The John Maxwell Leadership Team, a national and international team of leadership trainers and coaches. Dr. Headley is a leadership consultant, trainer, speaker and coach for community and faith-based organizations. She served as an adjunct professor of leadership in ministry at Gordon Conwell Theological Seminary and as an adjunct professor of Women in Leadership at Bay Path University in Longmeadow, MA. She is an ordained American Baptist minister and has served several congregations as an Interim and Transitional minister. Dr. Headley served seven years as associate minister at Trinity Baptist Church, New York, where she was the founder and Dean of the Trinity Bible Institute. She served as Assistant Dean and Director of Degree Programs at Hartford Seminary (now Hartford International University for Religion and Peace) where she also was an adjunct professor and on the Board of Trustees. She was the host and teacher of the radio broadcast, “Sounds of Faith” in Hartford CT. She has lectured and preached at Yale Divinity School, Harvard Divinity School, Drew Theological Seminary, New York Theological Seminary, Connecticut College, St. Joseph’s University, Wesleyan University and Andover Theological School. Dr. Headley is a recipient several ministerial and community awards including the Union Seminary Merit Award, the Benjamin E. Mays Fellowship for Ministry Award, the Greater Hartford Interdenominational Ministerial Alliance Award for Pastoral Excellence, the Trinity College Master Carpenter Certificate of Merit award for community service, the Hartford Urban League’s Community Service a citation and recognition by the Connecticut General Assembly. She was appointed in 2005 by then Governor Jodi Rell to the Citizens Council of the Connecticut State Office of Ethics. She has also served as a Commissioner on the Association of Theological Schools Commission on Accreditation. Dr. Headley was born in Brooklyn, New York. She received her Bachelor of Science degree in physical therapy from Ithaca College, her Master of Divinity degree from Union Theological Seminary in New York City, and her Doctor of Ministry degree with distinction from Hartford Seminary. She has a Graduate Certificate in Non-Profit Management from Bay Path University and is a graduate fellow of Leadership Greater Hartford leadership program. She has studied at The New York School of the Bible, New York Theological Seminary, The Jerusalem Center of Biblical Studies in Israel and at the University of Cape Town in the Republic of South Africa. She is also a member of Delta Sigma Theta Sorority, Inc.
Chief Justice Raheem L. Mullins
State of Connecticut Judicial Branch
The Honorable Justice Raheem L. Mullins became the Chief Justice on Monday, September 30, 2024, after being nominated by Governor Ned Lamont on September 6, 2024. He is the youngest person to be appointed to the position of Chief Justice. He was nominated to the Supreme Court on October 4, 2017 by Governor Dannel P. Malloy. He was sworn in as a Supreme Court associate justice on November 1, 2017, becoming the youngest person to be appointed to the Supreme Court. Before his appointment to the Supreme Court, Justice Mullins served as a judge on the Appellate Court and as a trial judge on the Superior Court. Born in Middletown, Justice Mullins graduated from Watkinson School in Hartford. He received his Bachelor of Arts degree in Sociology from Clark University in Worcester, Mass. in 2001 and his Juris Doctor from Northeastern University School of Law in 2004. While at Northeastern, Justice Mullins participated in the Frederick Douglass Moot Court Competition; his team won best brief award and placed fourth in the nation on the oral advocacy piece of the competition. After graduating from Northeastern, he clerked for Judge Frederick Brown on the Massachusetts Appeals Court from 2004-2005. Justice Mullins is admitted to the Bar of the United States Supreme Court as well as the Connecticut Bar. Before becoming a judge, Justice Mullins served as an Assistant State’s Attorney for the Appellate Bureau, in the Division of Criminal Justice. In this position, he argued appeals before the Connecticut Supreme Court and Appellate Court. Before becoming an appellate prosecutor, Justice Mullins served as an Assistant Attorney General in the Child Protection Division of the Connecticut Attorney General's Office and tried cases before judges in the Superior Court for Juvenile Matters. Justice Mullins is currently a faculty member of the Connecticut Judicial Branch’s Civics Academy and participates in the annual Read Across America event and the Judicial Branch’s Speakers Bureau. He has been a member of the Oliver Ellsworth Inn of Court; serves as Chair to the Code of Evidence Oversight Committee, 2018 to present; is a fellow of the Connecticut Bar Foundation and is a member of the Watkinson School Board of Directors. He previously served as a member of the Young Lawyers Section of the Connecticut Bar Association, the Board of Directors for the Fund for Greater Hartford, as an Executive Committee Member of the Government Division of the Connecticut Bar Association, as a member of the Law Library Advisory Committee and the Task Force to Study the Feasibility of Amending Title 46b to Permit a Person Other Than a Family or Household member to Apply for a Restraining Order.
Jeffrey O. G. Ogbar, Ph.D., Author
Founder, Center for the Study of Popular Music,
UConn Professor of History, UConn
Jeffrey Ogbonna Green Ogbar was born in Chicago and raised in Los Angeles, California. He received his BA in History from Morehouse College in Atlanta. He earned his MA and Ph.D. in U.S. History with a minor in African studies from Indiana University in Bloomington. Since 1997 he has taught at the University of Connecticut’s Department of History. From 2003-2009 he served as the Director of the Africana Studies Institute. He served as Associate Dean for the Humanities in the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences from 2009-2012. In June 2012 he was named the University’s Vice Provost for Diversity. In 2014 he became founding director of the Center for the Study of Popular Music. Jeffrey O. G. Ogbar’s research interests include the 20th century United States with a focus in African American history. More specifically, Dr. Ogbar studies black nationalism and social justice movements. He has developed courses, lectured and published articles on subjects as varied as the New Negro Renaissance, mass incarceration, social movements, hip-hop, and urban history. Dr. Ogbar has held fellowships at Harvard University’s W.E.B. Du Bois Research Institute, where he completed work on his book, Black Power: Radical Politics and African American Identity. He also held fellowships at the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture in New York City, and the Africana studies program at the University of Miami where he conducted research for his book Hip-Hop Revolution: The Culture and Politics of Rap. He won a UConn Humanities Institute Faculty Fellowship to continue researching and writing his latest book, America’s Black Capital: How African Americans Remade Atlanta in the Shadow of the Confederacy. Along with research and teaching, Dr. Ogbar has enjoyed his role as the advisor to numerous student organizations, as well as working in various community service projects.