Our Team
Najma Nuriddin
Najma Nuriddin is an award-winning filmmaker with over 10+ years of experience as a filmmaker and educator. Her work is centered in telling socially and culturally relevant stories that focus on humanity and history. After receiving her M.F.A. in film at Howard University, Najma has lived, worked, and traveled to various parts of the world, including Cape Town, South Africa, where she has worked on various film projects. Most recently, the award-winning documentary film "Not in My Neighbourhood" awarded Best Documentary at the American Black Film Festival. Her films have screened nationally and internationally and received multiple awards. Najma is also a member-owner of co-op New Day Films, a filmmaker-run distribution company, providing social issue documentaries to educators since 1971.
Ronel E. Stevens
A highly organized International Education specialist with over 15 years’ experience in the South African public tertiary sector. A savvy manager with in-depth knowledge and understanding of international higher education exchange programs. Proven capability in the design and implementation of creative and community facing service learning projects. Strong planning, monitoring, evaluation and learning skills. A demonstrated history of successfully working with university students from all over the globe, specifically Sub-Saharan Africa, North America and European academic institutions on short term exchanges and internships on the African continent. A Masters in Laws graduate, specialising in Human Rights Law; a Child Protection Officer and an International Development specialist, focussed on Education, NGO Impact Analysis and Inter-Cultural Learning through engagement, bridging the gaps that exists between the academy and communities.
Kurt Orderson
Kurt Orderson is an award-winning filmmaker from Cape Town, South Africa. His career started after completing his film and television studies at Monash University, South Africa, in 2004. He has directed 11 feature-length documentary films shot between five continents, as well as more than 20 shorts. His films serve as a creative pedagogy by making use of historical, archival, political, and transnational solidarity traditions. His work explores unknown stories, asking critical questions to create new narratives in impermanent settings. In 2009 Kurt founded Azania Rizing Productions, an award-winning production company consisting of a collective of filmmakers and activists, creating film and media content that facilitates unity, solidarity, forms new alliances, and stimulates public discourse. Azania Rizing, aspires to tell stories about Afrika, the Afrikan Diaspora, and Afrika's legacy in world heritage to revive political consciousness, honouring the struggle of our foremothers and fathers.
Rachel Milkovich
Rachel Milkovich is currently pursuing her Master of Science in Public Health, with a concentration in sexual and reproductive health, at the Johns Hopkins School of Public Health. Her research focuses on access to and equity in sexual health services and contraception, particularly for youth and adolescents. Prior to graduate school, Rachel worked for several years in strategic communications for global health non-profits, including Médecins Sans Frontières and Women Deliver. Rachel is also training to become a doula and is a co-leader for the Birth Companions program at the Johns Hopkins School of Nursing.
Project Advisors
Beverly Silver, Johns Hopkins University Professor in the Department of Sociology and Director of the Arrighi Center for Global Studies. Their research focuses on problems of development, labor, social conflict, and war, using comparative and world-historical methods of analysis. By recasting these issues in a broad geographical and long-term historical framework, their work teases out patterns of recurrence, evolution and “true novelty” in contemporary processes of globalization.
Shawntay Stocks, Ph.D. is the Assistant Director of Fellowships and Community Engagement in the Krieger School of Arts and Sciences with the Inheritance Baltimore Project. She has over a decade of experience in service and community-based learning, coordinating service and diversity programs, and teaching. Dr. Stocks obtained her Bachelor’s degree in History from Guilford College, Master’s degree in English and African- American Literature from North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University, and her Ph.D. in the Language, Literacy and Culture program at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County. Her dissertation research focused on faculty diversity within higher education.
Michele R. Decker, ScD, MPH, is an Associate Professor in the Department of Population, Family and Reproductive Health at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. She directs the Women's Health & Rights Program of the Center for Public Health & Human Rights, and co-leads the Gender Equity and Justice thematic area of the Alliance for a Healthier World, a Johns Hopkins University Signature Initiative.