Educating With Heart, Soul, and Mind

Jill M. Humphries is a native Los Angelena, a rarity in the state of California.  She has always had an intellectual and activist interest in how collectives of people make sense of their world and organize themselves.  Subsequently, her intellectual interest spans indigenous spiritual healing systems, identity, gender, and sexuality, of Afro-descendent people.   More specifically, her research focuses on black ethnicity and transnational identity formation and its effect on the political and racial terrain in the United States.  Her current political project examines the use of digital technology for political organizing across space and time to influence US foreign policy towards Africa.   These eclectic interests led her to pursue a doctorate degree in Public Administration from the University of Southern California and a master and bachelor degrees in Public Health and Anthropology from the University California, Los Angeles.   She is a 2009 Visiting Scholar recipient with the Center for Study of Ethnicity and Race (CSER) at Columbia University, was an International Minority Fogarty Fellow where she studied at Makerere University in Uganda and as an International Career Advancement Alumnae she works to increase the representation of people of color in international development and foreign affairs.  She has taught at several institutions including Columbia and Temple University as adjunct faculty for the departments of Sociology and African American Studies.  Her international experience includes working in Zimbabwe as a secondary school teacher, leading educational and healthcare teams to African nations and traveled extensively the African continent.   She is the creator of RUDO Enterprises an educational consulting agency engaged in public education about US foreign policy towards Africa.  She is a photographer and videographer having produced two photo exhibits of her African travels entitled, The Children of Africa, and The Zimbabwe Community Health Project; and three educational DVDs entitled Black Female Diaspora Expressions, Interrogating White Subjectivity and Privilege in the 21st Century, and Me and My 'White' Liberal Professors Reflections of a Modern Day Lynching that examine antiracist strategies.  During her leisure time she enjoys reading, photography, international travel, yoga, cycling, and rock climbing.