Ashlin received her BA in Political Science and Social Change and Development, and her MA in International Conflict Resolution. She lives in Sacramento with her husband Theodros and her 2 children Kayden and Davin. 

Read more about her work here.

hooks assumed her pseudonym, the name of her great-grandmother, to honor female legacies; she preferred to spell it in all lowercase letters to focus attention on her message rather than herself. She taught English and ethnic studies at the University of Southern California from the mid-1970s, African and Afro-American studies at Yale University during the ’80s, women’s studies at Oberlin College and English at the City College of New York during the 1990s and early 2000s. In 2004 she became a professor in residence at Berea College in Berea, Kentucky. The bell hooks Institute was founded at the college in 2014.

In the 1980s hooks established a support group for Black women called the Sisters of the Yam, which she later used as the title of a book, published in 1993, celebrating Black sisterhood. Her other writings included Feminist Theory from Margin to Center (1984), Talking Back: Thinking Feminist, Thinking Black (1989), Black Looks: Race and Representation (1992), Killing Rage: Ending Racism (1995), Reel to Real: Race, Sex, and Class at the Movies (1996), Remembered Rapture: The Writer at Work (1999), Where We Stand: Class Matters (2000), Communion: The Female Search for Love (2002), and the companion books We Real Cool: Black Men and Masculinity (2003) and The Will to Change: Men, Masculinity, and Love (2004). Writing Beyond Race: Living Theory and Practice was published in 2012. She also wrote a number of autobiographical works, such as Bone Black: Memories of Girlhood (1996) and Wounds of Passion: A Writing Life (1997).Adapted from Encyclopaedia Britannica.

They are the author of several books:  Subjects of Desire: Hegelian Reflections in Twentieth-Century France (1987), Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity (1990), Bodies That Matter: On the Discursive Limits of “Sex” (1993), The Psychic Life of Power: Theories of Subjection (1997), Excitable Speech (1997), Antigone’s Claim: Kinship Between Life and Death (2000), Precarious Life: Powers of Violence and Mourning (2004); Undoing Gender (2004), Who Sings the Nation-State?: Language, Politics, Belonging (with Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak in 2008), Frames of War: When Is Life Grievable? (2009), Is Critique Secular? (co-written with Talal Asad, Wendy Brown, and Saba Mahmood, 2009), Sois Mon Corps (2011), co-authored with Catherine Malabou, Parting Ways: Jewishness and the Critique of Zionism (2012), Dispossession: The Performative in the Political (co-authored with Athena Athanasiou 2013), Senses of the Subject and Notes Toward a Performative Theory of Assembly (2015), and a co-edited volume, Vulnerability in Resistance, with Duke University Press (2015), The Force of Nonviolence (2020), and What World is This? A Pandemic Phenomenology (2022). Their books have been translated into more than twenty-seven languages.

They served as a founding director, with Martin Jay, of the Critical Theory Program at UC Berkeley. They received a Mellon Foundation grant to found and developed the International Consortium of Critical Theory Programs (2016-2020) where they serve now as Co-Chair of the Board and editorial member of Critical Times. Earlier, they served as Department Chair of the Department of Rhetoric in 1998-2003 and 2006-7, and the Acting Chair of the Department of Gender and Women’s Studies, 2002-3. They also served as the Chair of the Board of the University of California Humanities Research Center in Irvine. They were elected member of the Executive Council of the Modern Languages Association and chaired its committee on Committee on Academic Freedom and Professional Responsibilities before serving as President of the organization in 2020.  They are also affiliated faculty with the Psychosocial MA Program at Birkbeck College University of London and teaches as the  Hannah Arendt Chair at the European Graduate School in Sass Fee, Switzerland.  They have taught as a Distinguished Visiting Professor in Philosophy at the New School University in 2020-2022. They will be the intellectual in residence at the Centre Pompidou in Paris in 2024.

Butler has been active in several human rights organizations, including the Center for Constitutional Rights in New York and the advisory board of Jewish Voice for Peace. They were the recipient of the Andrew Mellon Award for Distinguished Academic Achievement in the Humanities (2009-13) and received the Adorno Prize from the City of Frankfurt (2012) in honor of their contributions to feminist and moral philosophy, the Brudner Prize from Yale University for lifetime achievement in gay and lesbian studies, and was named the Albertus Magnus Professorship from the City of Cologne, Germany in 2016. They are the past recipient of several fellowships including Guggenheim, Rockefeller, Ford, American Council of Learned Societies, and was Fellow at the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton and at Ecole Normale Superieure in Paris. They have given the Wellek Lectures at Irvine, the Carpenter Lectures at the University of Chicago, the Watts Lecture at the Nobel Museum in Stockholm, the Gauss Lectures at Princeton, the Messenger Lectures at Cornell, the Tanner Lectures at Yale University, and the annual Freud Lecture at the Freud Museum in Vienna.  They have received 14  honorary degrees: Université Bordeaux-III, Université Paris-VII, Grinnell College, McGill University, University of St. Andrews, Université de Fribourg in Switzerland, Universidad de Buenos Aires, Liège Université, the Universidad de Costa Rica, Universidad de Guadalajara, Universidad de Chile, University of Belgrade, Universidad Veracruzana, and the Autonomous University of Mexico and appointed an Honorary fellow at Birkbeck University of London. In 2014, they were awarded the diploma of Chevalier of the Order of Arts and Letters from the French Cultural Ministry and subsequently reappointed as Commandant. They served as well on the Advisory Committee of the Institute fuer Sozialforschung in Frankfurt. In 2015, they were made an “honorary geographer” by the American Association of Geographers and was elected as a corresponding fellow of the British Academy. They were also elected as member of the American Philosophical Society and  elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2019. In 2022, they received the Catalonia International Prize from the canton of Catalunya and the gold medal from the Circulo de Bellas Artes in Madrid.

Ashley creates and circulates belonging educational materials, amplifies belonging practices in motion, and uses her understanding of the Institutes frames of Belonging, Bridging and Targeted Universalism to support initiatives. Ashley engages in complex considerations of how belonging moves with and positively contributes to our world's biggest necessary shifts like that of global human rights, climate justice, cross-movement alignment and much more. Ashley is one of three co-facilitators at Belonging a Weekly Practice, a free, low barrier virtual belonging space open to all. Registration information for the sessions is available here

Before working with OBI, Ashley worked within public health and healthcare to advance health equity and racial equity in application. She directed state wide equity coalitions and believes in the power of network models to co-create momentum beyond any one entity's capacity.

While born in Southern California, Ashley was raised in Belen, NM, grew as an adult in Denver, CO, and found her way to the place where her spirit feels aligned in Oakland, CA. In her free time, Ashley enjoys spending time with loved ones, building community, experiencing and contributing to the arts, reading, being near water and maintaining a spiritual groundedness.

Mc Neal has over 30 years of senior leadership experience and flexibly negotiates the intersection between creativity, new technologies, and professional learning. He has trained in multiple culturally responsive practices including; restorative justice techniques, social-emotional learning, and Teaching Tolerance curriculum (from the Southern Poverty Law Center). He is an accredited Integrated Learning Specialist and a certified Oral Historian. A frequent and sought-after conference presenter, Mc Neal has lectured on arts, education, social justice, multiculturalism, and equity for The Edinburgh International Festival, UC Berkeley, Stanford University, and Harvard Graduate School of Education.

Mr. McNeal is the first-ever Director of Diversity, Equity and Community for the San Francisco Opera. A pioneering leader in the field of arts, McNeal is ostensibly the first director of diversity for an opera company in the United States. Mr. McNeal has operationalized a new department in a major arts organization for the second time. In his role, he leads internal and external initiatives aimed at developing diverse audiences, creating a safe, and diverse working environment and facilitating the further advancements of the organizational mission. He is tasked with creating a culture of belonging and acceptance, we’re diverse peoples on value and inspiration in the arc of Opera. He is guided by the goals and objectives outlined in the 2019 Strategic Plan – to place develop diversity, and equity inclusion at the core of arts and business practice. Mr. McNeal works organization-wide to advise, consult, and mentor on diversity and equity initiatives.

He also continues training teaching artists, conducts arts research, develops novel initiatives, and advises on artistic content, culturally responsive pedagogy, creative collaboration and more. He designs and curates accredited professional development training for credentialed educators who partner with the San Francisco Opera.

A celebrated dance educator, Mr. Mc Neal is the former Director of Education for San Francisco Ballet where he established the distinguished, San Francisco Ballet Center for Dance Education, engaging over 30,000 people annually through 1,500 culturally diverse events.

Mc Neal served as a Transformative Learning Coach, Leadership Advisor and Arts Integration Specialist for Alameda County Office of Education where he developed culturally responsive, inquiry-based, social justice curriculum. He is a founding member of the San Francisco Unified School District’s Arts Education Master Plan Advisory Committee. McNeal is on the Leadership Council of Create California, a statewide-advocacy consortium, where he Chairs the Equity Committee – working to creating a sustainable, equitable, arts learning eco-system for the state of California.

Mr. Mc Neal holds two bachelor’s degrees – in psychology, and sociology from Excelsior University, and a master’s degree in education from Lesley University. Dr. Mc Neal holds a Ph.D. in Transformative Studies in Education from the California Institute for Integral Studies in San Francisco. Mc Neal’s research focuses on Critical Pedagogy, Culturally and Linguistically Responsive studies, and Artistic Inquiry and lies at the intersection of arts, cultural responsiveness, and educational equity as he devises solutions to the pressing issues of education reform and racial equity in the arts.