Center for the Humanities: Graduate Career Diversity Panel w/African Cultural Studies

Join the Center for the Humanities to hear the stories of three alumni of African Cultural Studies who took non-academic career paths, and to imagine your own potential professional path.The panel will be moderated by Katrina Daly Thompson (Professor; Department Chair; Director of the Program in African Languages), and there will be time for Q&A and informal conversation.

Register to attend the panel by Zoom. We will record the event and make the video available to interested students.

Jared Banks is a Foreign Service Officer (diplomat) at the U.S. Department of State. He is currently part of the Secretary’s Policy Planning Staff, which provides analysis and advice on global trends. Overseas, he most recently worked at the U.S. Mission to the United Nations in Geneva, and has also been assigned to Brasilia, Kabul, and Warsaw. In Washington, he has also advanced science diplomacy, justice sector reform, peacekeeping, and human rights. He completed a BA in comparative literature at Brigham Young University and a PhD in African Languages and Literature (aka Cultural Studies) at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Jared entered federal service as a Presidential Management Fellow and was a Fulbright fellow in Mozambique.

Heather DuBois Bourenane is Executive Director of the Wisconsin Public Education Network, a nonprofit coalition advocating for educational equity. She came to UW-Madison to pursue (but not complete) a PhD in African Languages & Literature after receiving an MA in African and African-American Studies at the Ohio State University and spent many years here as a member of the academic precariat, raising two young children while teaching part-time at Madison College, lecturing at UW-Madison, and working in outreach programs at the African Studies Program and the Center for the Humanities.

Kazeem Kẹ́hìndé Sanuth is an alumnus of the department of African Cultural Studies, UW-Madison where he got his M.A. degree in African Languages and Literature, followed by his Ph.D. from the Doctoral Program in Second Language Acquisition (SLA) at UW- Madison. After graduation, Kazeem joined the Hamilton Lugar School of Global and International Studies (HLS), Indiana University, as the International Education Outreach Administrator. He led several Title VI Area Studies Centers across the university on coordinating global learning and international education through a range of programmatic undertakings. After a year in this role, Kazeem transitioned to the position of the Associate Director of the National African Language Resources Center (NALRC), at Indiana University.