EDUCATION: Dr. Raina León received her BA in Journalism with minors in African American Studies, English, International Studies and Spanish from Pennsylvania State University - University Park. She received her MA in Teaching of English from Teachers College Columbia University, her MA in Educational Leadership from Framingham State University, and MFA in Creative Writing - Poetry from Saint Mary's College of California. She has a PhD in Education (Culture, Curriculum, and Change) from University of North Carolina - Chapel Hill,Raina J. León, PhD is a Black and Afro-Boricua Philadelphian. She believes in collective action and community work, the profound power of holding space for the telling of our stories, and the liberatory practice of humanizing education. She seeks out communities of care and craft and is a member of the Carolina African American Writers Collective, Cave Canem, CantoMundo, Macondo. She is the author of three collections of poetry, Canticle of Idols, Boogeyman Dawn and sombra: dis(locate) and the chapbooks, profeta without refuge and Areyto to Atabey: Essays on the Mother(ing) Self. Her poetry, nonfiction, fiction, and scholarly work has been published in well over 100 journals and anthologies. She has received fellowships and residencies with the Community of Writers, Montana Artists Refuge, Macdowell, Vermont Studio Center, the Tyrone Guthrie Center in Annamaghkerrig, Ireland and Ragdale, among others. She is a founding editor of The Acentos Review, an online quarterly, international journal devoted to Latinx arts. She continues to serve as its editor-in-chief for over 14 years and over 900 Latinx published artists and writers later. At Saint Mary's (early retirement), she engaged in extensive service including as director of the Single Subject Credential Program and as former chair of the teacher education department). She has received additional training in digital literacy, hybrid pedagogy, and is an Apple Educator in Ipad, Mac, and Swift Playgrounds. She has extensive project management experience, most recently as the lead coordinator for Nomadic Press Philadelphia, developing literary programming and publishing initiatives. She is a frequent keynote speaker and workshop leader on topics like play as a facet of learning, hybridity in creation and ideation, narrative medicine, identity as literary craft, critical pedagogy, project based learning, academic recruitment and retention of faculty of color, cultivating ancestral knowledge, strategic planning for equity and change, and humanizing education