LEADERSHIP TEAM
DIRECTORS AND FOUNDERS
Rita Kohli is a co-founder and co-director of ITOC. She serves as a Professor in the Education, Society and Culture Program in the School of Education at the University of California, Riverside (UCR). A former Oakland Unified School District teacher, teacher educator, and education researcher, Kohli has spent over 20 years studying and working with K-12 teachers across the country, and beyond. She currently serves on the editorial board of the international journal Race, Ethnicity and Education, and is an Assistant Educator for the Journal of Teacher Education. She is also co-editor of the book, Confronting Racism in Teacher Education: Counternarratives of Critical Practice, and author of the award winning book, Teachers of Color: Resisting Racism and Reclaiming Education. Her research interests include critical race theory, racial climate and racial hierarchies in K-12 schools, and she has studied the strengths, barriers, resistance, and reimagination of teachers of color across the pipeline. Kohli was the recipient of UCR's Innovator for Social Change Award (2016), the Scholar Activist and Community Advocacy Award (2017) from the Critical Educators for Social Justice Special Interest Group of the American Educational Research Association (AERA), the AERA Division G: Social Context of Education Early Career Award (2018), the AERA Division K: Teaching and Teacher Education Mid Career Award (2020), the AERA Division K Exemplary Research in Teaching and Teacher Education Award (2023), and the American Association of Colleges of Teacher Education Outstanding Journal of Teacher Education Article Award (2023).
Marcos Pizarro is a co-founder and co-director of ITOC. He is the Dean of the College of Education at California State University, Los Angeles. He has worked for over twenty years to develop innovative approaches to schooling with Chicanx youth. His book Chicanas and Chicanos in School: Racial Profiling, Identity Battles, and Empowerment, explores the relationship between the identities of Chicanx students and their academic performance. He coordinates MAESTR@S, an Institute for Raza Liberation through Educación, a teacher support group that has developed a model for transforming the school experiences of Raza youth in disenfranchised communities. He engaged in a yearlong project integrating this model in the development of a 11th grade Latinx Literature class to replace the standard English course.
Program Assistants
Corinna Ott (she/her) is a dedicated scholar-activist, educator, and researcher. Her work centers critical theories of race, caring, and racial literacy to disrupt racism in K-12 schools and uplift the joy, humanity, and strengths of teachers and students of Color. As a Ph.D. Candidate in Education, Society, and Culture at the University of California, Riverside, her dissertation seeks to understand how first-year teachers of Color engage, embody, and sustain their racial literacies to identify, navigate, and disrupt racism in their respective K-12 school contexts. Her research has been published in The International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education, Multicultural Perspectives, and The Urban Review. Corinna is a former high school history teacher from the California Bay Area.
Re’Nyqua Farrington (she/her) is a Ph.D. student in Education, Society, and Culture at the University of California, Riverside. Her experiences attending and student teaching at predominately Black public schools largely shape her current research interests and current dissertation study. Specifically, her dissertation studies the history of Black student resistance to school police in the metro Atlanta area. Before her doctoral studies, Re’Nyqua received her B.S. in English Education from Nova Southeastern University and later completed her M.Ed. in Diversity and Equity from the University of California, Riverside.
Communication Assistants
Emily Dech (she/they) is a Ph.D. student in Education, Society, and Culture at the University of California, Riverside (UCR). Their doctoral studies focus on how to support, retain, and increase Teachers of Color, particularly through affinity groups. Prior to her doctoral studies, Emily taught elementary school in St. Paul, Minnesota and Stockholm, Sweden, facilitated affinity groups for Teachers of Color in her previous school districts, and collaborated with the Coalition to Increase Teachers of Color and American Indian Teachers in Minnesota to create an online guide for schools to create their own affinity groups for Teachers of Color.
Arts Director
Nicole "Novela" Martinez is a Chicana Indigena community artist, educator and activist representing her homeland of Abiqui Pueblo, Nuevo Mexico to her hometown of Sacramento, California. Growing up hip-hop and ranch, she strives to acknowledge our rich ethnic identities and cultures and works to build partnerships and encourage solidarity with diverse communities through music, poetry, photography and the sharing of our unique stories, traditions and spiritual beliefs. Currently Nicole is a fourth grade bilingual teacher at Cesar Chavez Intermediate School in South Sacramento, Meadowview. She also works with community arts organizations Sol Collective, Sacramento Area Youth Speaks, Mahogany Urban Poetry, and other activist organizations. She provides beats, rhythms and soul to ITOC both on the turntables and off.
ITOC COMMITTEES OF 2024-2025
Admissions Committee
Michaela McCoy, Mounds View Public Schools, Minneapolis, MN
Arturo Nevárez, California State University, Stanislaus
Saraswati Noel, University of Washington
Jonathan Montero, Bronx Academy for Software Engineering, The Bronx, NY
Teacher Educators of Color Committee
Nallely Arteaga, California State University, Dominguez Hills
Sharon Leathers, Ramapo College; Mahwah, NJ
Diane Mendoza Nevárez, California State University, Stanislaus
Femtorship Committee
Andrea Carreno Cortez, University of Washington
Lesly Monsalve, Corona-Norco Unified School District, Corona, CA
Izamar Ortiz Gonzalez, University of California, Davis
Healing and Wellness Coordinator
Altagracia Montilla, A.M. Consulting
Accessibility Coordinator
Danielle Mireles, University of Nevada, Las Vegas
Michaela McCoy, Mounds View Public Schools, Minneapolis, MN
Arturo Nevárez, California State University, Stanislaus
Saraswati Noel, University of Washington
Jonathan Montero, Bronx Academy for Software Engineering, The Bronx, NY
Teacher Educators of Color Committee
Nallely Arteaga, California State University, Dominguez Hills
Sharon Leathers, Ramapo College; Mahwah, NJ
Diane Mendoza Nevárez, California State University, Stanislaus
Femtorship Committee
Andrea Carreno Cortez, University of Washington
Lesly Monsalve, Corona-Norco Unified School District, Corona, CA
Izamar Ortiz Gonzalez, University of California, Davis
Healing and Wellness Coordinator
Altagracia Montilla, A.M. Consulting
Accessibility Coordinator
Danielle Mireles, University of Nevada, Las Vegas
We want to recognize and honor Dr. Rebeca Burciaga as a co-founder and former co-director of ITOC. She is the Faculty Executive Director of the Institute for Emancipatory Education at San José State University and a Professor of Educational Leadership and Chicana/o Studies, and helped to build and lead ITOC for its first 8 years.