LEADERSHIP TEAM
DIRECTORS AND FOUNDERS
Rita Kohli is a co-founder and co-director of ITOC, and serves as an Associate Professor in the Education, Society and Culture Department at the University of California, Riverside. As a former Oakland Unified School District teacher, teacher educator and education researcher, Kohli has spent almost 20 years in urban public schools across the country. She currently serves on the editorial boards of the international journal Race, Ethnicity and Education and the Journal of Teacher Education, and is co-editor of the book, Confronting Racism in Teacher Education: Counternarratives of Critical Practice. Her research interests include critical race theory, racial climate and racial hierarchies in K-12 schools, and she has studied the strengths, barriers and resiliency of teachers of color across the pipeline. Kohli was the recipient of the University of California, Riverside'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, and the Early Career Scholar of the Social Context of Education Division of the American Educational Research Association (2018).
Marcos Pizarro is a co-founder and co-director of ITOC. He is a Professor in Mexican American Studies, and Associate Dean of the Connie L. Lurie College of Education at San José State University. 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 Ph.D. student in Education, Society, and Culture at the University of California, Riverside. Her research focuses on teacher education and development, sustaining teachers of Color in the profession, and the racial literacy development of students and teachers. Prior to her doctoral studies, she was a history and AVID teacher at a large public high school in 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 (UCR). Her doctoral studies focus on investigating (and ultimately disrupting) the similarities between U.S. prisons and public schools serving Black students. Broadly, her research interests center on BlackCrit, abolitionist praxis, race/racism in education, and educational equity. Prior to beginning her doctoral studies, Farrington worked as the program coordinator for UCR’s Pathways to Psychological Sciences program– an initiative that works to prepare HBCU students for a pathway to graduate school–, the graduate student archivist responsible for documenting and celebrating the 50 Year Anniversary of African Student Programs at UCR, a middle school student teacher, and a high school student mentor. Farrington is a proud alumni of UCR’s master’s program in Diversity and Equity and an awardee of the Chancellor's Distinguished Fellowship.
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 2020-2022
Admissions Committee
Andrea Carreno Cortez
Michaela McCoy
Arturo Nevarez
Saraswati Noel
Teacher Educators of Color Committee
Nallely Arteaga
Sharon Leathers
Femtorship Committee
Andrea Carreno Cortez
Lesly Monsalve
Izamar Ortiz Gonzalez
Andrea Carreno Cortez
Michaela McCoy
Arturo Nevarez
Saraswati Noel
Teacher Educators of Color Committee
Nallely Arteaga
Sharon Leathers
Femtorship Committee
Andrea Carreno Cortez
Lesly Monsalve
Izamar Ortiz Gonzalez
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.