'Community Wealth Building and the Reconstruction of American Democracy'

Melody Barnes is co-director for policy and public affairs for the Democracy Initiative, an interdisciplinary teaching, research, and engagement effort led by the College and Graduate School of Arts & Sciences at the University of Virginia. She is also a professor of practice at the Miller Center and distinguished fellow at the UVA School of Law. During the administration of President Barack Obama, Barnes was assistant to the president and director of the White House Domestic Policy Council. She was also executive vice president for policy at the Center for American Progress and chief counsel to the late Senator Edward M. Kennedy on the Senate Judiciary Committee.

Corey D. B. Walker is the Wake Forest Professor of the Humanities at Wake Forest University. He is the author of A Noble Fight: African American Freemasonry and the Struggle for Democracy in America (Champaign: University of Illinois Press, 2008). His research and teaching interests include Africana philosophy, critical theory, ethics, social and political philosophy, and religion and public life. His scholarship and public speaking attracts a broad audience and he provides informed commentary to a number of media outlets.

Thad Williamson is associate professor of Leadership Studies and Philosophy, Politics, Economics and Law at the Jepson School of Leadership Studies at the University of Richmond. His research focuses on the intersection of theories of social justice and public policy, particularly as applied to urban politics and economic policy. Williamson served as the first director of the city’s Office of Community Wealth Building (OCWB) while on leave from the University during the 2014–15 and 2015–16 academic years.

Barbara Brown Wilson is an associate professor of urban and environmental planning at the UVA School of Architecture, and co-founder and faculty director at the UVA Democracy Initiative Center for the Redress of Inequity through Community-Engaged Scholarship (aka The Equity Center). Her research and teaching focus on the history, theory, ethics, and practice of planning for climate justice, and on the role of urban social movements in the built world. She is the author of Resilience for All: Striving for Equity through Community-Driven Design and co-author of Questioning Architectural Judgement: The Problem of Codes in the United States.