Dr. Richard Lofton is a sociologist of education, applied researcher, theorist, activist, policy influencer, and educator.  His funded research has examined academic placement, racially diverse schools, mentoring programs, concentrated poverty, and social and emotional development. Dr. Lofton has been funded by the Spencer Foundation, Gates Foundation, Education Innovation and Research Grant, American Sociological Association, National Science Foundation, Arnold Foundation, and Baltimore Community Foundation.  He received an early career award at Johns Hopkins University with the Catalyst Grant.  His research positions African American students, parents, and community members not as the problem but rather as an integral part of the solution to equity, justice and the humanization of their lived experiences. Currently, Dr. Lofton is the Principal Investigator of the Nobody Asked Me Campaign.  Through this research campaign, Dr. Lofton, his research team, and an advisory board comprised of community activists, city agency directors, school board members, school district leaders, and experts center the voices and experiences of over 300 African American students and their parents in Baltimore as they relate to education, violence, transportation, housing, and school infrastructure. Their goal is to co-produce policies, strategies, and practices along with African American parents, students, and community members to promote equity and justice in educational resources, opportunities, and experiences.

Annette C. Anderson is a native of Baltimore and a graduate of Baltimore City Public Schools, an experience that has left an indelible mark on her career interests in educational equity and adequacy. Besides her research pursuits, she has served in a variety of school-based positions, including classroom teacher, teacher leader, curriculum coordinator, and assistant principal. She served as the chief executive officer and founding principal of Widener Partnership Charter School, the first university-assisted charter school in Pennsylvania. The school quickly became known to state and local education officials as a successful model for university-public school partnerships.

She has assumed advisory and related duties for the School Administration & Supervision programs at the Johns Hopkins School of Education. She holds a Ph.D. and master’s degree from University of Pennsylvania, a second master’s degree in public policy from Georgetown University, and a bachelor’s degree from Syracuse University.

Keri N. Althoff, PhD, is the Provost’s Fellow for Research Communication and an associate professor of epidemiology in the Bloomberg School of Public Health and the School of Medicine. As a Provost’s Fellow, she is expanding our institutional capacity to share research achievements. Dr. Althoff's research interest is aging in the context of human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) infection. She serves as the co-director of the North American AIDS Cohort Collaboration on Research and Design (NA-ACCORD), which is a collaboration of more than 20 longitudinal HIV cohort studies of adults with individual-level harmonized data. She earned her bachelor's degree at the University of Iowa, then her MPH and PhD from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. Prior to becoming an accomplished epidemiologist, Dr. Althoff worked in public relations and journalism.