A FEW GLOBAL PEOPLE

BOARD OF DIRECTORS

President  
Dr. Steven Damo
Assistant Professor, Fisk University
​
Secretary
Monica Cooley
Kala Nivedanam South Indian Classical Dance School

Andrea Fanta
Nashville Public Library

​Thomasa Daughety 
Product Manager, Kroll

Laini Brown
Laini’s Cultural Connections & Hachette Book Group

Dr. Montanez Wade
Retired Engineering Professor, Tennessee State University

Dr. Gayathri Narasimham
Associate Director, Vanderbilt Institute for Digital Learning               
Vice President
Andrea McClain
Teacher Licensing, Belmont University

Treasurer
Luke Searcy 
Staff Accountant, Carr, Riggs and Ingram LLC

Dr. Valerie Dickson Cordero
Co-Executive Director, Families for Depression Awareness

Dr. Naoko Ozaki
Center for Language & Intercultural Communication
Rice University

Jervon Dailey
National Account Manager, Second Harvest Food Bank

Mayra Yu Morales
Director, Casa de la Cultura Latino Americana

Manju Bala
Research Specialist, Vanderbilt University
ARTISTIC STAFF

Ellen Gilbert
Executive Director of Global Education Center
Ellen is the founding director of the Global Education Center, created in 1997 based on her thirty-five years as an anti-bias, multicultural arts education specialist. In her work as an administrator, a teacher, a parent volunteer and a student of world dance styles, Ellen saw a need for developing intercultural understanding and respect and for exploring ways in which to create classrooms that are safe havens for all of our children. With encouragement from educators throughout the area, she partnered with a diverse pool of artists to create lively programming that beckons all of the senses to experience the richness and beauty of different cultures, offering creative solutions to confront cultural and religious intolerance, stereotypes, misinformation, lack of information and the many negative "isms" of American society which make harmonious living difficult for many people.

Read more about Ellen in The Nashville Scene and on The Greenery.
Charlie Gilbert 
Roots, Rhythm, and Rhyme and Music Director
Charlie is the program director for Roots, Rhythm and Rhyme, our summer, after-school and weekend arts programming for youth at both our satellite studio in Casa Azafran Community Center and our home base in northwest Nashville. He recently finished his Masters in Latin American Studies at Vanderbilt University and graduated with a B.S. from Eckerd College, majoring in Spanish and International Relations, where he was Director of Cultural Affairs, organizing festivals and scheduling artistic performances and activities for students and the community. He has literally grown up at the Global Education Center and works as staff over both Latino and youth programming and as a teaching artist, teaching Spanish and world percussion (African, Latin, Polynesian and bucket/drumline). He has been invaluable in solidifying our relationships with our Latino families and instigating partnerships with Latino organizations such as Nino Luz, a nongovernmental organization in Peru. Previously employed by Nashville Public Library as a Spanish-language workshop presenter in their Bringing Books to Life program and as a Spanish language home-school coordinator for Headstart, he brings vast experience in working with international children and their extended families. 
Alejandro Rivera
Dance Director and Site Manager of our Nolensville Road Studio
Alejandro joined the Global Education Center staff after a few years as a contracted artist. He serves as director of dance as well as studio manager and artistic director of Helios World Dance Ensemble. He continues to be a popular choreographer, teacher and performer throughotu the Nashville area and has his own dance program specializing in choreography for Quinceañeras. He has a BA in Industrial Management/Human Resources, with a Minor in Education. He is from Hatillo, Puerto Rico, Alejandro trained in Musical Theater, Jazz, Hip Hop, Modern, Latin, Ballroom and Ballet, from four Academies: Compañía Baile Moderno in San Germán, PR by Janice Santana, and Elmer Pérez; Western Ballet Theater in Mayagüez, PR by Nana and Mumy Badrena; Ballet Jazz de Mayagüez in Mayagüez, PR by Doris Ocasio; and School for the Performing Arts in San Juan, PR by Waldo González. Mr. Rivera was the director and founder of the first College Dance Team to receive full university tuition scholarship out of all 11 state universities in Puerto Rico. He was chosen out of 50 teachers at W.A.L.K.S. (private magnet school in Mayagüez, PR) to provide dance workshops in private and public schools as well as organizations and other groups of kids and adults in Danbury, Connecticut. Alejandro has taught kids from 4 year olds to adults over 85 years old. Alejandro opened his own performing arts studio, named Imagination Performing Arts Studio in Mayagüez, PR, where students had the opportunity to create their own musicals and the teachers were their guides to explore their talents throughout the class. Alejandro has served his community through dance workshops for non-profit organizations such as Muscular Dystrophy Association (MDA), Relay for Life, and our very own, Global Education Center. Mr. Rivera has worked as a Healthcare Training Manager for the past 7 years providing training techniques and skills to several healthcare companies in Nashville, TN.This September, he decided to dedicate completely to the arts and continue to make a difference in the lives of every person he encounters through the power of dance and respect.
Jeimy Vitor Gilbert
Teaching Artist
Jeimy teaches ZumbaKids®, PoundFit® and Peruvian dance in preschools and early learning centers for the Global Education Center. She has created an interactive preschool Spanish language program that she shares with families both at the Global Education Center and in area schools. She is heavily involved in our healthy lifestyles collaboration with Meharry Medical College Department of Pediatrics. Jeimy performs on the Center's Afro Latin Dance team in both Afro Cuban and Peruvian dance. She comes to the Center with several years of experience as a preschool curriculum creator at an NGO in Peru serving children of Inca descent and uses this experience to enhance her work with Latino families in Nashville. Jeimy is a student at Nashville State Community College where she is studying English and early childhood education.
Thandiwe Shiphrah
Director of Literary Arts & Community Engagement
Thandiwe has worked with the Global Education Center for many years and is currently serving as the director of literary arts and community engagement. She created and curates the Center's Line Breaks Literary Reading Series, now in its 13th year, and is founder of MuseWisdom.com, the online home of Thandiwe's poetry-inspired creativity. Most of her work is dedicated to highlighting poetry’s role in human creativity and its capacity to drive social change.  For more than two decades, Thandiwe has been developing and producing poetry-inspired workshops, products, exhibits and installations, and live concerts for adults and youth. Her offerings help promote wellness, awaken the imagination, foster ingenuity, cultivate goodwill, and celebrate our oneness with each other and the natural world. 
Tirra Olufemi Hargrow
Teaching Artist & African Dance Instructor
Tirra is the resident West African and Afro Latin dance teacher at the Global Education Center. She performs West African, Afro Brazilian, Afro Cuban and Afro Peruvian dance as well as leads our children's Zumba®crew. As a certified fitness trainer, she teaches Zumba®, ZumbaKids®, and just about every other form of Zumba® in addition to being a Beach Body® coach. Tirra has studied with various dance masters from Guinea, Brazil, Cuba, Colombia and Peru while at the Global Education Center. She holds a Masters in Public Health and assists with the healthy lifestyles component of several of Global's programs. She also coordinates the Center's home-school programming and is a valuable asset in our school outreach, Passport to Understanding. And beyond all of that, she is an incredible mother to two amazing young men, whom she educates at home.
TEACHING ARTISTS
While we have close to 100 artists on our roster, these are the artists currently working regularly in the schools.
Michael Irvin
Michael, known to most people who do Capoeira as Professor Eme Eme, began learning Capoeira with his family in 1999 in Lexington KY. He finds the acrobatics movements to be very freeing and the history is something in which he takes great pride.  The vast majority of his training has been with Capoeira master  Mestre Gildo Valu who is in Bahia, Brazil. This Capoeira education has taken Michael to many places, including Brazil, where he learned how the art form is practiced in the traditional academies, the modern/ contemporary classes, and even in the streets. Entering his fifth year of  teaching for the Global Education Center, Michael shares his love of this Afro Brazilian art form, teaching a little about all aspects of Capoeira - its dance and fighting movements, games, music, ritual, history and role in political resistance and survival. Through the Center, he and his group, Grupo Balança Capoeira, perform Capoeira and teach in schools throughout Middle Tennessee, including  Metro Nashville Public Schools, as well as offer community classes for children (age 4-12), teens and adults of all ages and skill levels, including folks at Room In The Inn. When he is not doing Capoeira,  Michael can be found working tirelessly on his PhD in Computational Biology.   
Monica Cooley
Monica  is a respected performer and teacher of Bharatanatyam, the beautiful and intricate classical dance form of southern India. An American born in Singapore and raised in Indonesia, Ms. Cooley learned Indonesian dance forms as a child, as well as Western classical ballet, before being introduced to Bharatanatyam in 1979 in the southern Indian city of Madurai. Her early teachers of Bharatanatyam were Mrs. Neela Krishnamurthi in Madurai and Mrs. Sujaya Dixit in Atlanta, GA.  In 1986, she went to live in Madras, India for intensive professional training with renowned dancers, Narasimhachari and Vasanthalakshmi. Under their careful guidance, Monica worked to master the demanding physical technique and graceful art of expression required of Bharatanatyam dancers. Her Arangetram (debut performance) took place in Madras, India in September 1989. Monica is an active performer, teacher and choreographer and one of Global Education Center's original resident artists. In addition to performing in area schools and festivals for the Center, her school, Kala Nivedanam, is housed at Global where she teaches with her husband, Mahadevan Sankaran, who teaches Hindustani music and vocals.  
Shaolu McLaren
Shaolu is the founder and artistic director of Little Eagle Chinese Dance Academy, a resident school of the Global Education Center. She was a professional dancer in China as well as a tour guide sharing the history and culture of the various minority groups in China. After moving to the U. S., Shaolu decided to share the dances of her homeland with children in Middle Tennessee. She has a thriving children's dance program as well as an annual Chinese arts immersion camp, both of which take place at the Global Education Center. She also coordinates and facilitates numerous Chinese cultural exchanges for middle school, high school and college students. In the past, Shaolu has taught and set choreography for Nashville Chinese Culture Club and Van Divas but has devoted the last few years to focusing on the children.
Carolina Gomez
Carolina is a visiting artist from Madrid Spain who will be in residence through June, 2020. While Carolina is young in age, she has definitely mastered the art of flamenco, although she remains eager to learn throughout life. She has been dancing her entire life and graduated from the Madrid Dance Conservatory in 2012. Her mother's side of the family comes from Cadiz (Andalusia) which is where her passion for Flamenco was sparked. In Madrid, she taught Flamenco to kids in schools and workshops to adults and foreigners visiting Madrid. While at Global Education Center, she will be teaching children's and adults' flamenco classes at the Center as well as in area schools. She will also be performing with the Center's Latin and Afro Latin dance groups. Carolina is an amazing addition to the Global Education Center family and to our entire community.
Summer Shack
​Summer has studied a plethora of different dance genres including ballet, modern, tap, hip-hop and majorette. She is an alumna of Belmont University's College of Visual and Performing Arts, where she majored in theatre and drama with an emphasis in directing and minored in dance. Summer has been dancing ever since she was a little girl but did not start professional training until her freshman year of college. Her love for dance goes beyond performing on a stage--she loves children and the magical feeling she gets from motivating and inspiring youth. Her goal as a dancer is to diversify her experiences and talents with the world of art and extend arts opportunities to at-risk youth and families who suffer from financial disadvantages. She works to give back to her community by teaching dance and offering mentorship to local community centers, while encouraging kids to use art as a way to overcome life’s hardships. "As a child, dance was one of the few things that kept me away from the negativity that controlled my environment. Dance helped me gain self-confidence and gave me a reason to be happy in a world full of drugs, violence and lost dreams. Dancing made me feel secure and I knew that no matter what, I could always gain a clear head through movement and gesture.  While I know that I am not the best dancer in the world and that I have much to learn about the history of its origin, I know that God blessed me with a passion that saved me from this world. I will use dance as a healing mechanism, a pathway to freedom and a tool to promote self-expression for those who have yet to find their artistic voices/purposes."-Summer
Shelby Hughes
Shelby has been dancing and doing martial arts for over 14 years.  She is a third degree black belt and instructor of Wado Ryu Karate, a first degree black belt in Satori Ryu Samurai Swordsmanship, and has been training with Grupo Balança Capoeira of Nashville and Niseido Ju Jitsu of Murfreesboro for almost 2 years. With origins in classical dance, she is now a Latin dance instructor and choreographer in Nashville and frequently teaches and dances BachaTango, Salsa, Merengue, Bachata, Argentine Tango, and Zouk to name a few. She is a member of the Music City Salsa team and La Fuerza, a national semi-pro Bachata performance team. A graduate of Vanderbilt University with a double major in Arts Management and Film Studies, and a graduate of MTSU with a B.S. in Spanish, she is passionate about the arts of different cultures and learning about how they connect to one another. (Tango and Karate are much more similar than you might think)! I hope to be able to use my background in dance and martial arts to help create understanding and appreciation for all art forms in the Nashville community.
Ashlyn Cianciolo
Ashlyn is a new member of the Center's growing family of teaching artists.  Originally from Wisconsin, Ashlyn has been living in Nashville for 3 years.  She is an active member of Blue Moves Modern Dance Company, performing and choreographing with the company since January 2016.  In addition to creating new dances, Ashlyn is also a teaching artist - working with various studios and programs throughout the Nashville area.  She is passionate about inspiring the next generation of artists and teaching in a way that promotes self-awareness and body positivity. We are fortunate to welcome her to our Global family as a teacher in our Roots, Rhythm and Rhyme youth programming as well as a performing member of Helios World Dance Ensemble.
Shabaz Chijioke Ujima
Shabaz is from Nashville where he began his dance training at Nashville School of the Arts and Nashville Ballet. He also studied at New World School of the Arts (Miami, FL), Martha Graham School of Contemporary Dance (New York, NY) and Practice Yoga( Dayton, OH). In his professional career, he has danced with Dayton Contemporary Dance Company; Cleo Parker Robinson Dance Ensemble; Martha Graham Ensemble; and Jeanne Ruddy Dance. His teaching experience includes classes while at Dayton Contemporary Dance Company, at South Dayton Dance Theater, at North Cincinnati Youth Ballet, at School of Nashville Ballet (contemporary dance and yoga), and Decca Academy (mindfulness and yoga with young males with behavioral problems). He joined the teaching artists’ roster of the Global Education Center in 2015, where he will be teaches creative movement, yoga and mindfulness in the schools.   
In addition, we have the following dance and music groups in residence at the Global Education Center.

5Rhythms
Afro Latin Dance Team
Belly Dancing Shakes
Blues Dance Nashville
Dance with Dai
English Country Dancers
Grupo Balanca Capoeira
iJam
Kala Nivedanam School of South Indian Classical Music and Dance
Line Breaks Writing Collective
Music City Salsa
Music City Tango
Nashville Jitterbugs
New Dialect
Nashville Tango Club
NYAMA
Little Eagle Chinese Dance Academy
Sentir el Ritmo Latin Dance Company with Salsa Fierce and La Fuerza Dance Teams
Sisco Dance Team with Francisco Nacion
Small World Yoga
Swing Dance Nashville (formerly Nashville Swing Dance Foundation)
The Bosch Institute
Tula Tribal Belly Dance
Yosvany y Su Son Tropical