Director, The God Box Foundation

Gilbert Kobina Bouhairie is a Systematic Theologian specializing in Pan African Religions from Union Theological Seminary at Columbia University, New York.

After being mentored by the late and great Founder of Black Theology, Dr. James Cone and the contemporary world-renowned scholar Dr. Cornel West, Mr. Bouhairie’s theological journey took him on many travels around the Pan African world engaging in intellectual and experiential conversations. This lead to Mr. Bouhairie founding The God Box Foundation (TGBF). The first Pan African Interfaith/Multifaith organization in the world that embraces, celebrates, and promotes the religious and spiritual diversity of the Pan African Family through theological reflections with Pan African Scholars, Activists and Practitioners.

Mr. Bouhairie is the Director of Operations for PANAFEST, the most celebrated Pan African festival in the world. He is also the Director of Operations for the Pan African Heritage World Museum. He was instrumental in creating the proposal for Ghana’s historic Year of Return 2019 and is currently a PhD candidate at University of Ghana, Legon. Mr. Bouhairie lectures at seminaries and universities in Ghana and the United States.

Janel Martinez is a writer and the founder of award-winning blog, Ain't I Latina?, an online destination celebrating Afro-Latinx womanhood. The Bronx, NY native is a frequent public speaker discussing media, culture and identity at conferences and events for Bloomberg, NBCU, New York University, SXSW, Harvard University and more. She’s appeared as a featured guest on national shows and outlets, such as MSNBC's The Culture Is: Latina, BuzzFeed, ESSENCE, NPR and Sirius XM, and her work has appeared in Adweek, Univision Communications, Oprah Daily, Refinery29, Remezcla and The New York Times, among others.

The Honduran-American has been nominated for the 20th Annual Rosoff Award in the 20-Something Category and won the Afro-Latino Festival of New York's Digital Empowerment Award and, in 2018, was recognized at City Hall by the New York City Council, the Black, Latino and Asian Caucus and the Bronx Delegation to the NYC Council for her contributions as a woman of Garifuna descent.

Her work is featured in the YA anthology, Wild Tongues Can't Be Tamed, published by Flatiron Books.

Fabian Villegas is a historian, journalist, and independent curator. He attended the E.N.A.H National School of Anthropology and History of Mexico. He received a Bachelor's Degree in History and a Masters's Degree in Analysis of Discourse and Semiotics of Culture in Linguistics. His scope of work interrelates the studies of the Global South and anti-colonial thought. From 2007 to present day, he has been invited to give multiple lectures, seminars, conferences, and workshops at various universities and academic centers, renowned art biennials, and cultural centers around the world (Mexico, France, Brazil, United Arab Emirates, Morocco, Puerto Rico, Portugal, Uruguay, Costa Rica, Spain, Guatemala, USA, United Kingdom, Nigeria, Dominican Republic, Venezuela, Germany, Scotland, etc.)

Fabian has given lectures, seminars and classes at the National University of Costa Rica, National School of Anthropology and History of Mexico, College of Arts of the University of Edinburgh, Scotland, National University of Cuyo, Argentina, Humboldt University of Berlin, University of Sao Paulo, Brazil, etc. He is the co-founder of Contranarrativas, a horizontal and collaborative global project for the decentralized production of knowledge, cultural management and free communication. Contranarrativas is committed to the visibility, dissemination and production of epistemologies of the South, and to narratives and anti-colonial aesthetics from the experience of the Global South.

He is also the founder of “Aula Pùblica”, a pedagogical space of Contranarrativas that seeks to decentralize the production of knowledge through seminars, workshops, conferences, web seminars, on studies of the Global South, epistemologies of the South, decolonial studies, which has articulated around 2800 participants from 46 countries in America, Europe, Africa and Asia. Author of the books “In Black and White, a geopolitical itinerary of decoloniality”, 2014, “Masquerade: Body politics and wooden languages”,2015 and “Rumors”, 2021. Born in Mexico City, Villegas currently resides in the Dominican Republic.

Dr. Marimer Berberena Alonso works to build epistemological, cosmological and cultural bridges between Latin America and Africa. Her doctoral dissertation in Africology, from Temple University, focused on the retention of African culture in Puerto Rico, observing the cultural continuity from ancient Egypt, its transfer to various Central and West African ethnic expressions, and their historical legacy in the Caribbean. Her MA thesis, from the Graduate Center of CUNY, explored the Gagá in New York City and the initiative of the Dominican hermandad cultural Gagá Pa’l Pueblo as a means of healing, community, and resistance (https://academicworks.cuny.edu/gc_etds/170/).

Her work focuses on the African contributions to Latin America and the Caribbean such as Santería, Gagá, Rastafari livity, Anansi tales, spiritual manifestations, and more. She also studies the Ancient Egyptian mores and folkways and their relevance in today’s modern society.

Dr. Berberena has taught Latin American and Caribbean Studies, Sociology, Criminology, and Africology undergraduate courses at different universities like Temple University and Hostos Community College. She is currently an Adjunct Assistant Professor at Lehman College as well as a part-time lecturer at Rutgers University. Aside from her academic work, she is developing a healing and cultural center honoring African cosmology called “Centro Sankofa”.