Our Team

Dr. Charles Chavis is the Founding Director of the Mitchell Program at George Mason University, where he is also Director of African and African American Studies and an Assistant Professor of Conflict Resolution and History. He is a historian and museum educator whose work focuses on the history of racial violence and civil rights activism and Black and Jewish relations in the American South, and the ways in which the historical understandings of racial violence and civil rights activism can inform current and future approaches to peacebuilding and conflict resolution throughout the world. He is author of the newly released book, The Silent Shore: The Lynching of Matthew Williams and the Politics of Racism in the Free State (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2021) and editor of For the Sake of Peace: Africana Perspectives on Racism, Justice, and Peace in America (Rowman & Littlefield, 2020).

Dr. Linda J. Mann is a leading scholar and practitioner on racial redress initiatives at the intersection of U.S. history, international human rights, and racial repair. She currently serves as Director of Operations and Programming at the John Mitchell Justice Project at George Mason Carter School for Peace and Reconciliation and is also an Assistant Adjunct Professor at Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs (SIPA). In 2019, Mann co-founded the African American Redress Network (AARN) at Columbia University. AARN serves as an innovative model for scholars and advocates to further groundbreaking work in activism to promote racial redress for U.S. historical racial injustices. Previously she served as the Executive Director for the Civil Rights and Restorative Justice Project at Northeastern University’s School of Law and VP of Research for the Georgetown Memory Project.

Mann has a forthcoming publication in the International Journal for Transitional Justice ‘Advancing Local USA TJ Initiatives: A University Partnership Alongside Descendant Communities.’ She co-authored ‘Segregation in Evanston: An Impact Study ‘(2021), ‘To lift as we climb: A textbook analysis of the segregated school experience’ (2013) and the ‘Historical examination of the segregated school experience’ (2015). Mann's work is also included in the upcoming PBS documentary, The Cost of Inheritance. Additionally her work alongside the Georgetown University 272 (GU272) descendant community can be viewed online at American Ancestors, GU272 Memory Project. Oral histories she performed during her time at the Georgetown Memory Project will be preserved at the American Folklife Center repository at the Library of Congress.

Mann is a seasoned educator with over ten years of postgraduate teaching experience and ten years as a public-school history educator. Mann started her career as a conflict resolution specialist and has decades of experience as a political grassroots organizer.

Xochi Quetzali Cartland is a poet, Transformative Justice Practitioner, and amateur pretzel maker. She received her BA in Literary Arts from Brown University in 2021, where she graduated with honors and as a Royce Fellow for her research in the field of gender justice. While at Brown she was the co-founder of the Transformative Justice Initiative, a project that seeks to create community infrastructure to minimize, interrupt, and prevent interpersonal violence. In her six years of curriculum development, she has built out a yearlong LGBTQ inclusion curriculum for high schoolers, a nine-month long curriculum to teach youth leaders how to interrupt cycles of harm in their own communities, and multiple training series on non-carceral crisis response. Her work has led her on adventures as wide and varied as being a program coordinator for nonprofits seeking to end systemic inequality, a seamstress for a professional theater company, and a brief but memorable stint as an oyster shucker in Portland, Maine. Most recently, she was selected as a Creative Community Fellow through National Art Strategies, and as a Brooklyn Poets Fellow for her writing and community art practice. Having grown up in Silver Spring, Maryland, Xochi is thrilled to have returned to the DMV, and to be supporting the phenomenal work JMJP/OUDC are doing to bring about an equitable and just world.

Interns

Jabez la’Steph Nelson is a full-time undergraduate student at George Mason University studying Psychology with a concentration in Industrial Organizational Psychology. After graduating, he hopes to work as either a business consultant or within an HR role focusing on diversity, equity, and inclusion. He has spent the past year interning with OUDC, which he supports with curriculum development and communications. Bez is also a writer of all forms, including poetry, flash fiction, or theatrical monologues.

Kyla Greenwood is a junior at George Mason University concentrating in integrative studies, with a focus in legal studies and a minor in human rights. She has been OUDC’s intern for the past year, supporting the curriculum development and implementation of the program. After graduating, Kyla hopes to go to law school where she will work to advance Disability Rights.