Meet the Team
Scott Emerson, Executive Director
Scott Emerson is a scholar, community organizer, activist, and advocate with a love for communal/self-determination, wellness, and equity.
He earned his Master’s degree in English from Southern Illinois University and built a career as a workforce professional with many years of experience in career counseling, diversity, equity, and inclusion training, non-profit directing and managing, and collegiate teaching experience.
His experiences compounded with his enduring passion for advancing quality of life in historically-disenfranchised communities give him a unique and fervent perspective as Executive Director.
Cynthia Graville, Board President
Cynthia Graville is an Instructor of Converging Communication Technology and Director of the Communication Media Lab at Saint Louis University. Currently, she is enrolled as a doctoral student in the Teaching and Learning Division of the College of Education at UMSL. She was the recipient of ASTC's Roy A. Shafer Leading Edge Award for New Leadership in the Field (2008.)
Her work as an activist, graphic artist, and educator unite in her National Science Foundation funded grant project that hires high school students to work as infographic scientists. Youth from marginalized communities have access to employment, health benefits, and education as agents as opposed to subjects.
Cindy is also an influential maker space pioneer who brings maker spaces into institutions not normally recognized in the field of STEM, like juvenile detention centers and shelters for people experiencing homeless.
Monica O. Montgomery, Board Member
Monica O. Montgomery is an international keynote, graduate professor, museum director and cultural entrepreneur, curating media and museums to be in service to society. She recently spoke at TedX Charlottesville and is a winner of the 2016 Arts Entrepreneurship Award from Fractured Atlas. She is the founding director and chief curator of the Museum of Impact, the world’s first mobile social justice museum, inspiring action at the intersection of art, activism, self, and society. She curates Museum of Impact’s traveling exhibits, examining current events, creative resilience, human rights, and social movements.
Additionally, Monica is the Strategic Director of Museum Hue, a multicultural platform that advocates diversity, inclusion, and advances people of color in the arts, culture museums, and creative economy. As a sought-after public speaker and coach for executives and career changers, she frequently trains leaders and and partners with universities and museums to facilitate diversity, leadership, and equity initiatives. Monica is an alumna of Temple University and LaSalle University, with degrees in Public Relations and Communication. She is an adjunct professor at Harvard University, holding leadership positions in American Alliance of Museums, Museums As Sites of Social Action, and AMA UK. She is a dynamic empowerment speaker, educator, and facilitator who keynotes at conferences throughout Europe and America. www.monicamontgomery.org
Amy Bautz, Board Member
Amy Bautz is an artist and educator based in St. Louis, Missouri. Represented by Wonderwall studios in Austin, Texas, her artwork is shown and collected nationally. She is an associate professor at Saint Louis University, where she teaches art and design. She is also an animation team member for Blue Peach Media, headquartered in NYC. Originally trained as a photojournalist at the University of Texas at Austin, Ms. Bautz received her M.F.A. from Southern Illinois University at Edwardsville in painting, photography, and computer art. You can visit Amy Bautz's online portfolio at https://www.behance.net/AmyBautz
Wriply M. Bennet, Board Member
Wriply Marie Bennet is a proud, self-taught illustrator, actor, writer and singer born and raised in Ohio. Her organizing work started with the Trans Women of Color Collective and expanded in Ferguson where she was a freedom rider traveling to stand with Mike Brown’s family and community. Wriply’s work expresses the perseverance, power, strength, resilience, grace and beauty of trans women. Her work sheds light on the lack of national outcry over the epidemic of black trans women murdered each year at the hands of state sanctioned violence. Wriply’s art has been used in numerous social justice flyers and made its first film debut in MAJOR!, a documentary at the 2015 San Francisco Transgender Film Festival.
Tim Huffman, Board Member
Tim Huffman is an Associate Professor of Communication and Social Justice at Saint Louis University and a fierce advocate and accomplice in the creation and maintenance of The Justice Fleet. His contributions to The Justice Fleet are particularly clear in the Radical Imagination exhibit, which was inspired by one of his teaching activities called "The Just City." As a scholar-activist, Tim's research focuses on social justice organizing, particularly around issues of homelessness. He takes a community-based approach to understanding and promoting socially just, compassionate communication and is committed to improving the way we encounter and design services for and with those living in the margins of our society.
Chris Franco, Board Member
Chris is a former graduate student of both Amber and Tim and was a Research Assistant for the Justice Fleet during his years at SLU. He has extensive firsthand experience in deploying the Justice Fleet's exhibits and contributing to the development of its methodologies after handling their deployment and facilitation in communities throughout St. Louis. He also helped bring Radical Imagination to various organizations and coalitions in the homeless social services sector there. Currently based in California, he continues to support the Justice Fleet as a former exhibit co-developer and production assistant.