Anytown Alabama Co-Director Team

Andrea Miller, ACE Executive Director and Anytown Co-Director
Andrea has served as a staff advisor for Anytown Alabama since 2018, as well as an advisor for PEACE Birmingham. She was awarded AmeriCorps Member of the Year during her time with the YWCA's Building Communities, Bettering Lives AmeriCorps program. Her work with ACE's Life Skills Education Program includes developing an extensive Social-Emotional Learning curriculum and incorporating elements of Trauma-Informed Care and social justice into the curriculum for children, teens, and adult volunteers. She has served for 2 years as the Programs Director before stepping into the role of Executive Director as a result of the passing of ACE's Co-Founder and Executive Director, Matthew Smith. She served as the President and Treasurer of the Tragic City Rollers, the Birmingham roller derby non-profit, and her work in 2020 includes co-founding and leading an Inclusion Committee and co-creating and implementing amendments for annual anti-bullying, anti-harassment, and conflict resolution training for the entire league.  Andrea also serves as the Member Management Fellow on the Interim Leadership Team for the Birmingham Coalition for Student Mental Health, and is a volunteer for Alabama CASA.

Kam Thigpen, Anytown Co-Director (she/her/hers)
Kameryn Thigpen is a Southern Black girl from Birmingham, Alabama and she is a social justice strategist. She has been an advocate since 2016 when she attended Anytown Alabama. She attended the University of Alabama at Birmingham and graduated Cum Laude with a Bachelor’s Degree in Political Science with a double minor in African American Studies and Human Rights. She is currently obtaining her Master’s Degree in Public Administration at UAB. She is currently working on her comparative case study thesis on the community healing efforts from racial violence in Tulsa and Birmingham. She is the creator of a nonprofit organization Hipped Interests which is centered around building community around social justice awareness. In her spare time, she enjoys cooking and watching documentaries and she is a big Star Wars fan.

Kierra Burks, Anytown Co-Director
Kierra began her journey with Anytown Alabama as a delegate in 2019. She them returned to Anytown has a staff member in 2022. She has worked with ACE participating in Heritage Panel discussions at her high school. Kierra spends a lot of her free time giving back to the community through volunteering for different organizations in Birmingham. She is currently enrolled at University of Alabama at Birmingham pursuing her B.A. in Communications Management. Due to her passion for social justice, she plans to pursue a legal degree to become a practicing attorney.​

Anamaria Santiago, ACE Director of Social Justice and Anytown Co-Director
Anamaria has served as Anytown Alabama Co-Director since 2013 and as a staff advisor for Anytown since 2006, and as an advisor for Heritage Panel, PEACE Birmingham, and Make a Change Leadership Institute. She has experience teaching all age groups, from preschool to college, including as a therapeutic class teacher for children on the autism spectrum. Her master's thesis, "Rituals of Resistance in Contemporary Latino Fiction: Queering Masculinity, Matrimony, and Motherhood in the Works of Junot Diaz and Nicholasa Mohr" (2011) examined gender, sexuality, socioeconomic status, race, and ethnicity in contemporary Latinx fiction. She teaches literature and composition at the University of Alabama in Birmingham. She has been trained in the Birmingham PD/s Procedural Justice III as well as the University of Michigan's Intergroup Dialogue (IGD).

Kenton Kennedy, ACE Board Member & Anytown Co-Director
Kenton first attended Anytown as an advisor in 2012, and in 2016 became a Co-Director. He has volunteered and/or facilitated workshops for PEACE Birmingham, Make a Change, HICA, Habitat for Humanity, and the Social Y. He also worked on Mayor Williams Bell and REV Birmingham's Civil Rights District Vision Task Force. He is a certified basic life support provider and has been trained in Safety Awareness, Sexual Harassment & Gender Issues, Communication During Volatile Situations, Workplace Harassment & Violence Prevention, Interpersonal Communication, Diversity Training, Racial Harassment Prevention, Suicide Prevention, The Art and Science of Communication, and Developing Emotional Intelligence, among others. 

Rosa Delgado, ACE Programs Manager and Assistant to the Co-Directors
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