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 serves as the President 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. |
Joni Wiley, Teacher and Anytown Co-Director
Joni has served the Birmingham community in various avenues, including working with students as a trained facilitator, serving as a community leader, and developing and overseeing social justice programs. In her last role as Coordinator of Social Justice Programs, Joni developed and implemented all of the YWCA's social justice programs, including the three major programs of Anytown Alabama, PEACE Birmingham, and Heritage Panel. She currently works as a teacher at the Altamont School. |
Katherine Nance, ACE Co-Founder and Anytown Co-Director
Katherine joined Anytown as a staff member in 2015. She is an ACE co-founder and former board member. During her time with ACE she developed the pilot program for CommuniSafe which aims to build positive relationships and understanding between law enforcement officers and high school students through community roundtable discussions. Katherine earned her M.A. in Curriculum and Instruction as a graduate of the Mississippi Teacher Corps and worked as a classroom teacher for eight years. She served as the Heritage Panel sponsor at Huffman High School and Clay Chalkville High School. She currently works to advocate for minority representation in STEM through the Microsoft Philanthropies TEALS program. |
Anamaria Santiago, ACE Board Member 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. |