2026 STUDENT LEADERSHIP CONFERENCE
Change Agents: From Classroom to Community
The 2026 theme, “Change Agents: From Classroom to Community,” emphasizes the transformative power of education and the role of students in creating meaningful social impact. The conference features dynamic sessions led by graduate student presenters, and inspiring keynote speakers who are shaping change in their fields. Participants engaged in a variety of topics, from civic engagement and data analytics to healthcare innovation, storytelling, and accessibility, gaining practical skills and insights that extend beyond the classroom.
Monday, March 9, 2026
1:00 PM | Opening Keynote
In this opening keynote, Michele de Goeas-Malone explores how education serves as a catalyst for personal transformation and community impact. Drawing from her own journey and her work in linguistics, literacy, and culturally responsive teaching, she highlights how learning shapes leadership and identity.
This keynote invites students to see themselves as change agents - capable of carrying what they learn in the classroom into meaningful action within their communities.
Michele de Goeas-Malone, M.A.
Michele de Goeas-Malone is co-director of the Education Program and lecturer in the Education and Language Acquisition department at LaGuardia Community College, CUNY, where she brings expertise in linguistics, literacy, digital pedagogy, and culturally responsive teaching practices to her work with future educators. Under her leadership alongside her co-director, LaGuardia's Education Program received the 2025–26 Exemplary Program Award from the National Association of Community College Teacher Education Programs (NACCTEP), recognizing outstanding innovation, impact, and excellence in preparing future educators.
With an M.A. in Linguistics from the CUNY Graduate Center and a B.A. in Speech Pathology and Linguistics from Queens College, Michele teaches a diverse range of courses including Introduction to Language, Foundations of Bilingual Education, Language and Literacy in Education (K-12), and Education Technology. Her interdisciplinary background allows her to bridge theory with practical classroom applications.
Michele's journey to academia exemplifies the transformative power of education and the theme of "Change Agents: From Classroom to Community." After leaving school in Trinidad at ninth grade, she returned to education in New York, earning her GED before completing her bachelor's and master's degrees at CUNY institutions. This personal experience of transformation fuels her commitment to helping students recognize their own potential and become agents of change in their communities.
Her research addresses critical intersections in contemporary education: ePortfolio pedagogy, digital learning environments, literacy, and the development of culturally relevant and responsive teaching practices. She is particularly focused on teacher preparation and identity development, exploring how educators can better serve diverse student populations. In March 2025, she was recognized by CUNY for her commitment to advancing teaching excellence and student success.
Michele's work demonstrates how educators serve as change agents by transforming not only classroom experiences but also empowering students to carry that impact into their communities. Her approach to teacher education emphasizes the connection between academic learning and real-world application, preparing future teachers to foster social impact and drive positive change in urban schools and diverse communities.
Tuesday, March 10, 2026
1:00 PM | Inside NYC’s Paycheck: Data Insights from a Decade of Payroll (2015-2024)
New York City’s payroll spans millions of employees and billions in spending each year—but what stories lie beneath the numbers? In this hands-on workshop, we’ll analyze a decade of public payroll records (2014–2024) to uncover how compensation is distributed across agencies, roles, and boroughs. Using Python and real NYC Open Data, you’ll learn to clean messy civic datasets, detect overtime trends, measure pay equity, and visualize budgetary shifts over time. Whether you're interested in data journalism, public policy, or municipal analytics, this session will equip you to transform raw payroll files into meaningful, evidence-based insights about the city's workforce.
Mehreen Gillani
Mehreen Ali Gillani is a Master of Science in Data Science student at The City University of New York (CUNY), where she builds expertise in statistical modeling, machine learning, and data storytelling. Passionate about civic technology and public sector innovation, she applies analytical rigor to open government data with the goal of enhancing transparency and informing policy. Her recent research involves a large-scale analysis of NYC's Citywide Payroll Data, uncovering patterns in overtime expenditure, pay equity, and workforce allocation across the city's agencies. Through this work, she demonstrates how data science can transform raw public records into meaningful insights for better municipal management.
7:00 PM | Preserving Today’s Records of Grief and Hope: Organizing a Charity Anthology for Immigrant Storytellers
The current U.S. regime has abused its power to eradicate resources for immigrant and (un)documented populations, enforcing silence and isolation onto these families, neighborhoods, and communities. For those multi-marginalized by race, gender, sexuality, and/or disability, these terrors are further exacerbated as the administration threatens their health, relationships, identities, and lives. To preserve these stories, struggles, and survivals, an action-based charity anthology will explore the political and cultural impacts of ICE raids, mass deportations, and traumatic events towards multi-marginalized immigrants. Applying the frameworks of pluralism, Social Role Valorization Theory, and others, the charity anthology will empower disenfranchised creators to share their stories of strength, kinship, and radical hope.
Jessica King
Jessica is a disability scholar-activist with a passion for storytelling, education, and social justice. As a first-generation and low-income student, she completed her dual-major/dual-minor education in creative writing, comparative world literature, health humanities, and human development at Long Beach State University, and is now a CUNY SPS graduate student in disability studies. Reflecting her academic and professional backgrounds, she explores diverse topics across multiple disciplines and has presented in conferences such as: Southern California Writing Centers Association, Pacific Ancient and Modern Languages Association, Society for Psychological Study of Social Issues, and Wichita State University’s Accessibility Summer Camp. While working as a DSS Educational Coach at North Orange Continuing Education, Jessica also serves in nonprofit leadership roles, including: Director of Student & Campus Communications at The Orion Fund; DREAM-U Zine Submission & Accessibility Coordinator at Disability Rights, Education, Activism, and Mentoring; and Founder/Executive Director of White Dove Disability Advocacy.
Wednesday, March 11, 2026
1:00 PM | Technology Acceptance in Healthcare – Beyond Perceived Benefit and Ease of Use
The acceptance of technology in healthcare is primarily researched by employing two particular theories that did not originate in the healthcare arena. Given the variety of healthcare settings and stakeholders these theories may be lacking in their ability to truly capture the various factors that impact technology acceptance in healthcare. This presentation will explore commonly recognized contributors to technology acceptance while also offering suggestions for future research considerations. To better illustrate this topic, it will be addressed from the perspective of healthcare professionals as well as patients and will be based on personal experience with adopting and implementing technology in healthcare.
Frieda Erler
Frieda Erler (she/her) has been a Physical Therapist Assistant at a New York City Hospital for the past 19 years. Her passion is patient care but given the challenges that are facing healthcare she has become increasingly interested in healthcare administration. After receiving her BA in Disability Studies in 2022 at CUNY School of Professional Studies, she decided to continue her educational journey. She is now in her last semester of the MS in Health Information Management program, also at CUNY School of Professional Studies. In the future she would like to be able to combine her many years of experience in a clinical setting with the knowledge gained through her studies in order to empower clinicians to continue embracing patient care while also leveraging inevitable administrative / technological changes to their overall workflow.
7:00 PM | Applying the Theory of Interpersonal Relations to Help Patients Achieve their Healthcare Goals
This workshop explores Peplau's theory of Interpersonal Relations and its use as a tool to guide nursing practice and integrate new evidence-based practice strategies. Participants will examine how the concepts discussed can enhance health literacy and improve chronic disease management. The session will also highlight applications of the theory beyond the nursing profession, including its integration into information technology. Attendees will be encouraged to reflect on and explore how elements of interpersonal relations theory can be applied within their own client-facing professional roles and to develop strategies for becoming effective change agents within their communities.
Yanil Perez
Yanil Perez, AMB-BC, is a board-certified Ambulatory Care nurse currently practicing in New York City. While working as a staff nurse in an Adult Medicine clinic, she served as Chair of the Ambulatory Care Shared Governance Committee, supporting staff engagement and departmental decision-making. She is currently pursuing a Master of Science in Nursing Informatics at CUNY’s School of Professional Studies.
With a Bachelor of Arts degree in Communications, Yanil previously worked as a Communications Consultant for the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene, managing communications for public health initiatives. Passionate about advancing public health and health equity, she integrates evidence-based practice strategies into her nursing care to support patients in improving diabetes self-management and to help her organization meet community health needs for vulnerable populations. Yanil is a member of the Sigma Theta Tau International Honor Society of Nursing and the New York State Nurses Association (NYSNA).
Thursday, March 12, 2026
1:00 PM | Re-imagining Accessibility: Disability Justice Now!
This workshop invites participants to re-imagine accessibility using the framework of Disability Justice (DJ). In the U.S., accessibility is understood through the lens of legal compliance. How might we re-imagine accessibility so that it does not feel like we are simply ticking boxes off a checklist? This workshop is intended for students, staff, faculty, and community members. As a framework, Disability Justice teaches us to center intersectionality and the leadership of those impacted. Building upon the Disability Rights Movement, Disability Justice embraces the messiness and complexities of disabled lives. Emerging out of movement work, Disability Justice demands collective access and liberation for all disabled people. You can read the 10 principles of Disability Justice here. Drawing upon lessons from the COVID19 pandemic and the recent Immigrant Advocacy Conference, this workshop encourages participants to examine their relationship to disability, accessibility, and ableism. This workshop will provide concrete tools and suggestions on how we can expansively re-imagine accessibility.
Angel Sutjipto
Angel Sutjipto resides on Lenapehoking, otherwise known as New York City. They are a CUNY BA alum. After completing their undergraduate degree, they worked in the human rights field, where they participated in field-research on the LGBTQI+ community in Kampala, Uganda for the SMUG v. Lively case and contributed research to the 2017 Blasphemy Law report, published by the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom. For the past decade, they have worked serving immigrant and LGBTQI+ communities at various non-profits in NYC.
Outside of work, they are a creative non-fiction writer. Their works have been published in Briarpatch Magazine and Somewhere We Are Human, an anthology edited by Reyna Grande and Sonia Guiñansaca. Their co-authored work has been published in Decolonial Feminist Genealogies and Futures, edited by Annie Isabel Fukushima and K. Melchor Quick Hall.
7:00 PM | Closing Keynote
In this closing keynote, Dr. Sarah Zeller-Berkman reflects on what it means to sustain change beyond individual leadership moments. Drawing from more than 25 years of work in youth and community development, participatory action research, and public scholarship, she explores how young people and communities drive collective action and long-term impact.
This keynote challenges participants to move forward with intention - centering youth voice, shared responsibility, and community wellbeing as essential elements of lasting change.
Dr. Sarah Zeller-Berkman
Dr. Sarah Zeller-Berkman, PhD is Academic Director of the Youth Studies Program which includes a BA, MA and Advanced Certificate in Youth Studies which she developed and runs as a Distinguished Lecture. Sarah is also a founding member and director of multiple grant funded programs included a longitudinal, critical, participatory action research project called ‘The Intergenerational Change Initiative (ICI)’ and a paid gap year program for 18-24 year-olds that supports youth and community wellbeing called ‘Working the Gap’.
Prior to joining CUNY SPS, Dr. Zeller-Berkman worked on various initiatives for city government, foundations and non-profits including Mozilla Foundation, the Mayor’s Leadership Team on School Climate and Discipline and the Deputy Mayor for Strategic Policy Initiatives. For seven years she was a director at The Youth Development Institute (YDI) where she led the Community-Youth Development Unit. She was a fellow at La Guardia Community College and taught in the Children and Youth Studies Department at Brooklyn College. She is a founding member of the Public Science Project at the CUNY, Graduate Center and continues to deeply value this community of critical participatory action researchers.
Dr. Zeller-Berkman holds a BA from Emory University and a Doctorate from CUNY Graduate Center’s Social Personality Psychology Program. She has spent the last 25 years as a practitioner, researcher, evaluator, capacity-builder, professor and scholar in the field of youth and community development/critical youth development. She has worked in partnership with young people on participatory action research projects about issues that impact their lives such as sexual harassment in schools, incarceration, parental incarceration, economic mobility, housing and high-stakes testing. She has published in the Encyclopedia of Adolescence, Current Issues in Out-of-School Time, SAGE Encyclopedia of Out-of-School Learning, Harvard Educational Review, Community, Youth, and Environment, and The Oxford Handbook of Qualitative Research. She is a proud board member of the National AfterSchool Association. A member of the Collaborative for Advancing Youth Development. Last, but not least, she is a mama to two wonderful beings.