Dawn M. Demps Ph.D. hails from Flint, MI where she learned from community peers and elders the principles and strategies of community organizing and development. She received her B.A. from the University of Michigan-Flint in Africana Studies and Social Sciences and went on to obtain her M.A. in Social Justice Studies from Detroit's Marygrove College. She received her Ph.D. from Arizona State University in Tempe, Arizona in Education Policy and Evaluation. Her area of focus utilizes theories such as Black Feminisms (Collins, 1989) Critical Race Theory (Billings and Tate, 1995) and Community Cultural Wealth (Yosso, 2005) to look at the historical and contemporary policies and practices that contribute to the educational pushout of racialized populations. She further interrogates the ways those populations resist such exclusionary efforts to advocate for policy changes and work towards the creation of inclusive futures. From this work, she queries how we have come to determine and define who are "educational leaders".
