Dr. Harvey Charles is currently Professor of International Education at the University at Albany, SUNY.  He has served as Senior International Officer at a number of institutions around the US, including Georgia Institute of Technology, Northern Arizona University, San Francisco State University and the University at Albany.  Charles has been actively engaged in the field of international education and served as President of the Association of International Education Administrators, the leading association worldwide for university leaders of international higher education.  Apart from his deep administrative experience, Charles has published on issues including leadership in international higher education, internationalizing the curriculum and comprehensive internationalization. He serves on a number of boards, frequently consults and gives addresses on international education issues in the US and around the world. Dr. Charles earned his doctorate in Higher Education and Student Affairs from The Ohio State University in 1991.

Dr. Roberta Espinoza serves as Vice Provost for Global-Local Initiatives and Professor of Sociology at Loyola Marymount University (LMU). She draws from 10+ years of professional experience in diverse higher education environments, including at a large, public Hispanic-Serving Institution (California State University, Fullerton) and at a small, highly selective private liberal arts college (Pitzer College). Dr. Espinoza received her B.A. from Pomona College and earned her M.A. and Ph.D. in Sociology from the University of California, Berkeley.

As Vice-Provost for Global-Local Initiatives Dr. Espinoza’s responsibilities include oversight of the Office of Study Abroad, the Office of National & International Fellowships (ONIF), the Center for the Study of Los Angeles (StudyLA) and the Center for Urban Resilience (CURes). As LMU’s inaugural senior international officer, her role is to facilitate collaborations and professional relationships among LMU faculty, staff, alumni, and other institutions on efforts related to comprehensive internalization (global) and strategic community engagement (local).

Dr. Espinoza’s scholarly expertise on higher education access is informed by her own personal experience as first-generation Latinx student. She has written several books, peer-reviewed journal articles, book chapters, and articles in magazines for educational practitioners on the role of social and cultural capital in the educational advancement and success of first-generation students of color in higher education. She has also published articles on Latino undocumented students and women of color in doctoral education.

Prior to joining LMU in 2018, Dr. Espinoza served as Interim Associate Dean of Global and Local Programs and Director of the Institute for Global/Local Action & Study (IGLAS) at Pitzer College. In these roles, Dr. Espinoza led successful new initiatives and programs to ensure that global-local engagement and study were a part of the intellectual and psychosocial development of all students. She oversaw the Office of Fellowships and Scholarships and developed Pitzer’s First-Gen Program to support low-income students who are the first in their family to attend a four-year college. She also served as the faculty Academic Coordinator for the Claremont Colleges Mellon Mays Undergraduate Program (MMUF) and received the inaugural Claremont Colleges Diversity Teaching Award that “honors innovative pedagogical activities that effectively address issues or concerns related to diversity and inclusion in the classroom and other institutional settings.”

Darla K. Deardorff is Executive Director of the Association of International Education Administrators (AIEA). In addition, she is a research scholar at Duke University’s Social Science Research Institute and holds faculty positions at universities in several countries, including as a research associate at Nelson Mandela University (S. Africa), Meiji University (Japan), Shanghai International Studies University (China) and adjunct faculty at North Carolina State University. She is on the faculty of Harvard University’s Global Education Think Tank and has served as faculty for Harvard’s Future of Learning Institute as well as the Summer Institute of Intercultural Communication in Portland, OR. With over 20 years of experience in international education, she has also held national leadership positions with NAFSA and with Forum on Education Abroad. Author/editor of 8 books and over 60 book chapters and articles, her publications include The Sage Handbook of Intercultural Competence (Sage, 2009), Sage Handbook of International Higher Education, (Sage, 2012), Building Cultural Competence (Stylus, 2012), Demystifying Outcome Assessment for International Educators (Stylus, 2015), Intercultural Competence in Higher Education: International Approaches, Assessment and Application (Routledge, 2017), and Leading Internationalization: A Handbook for International Education Leaders (Stylus, 2018). Her most recent publication is an open access book entitled Manual for Developing Intercultural Competencies: Story Circles (Routledge/UNESCO, 2020) available in English, French, Spanish, Arabic, and Russian at https://unesdoc.unesco.org/ark:/48223/pf0000370336. She regularly gives invited talks, trainings and workshops around the world on intercultural competence, international education assessment, and global leadership and serves as a consultant and trainer on these topics, including with UNESCO and OECD. The intercultural competence models developed from her research are being used in numerous countries, and she is the recipient of several awards related to her work. Founder of ICC Global, her areas of specialty include cross-cultural training, assessment and evaluation, teacher/faculty preparation/development, curriculum internationalization, global leadership, and intercultural coaching. She received her master’s and doctorate degrees from North Carolina State University.