Ellen Prentiss Campbell is the author of the novel The Bowl with Gold Seams (2016), the short story collection Contents Under Pressure (2016) and Known By Heart (2020), and the soon to be published Frieda's Song (May 2021). Her short fiction has been featured in numerous journals including The Massachusetts Review and The MacGuffin. Her essays and reviews appear in The Fiction Writers Review, where she is a contributing editor, and the Washington Independent Review of Books. Ellen is a past Fellow at The Virginia Center for the Creative Arts. Her work has been recognized by The Pushcart Press (2018) and in competitions including Augury Books Short Story Collection (2013), Iron Horse Fiction Collection Contest (2010), Hunger Mountain Short Fiction Contest (2009), The Ledge Fiction Contest (2007), The Emerging Writers Network Fiction Competition (2006), The Elizabeth Simpson Smith Award (2005), The Potomac Review Fiction Contest (2003). Ellen is a member of the National Book Critics Circle.

A graduate of Sandy Spring Friends School's Class of 1971, parent of a member of SSFS's Class of  2009, and former member of SSFS's Board of Trustees, Ellen's roots in the Sandy Spring Friends School community run deep. Quaker beliefs and practice are woven throughout her works, especially Known By Heart. 

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Jocelyn Arem is a GRAMMY Award-nominated multimedia music producer, artist and author of "Caffe Lena: Inside America's Legendary Folk Music Coffeehouse" (powerHouse Books). She is the founder of creative storytelling studio Arbo Radiko (www.arboradiko.com). Her clients and collaborators include The GRAMMY Foundation, the American Folklife Center, Sony Music, BRIC Arts Media, the Erroll Garner Jazz Estate, and The Alliance for Media Arts and Culture. Her work is featured in The New York Times, Rolling Stone, Vogue Italy, People Magazine, NPR, and PBS. She has been invited to speak at South by Southwest, MusiCares, Creative Capital, the Library of Congress, the School of the New York Times, Experience Music Project, The Center for Documentary Studies, the New Orleans Jazz Festival and the NY State Council on the Arts. She is a Recording Academy voting member, a member of the Producers & Engineers Wing, a two-time GRAMMY Foundation grant recipient, the recipient of the ASCAP Deems Taylor Multimedia Award, and the Creative Thought Matters Award of Distinction from Skidmore College. She performs and records as an artist under the name Rabasi Joss (www.rabasijoss.com).

A graduate of Sandy Spring Friends School's Class of 2000, Jocelyn's creative work is deeply influenced by the community values and support for the arts she learned in her time at SSFS.

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*This page is password protected. Please email Tobi Goss at tobi.goss@ssfs.org for access to the recording

Nicole Lee currently serves as the interim Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) Director for Sandy Spring Friends School. She is a nationally-recognized DEI strategist and leadership coach. She is the founder of  Inclusive Life™, a movement centered on infusing inclusion through all levels of daily life. Her vision for Inclusive Life™ is to transform our societies to be more inclusive, equitable and just by how we stand up in our homes and in our vocations. This work is supported and amplified by her new book, Raising Antiracist Kids: The Power of Intentional Conversations about Race and Parenting as well as her podcast, Inclusive Life with Nicole Lee.

Nicole is also a co-founder of the Black Movement-Law Project (BMLP), an organization that provides legal and strategy assistance to Movement For Black Lives affiliates and human rights organizations operating in local communities. For nearly a decade she served as President of TransAfrica, working with leaders across the globe to advocate for a just U.S. foreign policy. She is a trusted spokesperson who has given testimony before the U.S. Congress, the United Nations and other international bodies.

Nicole is both an attorney and an intuitive coach. Through this unique blend, she has contributed to equity movements in the U.S. and abroad through human rights documentation, coaching, and holding space in difficult situations. 

She is the voice of truth and power and has commentated on CNN, MSNBC, NPR, and BBC. She has been recognized for her outstanding contributions in the private and public sectors through numerous awards, including Congressional Black Caucus, Running Starts “Women to Watch”, Black Women’s Roundtable TrailBlazer, Global Leadership, and the National Newspapers Publishers Association’s Press Champion Award.

Nicole brings light to serious issues in a poised and powerful way that evokes people to profound change. Her extensive knowledge and on-the-ground experience empower individuals to dive deep in self-reflection with the goal of achieving a just and equitable society.

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Ian Hoch attended Sandy Spring Friends School for seven years beginning in middle school, until his graduation in 2005. He then went to Frostburg State University for theater and art. Ian learned acting, then moved into lighting design, costume design, set design, and stage combat. At the same time, he wanted to expand his experience with different artistic mediums, including but not limited to: art history, jewelry, sculpture, 2D design, graphic design, painting classes, and illustration classes. Ian's experience gave him the ability to tell his own story through his art, and his love of illustration took root when he began doing pen and ink classes.

Ian happened to stumble upon the opportunity to illustrate "The Brothers Grimm Excellent Adventure" after doing some wedding art for the authors brothers. At the same time, Ian worked with Landless Theatre Company for a couple of shows as an actor, and was asked to illustrate The Brothers Grimm Excellent Adventure. Ian currently works at the American Association of Pharmaceutical Scientists as the Web Manager. 

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Shanna E. Ratner is the (now mostly retired) founder and principal of Yellow Wood Associates, a firm specializing in rural economic and community development since 1985. She was selected by the Ford Foundation to conceptualize and support implementation of a new approach to rural economic development that became WealthWorks. This experience led her to write Wealth Creation: A New Framework for Rural Economic and Community Development, published by Routledge in 2020. Ms. Ratner was trained in systems thinking as a member of the first class of Donella Meadows Fellows and has been a Mel King Fellow at MIT and a member of the Aspen Institute’s Learning Cluster on Rural Community Capacity Building. She holds a MS degree in Agricultural Economics from Cornell University and a BA in Value Systems from New College in Sarasota, Florida, and lives in rural Vermont with her cat Percyval. She graduated from Sandy Spring Friends School in 1971.

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A proud mom of an SSFS student and recipient of the “Emerging Leader in Family Medicine” award and a Fellow in the American Academy of Family Medicine, Dr. Kelechi Uduhiri, MD, MPH, MS, FAAFP (a.k.a. Dr. Kelechi) is a board-certified family medicine physician, international bestselling author, global speaker, and women's business consultant. In addition, she is a sought-after expert in primary care & preventive health issues as exemplified by her numerous peer-reviewed publications, and presentations on health topics at the national and local levels.

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Judith Farquhar is Max Palevsky Professor Emerita of Anthropology at the University of Chicago.  Her research focuses on the history and practice of traditional Chinese medicine in modern China, and on cultures of health and embodiment in both rural and urban China.  She has published a number of books and articles on these subjects, including a short philosophical study: A Way of Life: Things, thought and action in Chinese medicine (2020).  Her most recent book reports on the traditional medicines of minority nationalities in southern and southwestern China: Gathering Medicines: Nation and Knowledge in China’s Mountain South (University of Chicago Press, 2021).  She has many years of experience in field research and teaching in China.
*We had some technical difficulties with the Zoom recording that we were unable to fix. You'll see the first part of the recording and Judith has graciously shared her slides which I have included as well.

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Sarah McMullen is a wife, mother, grandmother, and health coach living with her husband Mike in Los Angeles, California. By the time she was eleven, she’d left her familiar three-story home in Boston, Massachusetts to reside in Italy, Tunisia, and Mexico for months at a time with her parents: one a world-renowned Harvard psychology professor and the other a free-spirited artist. It wasn’t until attending a Quaker Boarding School (Sandy Spring Friends School) in Maryland that Sarah’s quest for meaning beyond her adventurous childhood began to solidify.

After delving into hatha yoga, attending Ananda Marga spiritual retreats, and participating in the free-love movement of the 60s, Sarah began searching for her personal guru.  A hippie in heart and habit, she hitchhiked with friends across the US to California where she met an unexpected teacher: Jesus Christ within the backdrop of Charismatic Evangelical Christianity. Her journey from East to West is as much of a spiritual expedition as physical. The memoir ends in 1973. Since that time Sarah has left the church and today, she blends the wisdom learned from both Eastern and Western philosophies to be an instrument of God's light. In 2016, she launched the company Get Vitality, LLC to empower others to heal themselves through qigong, personal fitness, and massage therapy.

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The Rev. Dr. Kenyatta Gilbert — professor of homiletics at Howard University School of Divinity—is a nationally recognized expert on African American preaching. Kenyatta earned his M.Div. and Ph.D. in practical theology (homiletics) at Princeton Theological Seminary. As an ordained Baptist minister, he served congregations in Texas, New York, New Jersey, Maryland, and Kenya before landing at Howard University in 2006. A prolific writer and oft-featured expert on Black preaching, civil rights, and social justice, Gilbert has authored countless sermons and classroom lectures, as well as four books: Exodus Preaching: Crafting Sermons about Justice and Hope; A Pursued Justice: Black Preaching from the Great Migration to Civil Rights; The Journey and Promise of African American Preaching; and Just Living: Meditations for Engaging our Life and Times. His writing has also been featured by such outlets as PBS NewsHour, Sojourners, Word & Way, and The Conversation.

In 2011, he launched The Preaching Project, a ministry aimed at equipping ministers to better serve African American churches and communities. He also serves as Director of the Equipping the Saints: Black Congregations Online Resource Center at Howard University, the editorial board of Homiletic, a peer-reviewed journal sponsored by the Academy of Homiletics, and General Editor of Fortress Press’s forthcoming Preaching, Theology, and Culture book series. Kenyatta and his spouse, Dr. Allison Blow Gilbert, are the proud parents of three Sandy Springers: Olivia ‘21, Ella’ 24, and Ava ‘27.

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