Behind the Girl | Penn State Altoona

From Newark to Altoona to Indianapolis to Syracuse: as Juhanna Rogers moved via every of those cities, she collected the talents and expertise to show her passions right into a thriving profession and fulfilling life.

Overture

Rogers says her hometown of Newark, New Jersey, was her cultural basis. It’s the place she discovered to have fun African and Black American tradition, the place that formed her dedication to social justice, schooling, and the humanities.

That dedication led her to Penn State Altoona in 2000. Upon arrival, Rogers discovered herself in a distinct world: Newark, a bustling, vibrant hub of exercise and variety; Penn State Altoona, a predominately white faculty in a predominately white rural space. However she jumped proper in, constructing a group of scholars, school, and employees of all races. She grew to become a resident assistant, president of the Black Pupil Union, and bought concerned within the dance program.

Surrounded by the help of college together with KT Huckabee and Rebecca Strzelec and employees like Marlene Liska, Noel Feeley, Harriett Gaston, and Kenny Macklin, Rogers started writing, directing, and producing creative performances that celebrated Black historical past and tradition.

These exhibits started gaining reputation all through campus and Blair County. Some even bought out.

On the finish of her sophomore 12 months, Rogers was invited to attend the native NAACP’s annual Freedom Fund Dinner. When her title was introduced as recipient of the Girl of the 12 months award, she was shocked. “At first, I didn’t notice they have been speaking about me. I used to be barely 20 years outdated and receiving that award. It was loopy, nevertheless it actually affirmed for me the ability of efficiency and the work I used to be doing.”

Bolstered by the popularity, Rogers continued to put in writing. Throughout a semester overseas in Spain, she wrote a full-length play for her senior integrative arts challenge. When she returned to Penn State Altoona, she took a category that included set constructing. She held auditions and arranged a tech crew. By the point of its run the month earlier than Rogers’ commencement, it had almost 70 college students, school, and employees concerned and had three virtually sold-out performances. Rogers remembers it as a magical time in her life.

When commencement got here round in 2004, Rogers thought of her subsequent step. “I assumed that what I completed as a university pupil reworked the group and the scholar physique. So, I saved saying to myself, ‘Juhanna, you are referred to as to do one thing extra.’”

Act II

With that agency perception and confidence, Rogers determined to go on to graduate faculty. She was accepted to Indiana College to review larger schooling and pupil affairs, her ardour for supporting college students of shade was her dedication. “I thought of what of us at Penn State Altoona did very deliberately to open house for us to have fun who we’re. I knew I wished to be that individual on a campus for college students who appear to be me and wish help and mentorship.”

As soon as once more, Rogers packed up and moved to a brand new state the place she knew nobody. She once more discovered herself socially and culturally remoted as one among only a few girls of shade within the graduate program. She resorted to the talents she discovered in Altoona for fostering relationships and leaned into her love of motion and storytelling by getting concerned within the college’s dance program. She additionally carried out theatrical items on the Madam Walker Legacy Middle.

Rogers drew upon those self same expertise after she earned her grasp’s and stayed on on the college as an adjunct teacher for the Division of Africana Research. Along with educating, she developed examine overseas and worldwide trade packages, recruited and elevated African American and Latino pupil enrollment, helped develop on-line programs exploring African and African American Diaspora via schooling and fashionable tradition, and designed and facilitated service tasks and workshops.

Having discovered what it takes to develop programming that helps the retention of Black and Brown college students on campus and within the communities round them, Rogers pressed on, enrolling in Indiana College a second time to pursue a Ph.D. in instructional management and coverage research. Her analysis centered on essential race concept, racism in schooling, and the worldwide experiences of Black college students and students.

When she graduated in 2016, she and 7 of her colleagues have been dubbed The Great8, the most important variety of Black girls to finish doctorate diploma necessities within the college’s College of Training concurrently.

The Great8 have been chosen as Ebony journal’s Energy 100 Honorees for being change makers in schooling. “I used to be humbled as a result of once more, just like the Girl of the 12 months award, it wasn’t one thing I utilized for, nevertheless it was one thing out of the blood, sweat, and tears of doing my work, our work, that the group thought of worthy. And that meant every little thing as a result of what I used to be dedicated to doing was on behalf of the group.”

Following commencement, Rogers traveled the world exploring how underrepresented populations, particularly folks of African descent, might enhance their lives and communities. Using these experiences, she served as director of Well being Applications for Syracuse Mannequin Neighborhood Facility, Inc. She then took a job as director of group engagement and empowerment for Middle Metropolis CEO, a enterprise management group and chamber of commerce additionally in Syracuse.

After two years in that place, Rogers grew to become vice chairman for racial fairness and social influence on the firm, the place she creates inclusive areas for all members of the group to stay and thrive.

“I sit on the management desk with many enterprise leaders from throughout the nation, and I problem them to suppose in another way about how they’re fostering extra inclusive areas. I push on the boundaries and normalcies that exist on the subject of social justice. I allow them to realize it’s time to place concept into motion.”

As all the time, Rogers is utilizing that philosophy in all facets of her life, particularly the humanities.

Behind the Girl

Rogers considers it her private mission to encourage girls of shade to stay out loud and unapologetically stroll into who they’re. She has turn out to be keen about bringing narratives out of the ladies she has met alongside her personal journey.

In 2019, she grew to become the creator, government producer, and host of Behind the Girl in partnership with WCNY/PBS. The YouTube sequence options private tales from numerous girls leaders that encourage and empower different girl to pursue their targets and goals.

“That is about showcasing among the sensible Black and Brown girls within the space who’ve issues to say. We’re extra than simply our titles. We expertise issues and really feel issues. There’s something highly effective when people can sit down and listen to somebody’s lived expertise in a method that’s considerate and intentional. No matter race, shade, and gender, we are able to see the human connectedness.”

The third season will start in October 2022.

Rogers’ in depth analysis on racialized experiences of Black college students and college performs an infinite position in her writing and playwriting.

She is a contributing author for varied blogs providing commentary on larger schooling and the Black girl’s expertise. Her poetry has been revealed within the anthology Divine Feminist. A number of of her theatre items, together with A Gatherin’ Place and For Harriet, have been produced and carried out on stage.

This summer time, held over the Juneteenth weekend, was the inaugural Queendom’s Artwork Pageant in Cazenovia, New York. Conceptualized by Rogers, the occasion celebrated Black excellence within the arts with performances and different leisure. The pageant additionally featured readings from Rogers’ new work, Queendom, an in-process interactive expertise that explores the dream and risk of reparations.

“Juhanna is a collector—a collector of experiences and folks,” states Huckabee, who attended the pageant. “Her tribe retains getting bigger. She is all the time exploring, studying, educating, and creating, and all the time with a transparent message to be shared.”

Rogers isn’t even near being accomplished with what she will be able to and desires to do. She will see herself educating in arts packages and doing talking engagements on a bigger scale, increasing Behind the Girl, and touring the world sharing her work. She solely half jokes about being the subsequent Oprah. And she or he goals of her theatre work operating on Broadway and occurring tour.

Together with her ambition, nothing appears unattainable for Rogers.

“It is loopy. It’s so loopy. None of this was an orchestrated plan, all of it advanced. I simply saved making selections that felt proper to me, and right here I’m. I feel that speaks to the significance and significance in constructing the boldness to decide on the work you need to do. Simply preserve selecting you.”