Sheri Parks, Ph.D. is Vice President of Strategic Initiatives at Maryland Institute College of Art (MICA) in Baltimore. Previously, she was Associate Dean for Research, Interdisciplinary Scholarship and Programming and Director of the Center for Synergy at the University of Maryland, College Park.  She has been Principal Investigator (PI), Co-PI or Community Liaison on a number of sponsored projects, including those funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, the National Science Foundation and the US Department of Commerce.  She led Baltimore Stories:  Narrative and the Life of an American City, which was named a national model of deep community conversations by NEH.  Sheri is also a public intellectual, quoted in a variety of media, and a national award-winning National Public Radio affiliate host and commentator. She is the author of Fierce Angels: Living with a Legacy from the Strong Dark Feminine to the Strong Black Woman, selected as an editor’s pick by Essence Magazine and the lead editor of Baltimore Stories, forthcoming from Johns Hopkins University Press.  Her academic field is Public Aesthetics, or how ordinary people weave aesthetic forms and meanings throughout their everyday lives.  She currently serves as the President of the board of the Greater Baltimore Cultural Alliance.