Our Team

ILIANA FIGUEROA
Co-Director & Program Director

Iliana (she/they) has recently joined the InterAction team as their Program Director. She is a Queer Puerto Rican Femme, born and raised in the Northwest side of Chicago. Before InterAction, she had spent the past 8 years organizing within Black and Brown Queer and Trans community, as well and working with survivors of gender-based violence. She believes in a world without police and prisons, and loves to dream with others about what this possibility can look like.

ARIANA STEELE
Co-Director & Sustainability Director

KELLY YU
Education & Outreach Coordinator

Kelly Yu was born and raised in Arcadia, CA. Recently, she graduated from the University of Michigan with two bachelor’s degrees in Sociology and Women’s Studies. College was a transformative experience, where she learned about dialogue, self-reflection, and social justice. Kelly learned how her social identities shape her lived reality, how to articulate her experiences and work with people of diverse backgrounds.

As the new Outreach Coordinator for InterAction Initiative, Kelly is excited to utilize her social justice knowledge and dialogue facilitation skills. The organization’s focus on critical race and pedagogical theory aligns with her ideology. Through the work, Kelly hopes to make social justice more accessible and empower young activists to thoughtful action.
Outside of work, Kelly enjoy spending time with my two chinchillas, cooking new dishes, and watching Lifetime movies.

DEANDRA CADET
Co-Founder

Deandra “Dede” Cadet (she/her) has a passion for connecting people, resources, ideas, and stories that bring us to joy, healing, and collective liberation. As a Black, Haitian-American, woman and Midwest-transplant from Newark, NJ she’s still coming to know her full self, her counter-narrative. Deandra has served as the Executive Director of InterAction Initiative Inc. since co-founding the organization at 22 years old in 2015 as a student activist. Through her work at InterAction, she’s facilitated racial justice education programs for Young BIPOC and their allies across the country using counter-narrative methods for raising political and liberatory consciousness, resisting internalized dominant narratives, and mobilizing communities for social change. In 2018, Deandra was named a Dalai Lama Fellow, a global program which recognizes young social change leaders and in 2020 was an NLC Chicago Fellow, a fellowship for young progressive leaders committed to racial equity. Now, Dede is based in Chicago where she organizes with her local mutual aid group and loved to take walks around McKinley Park.

TAEYIN CHOGLUECK
Co-Founder

Taeyin ChoGlueck is a co-founder of InterAction and has served the organization as the Creative Director from its founding days to 2020. Taeyin’s experiences range from immigrant to second generation, from Korean to Korean-American and Minnesotan/Midwestern identities. Taeyin has worked in London, Minneapolis, and Seoul in multicultural organizations. As the co-founder of InterAction, Taeyin envisions InterAction to be the cultivating grounds for Young Black, Indigenous, People of Color to be the next critical thinkers, writers, and leaders in intersectional racial justice.

Udochi Esomonu
Young BIPOC Director

LUCAS GARCIA
President

“We are made of stories. When someone else uses power or violence to take control of our stories, they can sometimes unmake us, or make us into something we aren’t. InterAction empowers all kinds of people, especially young people of color, to excavate their own voices. They offer tools to activate that voice AND to build a platform to affirm them. I believe in InterAction’s mission because I believe in the power of telling your story from your own perspective.”

Lucas Garcia is a Chicago based writer and dramaturge from Albuquerque, NM. They are also Co-Director of Marketing and Communications for the Alliance of Latinx Theatre Artists, a volunteer member service organization dedicated to the advancement of the Latinx Theatre movement in Chicago. Lucas is also a member of El Semillero, ALTA’s Latinx playwriting circle. Lucas has worked as a dramaturg with Sideshow Theatre Company’s Freshness Initiative (Mechanisms of Fidelity), The Yard (columbinus), TimeLine Theatre Company (In the Next Room), Steppenwolf (La Ruta, Pass Over), The Hypocrites (W;t), and Chicago Dramatists (Lorca in New York, Felons and Familias). Lucas also writes as a theatre critic for Rescripted: an artist-led platform for critique, discussion and writing.

DR. CHELDA SMITH KONDO
Director

Chelda Smith Kondo (she/her) is an Associate Professor of Elementary Education at Georgia Southern University, where she teaches graduate courses in cultural issues, critical pedagogy, and elementary curriculum. She is also the co-founder and director of a fully online Elementary Education Master of Arts in Teaching program focused on culture and communities. Her research interests lie primarily in the area of pedagogical development, ranging from preservice teachers to university faculty.

“I serve on the board of InterAction Initiative Inc. because its mission of a world in which all young BIPOC have the opportunity to reach their full potential in their inclusive college campuses is central to my research and teaching. I believe my commitment to instruction and research rooted in cultural relevance, inclusion, and equity helps me serve and advance the mission of InterAction.”

CHRISTIAN MURPHY
Treasurer

Christian Murphy (he/him) is the Cofounder & CEO of Catharsis Productions. Catharsis Productions aims to change the world by creating and delivering innovative and interactive educational programs that challenge oppressive attitudes and transform behavior. Our programs use strategies like humor, interactive dialogue, and theater to tackle social justice issues, like sexual violence, sexual orientation and gender identity, and race in a non-conventional way.  Two of our presentations, Say What? (for college audiences) and NSFW (for corporate audiences) bid participants to recognize any unexamined privilege they may possess and how microaggressions unchallenged can further marginalize individuals from minority populations.  Our work is not to shame, but rather inspire positive, inclusive communities.

Pamela N. Young
Director

Pamela Young (she/her) was appointed Notre Dame’s first director for academic diversity and inclusion in 2016. In this role, Young directs efforts within the academy focused on diversity and inclusion, working with partners across all academic levels to ensure the University fosters an environment in which everyone may flourish. Her key responsibilities center on coordination, training and development, recruitment, retention, and communications, and she acts as the point person for colleges and departments as they implement the diversity and inclusion plans developed in response to the Faculty Experience Survey.

Young came to Notre Dame from PNY Consulting in Holyoke, Mass., where she advised colleges, businesses, and individuals on issues related to Title VII, Title IX, ADA, and FERPA. Prior to that, she was director of institutional diversity and equity at Smith College, administering the college’s affirmative action plan, exercising oversight of diversity and equity policies, and conducting discrimination and grievance investigations. Her experience in higher education also includes approximately five years as human resources director at North Shore Community College in Danvers, Mass.

As an attorney, Young has consulted for the Massachusetts Commission Against Discrimination and, from 1997–2000, served as an assistant district attorney in Hampden County, Mass. She has been an assistant city solicitor and a member of the Massachusetts Attorney General’s Office, as well.

After graduating with a B.A. in government from Dartmouth College, Young received her J.D. from the Notre Dame Law School. In addition, she holds an M.Ed. in educational leadership from Salem State College, and she completed the Institute for Management and Leadership in Education at the Harvard Graduate School of Education.

Alia Azmat

DR. CHELDA SMITH KONDO
Director

Chelda Smith Kondo (she/her) is an Associate Professor of Elementary Education at Georgia Southern University, where she teaches graduate courses in cultural issues, critical pedagogy, and elementary curriculum. She is also the co-founder and director of a fully online Elementary Education Master of Arts in Teaching program focused on culture and communities. Her research interests lie primarily in the area of pedagogical development, ranging from preservice teachers to university faculty.

“I serve on the board of InterAction Initiative Inc. because its mission of a world in which all young BIPOC have the opportunity to reach their full potential in their inclusive college campuses is central to my research and teaching. I believe my commitment to instruction and research rooted in cultural relevance, inclusion, and equity helps me serve and advance the mission of InterAction.”

Nancy Wong

Margie Andreason

Margie (she/her) is a first-generation immigrant, arriving to the United States as a toddler from Korea and growing up in the Twin Cities. She has spent over a dozen years working in philanthropy and leading grassroots, community organizing efforts which has fueled her understanding that a small group of people can make a difference. Margie currently leads the Diversity Equity Inclusion (DEI) strategy for the Northwest Area Foundation.

Before joining the Foundation, Margie worked on Asian Americans / Pacific Islanders in Philanthropy’s (AAPIP) National Gender and Equity Campaign, which aimed to build organizational capacity for social justice in Asian-led nonprofits in Minnesota and California. She has multiple years of experience as a community grant reviewer for Headwaters Foundation for Justice and the Women’s Foundation of Minnesota. She also had the honor of being co-chair of the Minnesota Chapter of AAPIP for over four years.

Margie remains engaged with local and national community groups through extensive volunteer work. She is currently Board Chair of the Coalition of Asian American Leaders, a network of 1,500 leaders whose mission is to harness our collective power to improve the lives of community. Margie also is a steering committee member of Pan-Asian Voices for Equity and represents District C on the Metropolitan Parks and Open Space Commission. Margie is active in the transracial adoptee community, having co-founded Network of Politicized Adoptees that works at the intersection of adoptee rights and the larger social justice movement. She also has experience leading multiracial media justice campaigns and is committed to narrative change and healing practices that advance equity. Margie has a bachelor’s degree in social work and political science from Concordia College-Moorhead, and a master’s in public affairs from the University of Minnesota’s Humphrey School of Public Affairs.

Eugene Park

Eugene is the founder and executive director of Full Spectrum Features NFP, a non-profit organization committed to driving equity in the independent film industry by producing and distributing the work of women, POC, and LGBTQ+ filmmakers. Eugene’s films have screened at over 400 festivals, micro-cinemas, museums, and alternative screening venues around the world, including SXSW, BAMcinemafest, Outfest, Frameline, Chicago International, Cleveland International, Chicago Underground, Athens International Film + Video Festival, and Antimatter. His feature-length script Michael’s Story (a fictional drama inspired by the 1982 murder of Vincent Chin) won the screenplay competition at the 37th Asian American International Film Festival in New York.

Eugene is the 2020 Community Impact Scholar of the Harvard Business School Alumni Club of Chicago, and he was the 2019 recipient of the Jan and Frank Cicero Fellowship at the Newberry Library. Described by Newcity as “essential to the film world of Chicago,” Eugene was recently inducted into the magazine’s inaugural Film 50 Hall of Fame.

Delaine Powerful

Delaine Andrea Powerful (Mx., they/them) is a Black Jamaican TomFemme whose commitment to and grounding in an abolitionist praxis is actualized through their work as a reproductive justice organizer and educator, anti-oppression consultant, youth worker and birth worker. Their commitments to Black liberation guide their daily work and practice. Currently, Delaine runs Operations at National Bail Out, an organization dedicated to abolishing money bail, pretrial detention, and mass criminalization, is a development strategist with Feed Black Futures, and consults with an organization designing communication intervention strategies for folks organizing around identity based violence. They have held roles as Chapter Co-Chair and Organizing Co-Chair with Black Youth Project 100 – NYC (BYP100 NYC) and is a co-founding member of Homecoming – a Birth Justice Collective in NYC. They are also an avid soccer player and Dancehall/Afrobeat enthusiast.

Nneka Soyinka