Who We Are
Meet the BU D&I Team
The success of Boston University Diversity & Inclusion (BU D&I) as a force for institutional change and equity depends on an extensive network of colleagues, allies, and University leaders. But as a central organization, BU D&I is represented by the following individuals.
Full-Time Staff
Megan Segoshi
Director, BU Diversity & Inclusion
Email: msegoshi@bu.edu
Dr. Megan Segoshi (she/her) is the Director of BU Diversity & Inclusion, situated within the Community & Inclusion unit of BU’s Office of the Provost. She came to BU in Spring 2021 from the University of Michigan’s National Center for Institutional Diversity. Her scholarship has focused on affirmative action in higher education, Asian American student identity development and engagement in racial justice work, and race, equity, and access in higher education. As Director of BU D&I she has led and expanded efforts at the University level to foster community among faculty with marginalized identities, developed opportunities for professional development for early career faculty of color, and provided training to hundreds of BU faculty members on inclusive search practices. Megan has a PhD in Higher Education from Loyola University Chicago, an MSW from The University of Georgia, and a BA in Sociology from The University of Massachusetts-Amherst.
Abby Styles
Project Manager, BU Diversity & Inclusion
Email: aburmeis@bu.edu
Abby Styles (she/her) is the Project Manager for BU Diversity & Inclusion. Abby came to BU D&I in 2018 from the University of New Hampshire (UNH), where she worked in the College of Engineering and Physical Sciences Business Services Center. She has seen the BU D&I unit through its immense growth and transitions, using her institutional knowledge to onboard numerous D&I colleagues, as well as colleagues in partner Community & Inclusion units. In this role, she has been an integral part in the unit’s efforts to cultivate community and belonging at BU – staffing multiple task forces and committees, coordinating the logistics of BU’s first-ever university-wide climate survey, and managing the transition into their own office space (set to open in Spring 2024). Abby received a BA in Sociology, with a focus in psychosocial development, from UNH.
Annabelle Estera
Assistant Director of Training and Workshops, BU Diversity & Inclusion
Email: aestera@bu.edu
Dr. Annabelle Estera (she/her) is the Assistant Director of Training and Workshops with BU Diversity & Inclusion. Prior to joining BU in Spring 2024, she was an Assistant Professor in the School of Education at Endicott College, where her teaching centered on issues of diversity, equity, and inclusion across educational spaces. Her research has focused on the experiences of faculty of color, anticolonial approaches to education, and inclusive teaching and learning. She has also previously worked in multicultural student affairs. Annabelle earned her PhD in Higher, Adult, and Lifelong Education from Michigan State University, MA in Higher Education and Student Affairs from The Ohio State University, and BA in Interdepartmental Studies from the University of Rochester.
Mary Lai Rose
Assistant Director of Programs, BU Diversity & Inclusion
Email: maryrose@bu.edu
Dr. Mary Lai Rose (she/her) is BU Diversity & Inclusion’s Assistant Director of Programs. Mary joined BU in Spring 2024 from the University of Michigan, where she supported the implementation of the university’s five-year strategic plan on diversity, equity, and inclusion involving 51 campus units, and managed the Anti-Racism Collaborative–part of the provost’s Anti-Racism Initiative–to amplify and support anti-racism scholars and scholarship. Mary has published peer-reviewed journal articles on Asian American and Pacific Islander youth violence, community collaborations, multiculturalism, and adolescent substance use and delinquency. Mary received a PhD in human development and family studies from The Pennsylvania State University, a MEd in Sociology and Education from Columbia University, and a BA in Asian American Studies from the University of California, Berkeley.
Naveen Inim
Senior Communications Manager, BU Diversity & Inclusion
Email: ninim@bu.edu
Naveen Inim (she/her) is the Senior Communications Manager for BU Diversity & Inclusion. As a former student at BU, Naveen worked on communications teams for Boston University Libraries and The Newbury Center. Naveen is returning to BU in Spring 2024 after working as the Social Media Content Specialist on the central administration communications team at the University of Southern California. Naveen received a BA in Psychology and BS in Film & Television as well as a MFA in Film & Television Studies from Boston University.
Graduate Assistants
Liv Jacobs
Graduate Assistant, BU Diversity & Inclusion
Liv Jacobs (they/them) is a PhD student in American and New England Studies at BU. They have an M.A. in Performance Studies from Washington University in St. Louis. Liv’s work engages with the unique confluence of factors which constitute Americanness using frameworks of performance, aesthetics, politics, and regionalism. As an interpretive ethnographer, Liv writes about folk/traditional communities and their music and dance practices. Their scholarship is committed to radical epistemologies and they are working to develop re-indigenized pedagogical models. With the D&I office, Liv Jacobs is available to provide guests and staff with practical support in administration and programming.
Kaizha King
Graduate Assistant, BU Diversity & Inclusion
Kaizha King (she/her) is a first year PhD Student in the Department of Sociology and serves as Graduate Assistant for BU Diversity & Inclusion. Originally from Chicago, IL received her B.A., from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, triple majoring in Political Science, History, and Gender & Women’s Studies. After finishing undergrad, worked in New York for two years as a legal analyst before transferring jobs to work for the National Football League (NFL) as a Privacy Coordinator in their Legal Department. Her research interests center on the sociology of inequality, and specifically on the inequality of educational accessibility. She hopes to examine how America’s educational inaccessibility is rooted distinctly in racial and ethnic politics, and the sociological effects on minority populations.
Faculty Fellows
Priya Garg
Associate Dean, Office of Medical Education, Chobanian & Avedisian School of Medicine
Dr. Priya Garg is the Associate Dean of Medical Education and Associate Professor of Pediatrics at Boston University Chobanian and Avedisian School of Medicine. As Associate Dean, she has led the 2022 redesign of the medical school curriculum embedding evidence-based learning theory, active learning and teamwork into the curriculum. Dr. Garg focuses her scholarly work in medical education on antiracism and addressing health inequities through undergraduate medical curricula. She serves as co-chair of the Association of American Medical Colleges Medical Education Senior Leaders task force on Addressing Racism in Medical Education. She has been an invited speaker on antiracism in Undergraduate Medical Education at the National Academy of Science and Medicine, AAMC national meetings and medical schools across the US. She is also the Co-Director of the Academic Pediatric Association’s Educational Scholars Program, a national faculty development program in pediatrics focused on educational research and scholarship. She practices as a pediatric hospitalist at Boston Medical Center.
Laura Jiménez
Senior Lecturer, Director, Center for Educating Critically, Wheelock College of Education & Human Development
Dr. Laura M. Jiménez is a senior lecturer in the Language & Literacy Education Department at Boston University Wheelock College of Education & Human Development. She is also the director of the Center for Educating Critically. As a white-presenting Latina lesbian, her scholarship and activism center the multiple ways teaching has always been a political act. Additionally, it explores how educators can disrupt and create anti-oppressive, justice-oriented, inclusive classroom experiences for students.
Previously, Dr. Jiménez served as BU Wheelock’s associate dean for equity, diversity & inclusion. She is one of the inaugural Boston University D&I Partners Faculty Fellows. Her scholarship looks at the ways marginalized communities are represented in children and YA literature and the ways teachers can learn to critically engage their own teaching practices to include and forefront humanizing pedagogy and the power of modifying existing curriculum.
She is a founding member of the editorial board of Research on Diversity in Youth Literature, and a co-editor on the first all queer editorial team for NCTE’s Journal of Children’s Literature, co-editor of Diversity in Graphic Novels: Special Issue of Research on Diversity in Youth Literature. In addition, she is a co-author of Lee and Low’s 2023 and 2019 Diversity Baseline in Publishing surveys. Her work has been published in Journal for Literacy Research, Language Arts, Encyclopedia of Social Justice in Education, Literacy Research and Instruction, and other peer reviewed journals, as well as the Boston Globe, the New York Times, and other media outlets.
Kaylene Stevens
Program Director, Social Studies Education, Clinical Assistant Professor
Dr. Kaylene Stevens is the program director and a clinical assistant professor for social studies education at Boston University Wheelock College of Education & Human Development. Her research interests lie in how to best include marginalized groups in the social studies classroom and curricula as well as how to lift up the voices of teachers. She is a faculty affiliate with Boston University’s Center for Antiracist Research.
Before her work at Boston University, Dr. Stevens was a public school teacher and department head. She has several publications on gender-equitable and race-conscious teaching in the social studies classroom. Her work has been featured in the Journal of Social Studies Research and Theory & Research in Social Education. She coauthored the book Teaching History for Justice: Centering Activism in Students’ Study of the Past.