About our honoree

Elizabeth Alexander is a nationally recognized thought leader on race, justice, the arts, and American society. As president of the Mellon Foundation, she leads the nation’s largest funder of the arts and humanities, supporting educational institutions and cultural organizations while envisioning and guiding new initiatives to build just communities across the United States.

Dr. Alexander is a celebrated poet, scholar, educator, and advocate for how creativity and the arts can empower communities and address critical issues. While at the Ford Foundation, she served as director of Creativity and Free Expression and co-designed the Art for Justice Fund, an initiative that uses art and advocacy to address the crisis of mass incarceration. Dr. Alexander has also held professorships at the University of Chicago, Smith College, Yale University, and Columbia University. She serves on the boards of Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts, New York-Presbyterian Hospital, and the Pulitzer Prize, and is Chancellor Emeritus of the Academy of American Poets.

About our panelists

Amanda Williams is a distinguished visual artist and trained architect whose work explores the intersection of race, color, and the built environment. Growing up in Chicago’s South Side, she earned her Bachelor of Architecture from Cornell University. Williams is best known for her “Color(ed) Theory” project, where she painted abandoned houses in Chicago’s Englewood neighborhood with culturally resonant colors to highlight the impact of disinvestment in African American communities. Williams’s work has been exhibited in prestigious institutions with several permanent collections, including the MoMA, the Art Institute of Chicago, and the Smithsonian. She has received numerous accolades, including being named a MacArthur Fellow in 2022. Her commissioned piece, Resilient Hues, created with Olalekan Jeyifous for the National Public Housing Museum, draws inspiration from paint chips and wallpaper scraps salvaged from the Museum’s building from its days as part of the Jane Addams Homes. The large-scale, glass and steel artwork frames the Museum’s entrance.
 

Joy Johnson, a native of Kingston, Jamaica, has been a longtime community activist and organizer. As a public housing resident and former Outreach Coordinator for the Westhaven Nursing Clinic, she has worked tirelessly to improve access to healthcare, economic opportunities, and fair housing policies. She has volunteered countless hours as an advocate for Charlottesville’s low-income residents, speaking out on their behalf to demand safe and clean affordable housing, adequate representation on city boards and commissions, living wage employment, and voter education. In 1998, Johnson helped found the Public Housing Association of Residents (PHAR), a nationally recognized citywide resident association, which is responsible for Charlottesville’s outstanding level of resident representation on its Housing Authority Board of Commissioners. Johnson currently serves as Chair for the Public Housing Association of Residents (PHAR), Vice-President of the Board of Legal Aid Justice Center, and Chair for Charlottesville Housing Advisory Committee and UVA housing Committee. She is the recipient of the 2020 Cushing Niles Dolbeare lifetime service award and the 2023 Reflector Award.
 

Lisa Yun Lee is the Executive Director of the National Public Housing Museum, a cultural activist, and an Associate Professor of Public Culture and Museum Studies in the University of Illinois Chicago School of Art & Art History. As the previous Director of the Jane Addams Hull-House Museum, she oversaw a renovation of one of the US’s most important historic sites. As the Director of the UIC School of Art & Art History, she helped to found the Museum and Exhibition Studies Program that is committed to social justice. Lisa has published articles about housing as a human right, democratization of historic preservation, museums as sites for radical democracy, and written a book about philosopher and cultural critic Theodor Adorno. She served on both Mayor Brandon Johnson and Mayor Lori Lightfoot’s Arts & Culture Transition Teams, and on the city of Chicago’s Commission for Monuments, Memorials, and Historical Reckoning. She was appointed by Governor Pritzker to the Board of the Illinois State Museum, and currently serves on the boards of the Field Foundation, and the American Association of State and Local History.