Celebrating Ndi-Igbo

Uzo Aduba (@UzoAduba) is an American based actress of Igbo heritage. She is best known for her role as Suzanne "Crazy Eyes" Warren in Orange Is the New Black. Uzo Aduba attended Boston University, she began earning recognition for her acting in 2003, with a performance in Translations of Xhosa at the Olney Theatre Center for the Arts. This earned her a Helen Hayes Award nomination for Best Supporting Actress in a Play. Her Broadway debut was in 2007 as Toby in Coram Boy. She was a member of the Original Revival Cast of Godspell at the Circle in the Square Theatre from 2011 through 2012. Her first television appearance was on Blue Bloods in 2012. She also played the mother of the title character of Venice at The Public Theater in New York.

Akwaeke Emezi is an Igbo and Tamil writer and filmmaker based in liminal spaces. She was born in Umuahia and raised in Aba, Nigeria. Her work is often set in a landscape of disquietude, excavating the surface to reveal forces of psychosexual dislocation and violence. Brutal and surreal, it pushes past comfortable morality to honestly explore the margins of humanity. Akwaeze currently lives in Brooklyn, and has also been writing since she could write. Her works have been published by Raw Fiction and her first full length manuscript, Somadina, was selected as a finalist for the New Visions Award by Lee and Low Books.

Ruby Onyinyechi Amanze is a Brooklyn based artist of Nigerian birth 
and British upbringing. her drawings and works on paper have been influenced greatly by this cultural hybridity, as well as textile design, photography, print-making and architecture.
 amanze graduated Summa Cum Laude from Tyler School of Art, Temple University in Philadelphia. she then went on to pursue a M.F.A at Cranbrook Academy of Art, Bloomfield Hills, Michigan.

 Amanze has exhibited her work in numerous exhibitions in New York,
 London, Ghana, Lagos, Philadelphia, Seattle and Amsterdam. most recently, Amanze was
 awarded a 2012-13 Fulbright Scholars Award, to join the 
Department of Fine and Applied Arts at the University of Nigeria, 
Nsukka. she currently resides in Brooklyn where she maintains a full time studio practice. Source: rubyamanze.com

Ifeanyi Menkiti is a poet and professor of philosophy at Wellesley College. He is also the owner of the Grolier Poetry Book Shop in Cambridge, Massachusetts. The Grolier Poetry Book Shop ("the Grolier") is an independent bookstore on Plympton Street near Harvard Square in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States. Although founded as a "fine-arts" bookstore, its focus today is solely poetry. A small (404 sq ft.), one-room store with towering bookcases, it lays claim to being the "oldest continuous bookshop" devoted solely to the sale of poetry and poetry criticism. Here was a place where poets from T.S. Eliot and e.e. cummings to Robert Lowell, John Asbury and Adrienne Rich had hung out in their day. Ifeanyi Menkiti grew up in Onitsha, Nigeria.  He moved to the United States to attend college.  He received a B.A. from Pamona College in California, a M.S. from Columbia University, a M.A. from New York University and a Ph.D. in Philosophy from Harvard Un...

Christian Nwachukwu, Jr is an appointee of the Obama White House and serves as the senior speechwriter to CEO Wendy Spencer ( Chief Executive Officer of the Corporation for National and Community Service [CNCS]) at the Corporation for National and Community Service. Previously, Christian served as a speechwriter to New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg from 2011-13. Christian Nwachukwu, Jr. grew up on a farm in Manson, North Carolina, studied in Warren County Public Schools, and graduated from Morehouse College. He has lived in Atlanta; Washington, D.C.; Venice, Italy; Los Angeles; and New York City. He is a former Editor at Large at The Freedom Writers Foundation. 

Odera(Left) Odera Ume-Ezeoke is the founder and CEO of Viewsy Viewsy is a rapidly growing location analytics startup, formed in 2011 as a solution to a common problem faced by retailers the world over: understanding customer behavior in physical space in order to manage businesses better. Viewsy's solution continues to excite the marketplace. Clients include Vodafone, Amsterdam Arena and Google. He has a degree in Management, IT & Languages from University of York.

Born and raised in Los Angeles, Ajakwe graduated from Inglewood’s Morningside High and attended the University of Redlands on an academic scholarship. He earned degrees in English and Political Science and was named Most Outstanding Senior of his graduating class. He paid his way through college working in a movie theater, and covering news and sports for Redland’s Magazine, the Redlands Daily Facts and the Riverside Press Enterprise. Since 1993, Michael has worked in the theatre with renowned performers like Emmy-winner Glynn Turman, Vanessa Bell Calloway, Debbie Allen, Ted Lange, Phil Morris, Robert Ri’chard, Hill Harper, Niecy Nash, Tommy Hicks, Tracee Ellis Ross, Art Evans, Gary Sturgis, James Pickens, Tatyana Ali, Marc Coppage, Estelle Harris, Wendy Raquel Robinson, Lee Garlington, Robert Pine, Shayla Rivera, Gary Anthony Williams, Ralph Carter, Deniece Williams, Charles Dutton and Oscar winner Mo’Nique. As a tv and film writer, he’s worked with Martin Lawrence, Greg Kinnear...