Keynote Speakers 2024

Adjoa Jones de Almeida is the inaugural Executive Director for Forman Arts Initiative (FAI). Throughout her career, she has focused on arts and culture as vehicles for personal and collective transformation. From 2013-2024 she worked at the Brooklyn Museum, as Director of Education, and later as Deputy Director for Learning & Social Impact. There she launched the Museum’s Social Action Framework, and several social justice partnerships that reimagined the role of museums in people’s lives. Jones de Almeida graduated from Brown University in 1995 and went on to help create Sista II Sista (SIIS), a collective that for ten years developed Freedom Schools for young women of color in Brooklyn. In 2005, she co-founded Diáspora Solidária (Bahia, Brazil), a community group committed to environmental justice, arts education, and youth development. She earned her MA from Columbia University in International Educational Development and has written numerous articles on education and social change.