On Friday, Jan. 13, Alvin Herring, the director of Racial Equity and Community Engagement at the W.K. Kellogg Foundation, will introduce a Town Hall session that will include breakouts concerning the uncertain future of reforms made over the last decade in the areas of Education, Civil Rights/Criminal Justice, Employment/Economic Development and Healthcare/Social Security.
The Town Hall, which is free and open to the public, begins at 10 a.m. in MCC’s Collegiate Hall. The event is hosted by the MLK Unity Breakfast Committee, which celebrates the memory of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and seeks to build understanding in the community each January. The annual Unity Day Breakfast earlier that morning featuring Herring as the keynote speaker is sold out.
Alvin Herring
In his position at the Kellogg Foundation, Herring provides strategic oversight for the Racial Equity and Community Engagement team and grant portfolios related to racial equity, racial healing and community engagement that advance the foundation’s mission. The organization supports children, families and communities as they strengthen and create conditions that propel vulnerable children to achieve success in school, work and life.
Herring actively guides the integration of community engagement and racial equity into all aspects of the foundation’s national grant-making strategy and place-based efforts in Michigan, Mississippi, New Mexico and New Orleans.
Prior to joining the foundation, he was the deputy director/senior leader at the PICO National Network. He also previously held positions as the executive director for the Working Interfaith Network in Baton Rouge, LA; a community organizer for the Contra Costa Interfaith Supporting Community Organization in Richmond, CA; the principal and lead consultant for Side By Side in Alameda, CA; the executive director for the Muhammad Ali Institute for Peace and Justice in Louisville, KY; and was the dean of students/assistant vice president for student life at the University of Louisville.
Herring was the founding partner for the Fusion Partnership, Inc., based out of Baltimore, MD and worked as the chief operating officer for the National Coalition Building Institute in Washington, D.C.
He earned a Bachelor of Arts in Psychology and Pan-African Studies from the University of Louisville and a master’s degree in counseling from the University of St. Francis. He has also pursued post-master’s work in counseling at Purdue University and religious studies at the Ecumenical Institute, St. Mary’s Seminary.
For more information on the Unity Day events, contact Dan Rinsema-Sybenga at (231) 777-0569 or visit www.muskegoncc.edu/unity.