As a part of our annual celebration of the life & legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., please join us for the MLK Speaker Panel. 
 

Panelists include three MIT MLK Visiting Scholars, L'Merchie Frazier, Patrick Njoroge, and Djamila Tais Ribeiro dos Santos. It will be moderated by RaeVaughn Gardner-Williams from MIT Sloan School of Management's Office of Admissions. 

Please arrive at 1:45pm for light refreshments; panel discussion will begin promptly at 2:00pm.

Please RSVP.

Speaker bios: 

• Djamila Ribeiro is a Brazilian public intellectual, philosopher, and writer. She holds a bachelor’s degree in philosophy and a master’s degree in political philosophy from the Federal University of São Paulo. She coordinates Feminismos Plurais, an initiative that includes an institute supporting women in situations of social vulnerability and a publishing collection devoted to Black authors in Brazil and abroad. She is the author of several influential books, translated into multiple languages. A visiting professor at universities in Brazil and the United States, she is currently a visiting professor in the Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Scholars Program at MIT, becoming the first Brazilian to hold this position.

• L’Merchie Frazier is a visual activist, public artist, historian, educator, lecturer, and poet is Executive Director of Creative / Strategic Planning for SPOKE Arts Inc. She was formerly Director of Education and Interpretation for the Museum of African American History, Boston/Nantucket. Frazier is a member of AAMARP, African American Artist in Residence Program at Northeastern University and is a life-long member of The Women of Color Quilter’s Network (WCQN). Frazier serves as a resident history advisor to the classical music organization, Castle of Our Skins. She is a 2025-2026 MLK Visiting Professor in the Department of Urban Studies and Planning at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) previously co-teaching a course. on textile texts. Frazier’s innovative art focus supports social and reparative justice and the quest for civil and human rights through the lens of five hundred years of Black and Indigenous history. She is a Boston Foundation Brother Thomas Fellow. Recently she was awarded a 2025-2026 Wagner Arts Foundation Fellowship. She is a mayoral appointment to City of Boston Reparations Task Force and a gubernatorial appointment to the State of Massachusetts Art Commission. Frazier’s residencies in Brazil, Taiwan, Costa Rica, Africa, France, and Cuba feature public community projects. Her permanently collected works are in the Smithsonian Renwick Gallery, the White House, Minneapolis Institute of Art, the Dallas Museum of Art, the Peabody Essex Museum, and the Museum of Arts and Design. She is a recipient of the 2023 Boston Celtics “Heroes Among Us” Award. Her selected interviews include Claudia Rankine, Dr. Margaret Burnham, Ibrahm X. Kendi, Patrisse Cullors, Tamara Payne, Robert Freeman and other literary and visual artists. Her poetry is now published in a volume, Wheatley at 250: Black Women Poets Re-imagine the Verse of Phillis Wheatley Peters Anthology, edited by City of Boston Poet Laureate, Danielle Georges. 

• Dr. Patrick Njoroge served as the ninth Governor of the Central Bank of Kenya from June 2015 to June 2023, after a 20-year career at the International Monetary Fund. During his tenure as Governor he led improvements in the conduct of monetary policy and oversaw an overhaul of the banking system, including the launch of Kenya’s first Banking Sector Charter and upgrading CBK’s supervision. Other parts of the financial sector were also strengthened, including the National Payments System. In November 2018, he was appointed by UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres to the UN Task Force on Digital Financing of the SDGs, whose final report was launched in August 2020. He also served as Co-Chair of the High-Level Roundtable of the Dialogue on Global Digital Finance Governance, which extended the work of the UN Secretary General’s Task Force and was hosted virtually by the Swiss Government.Dr. Njoroge’s research interests are in Africa’s economic transformation, FinTech and innovation. Other professional interests are in monetary policy, international finance, and development economics.