Staff

Jay Botsford

Position title: Learning Communities Facilitator

Email: jay.botsford@wisc.edu

Jay Botsford (pronouns: ze/zir/zirs/zirself) has been advocating with LGBTQ+ communities in WI since 2002, providing equity & justice-focused training/consulting to service providers and institutions, supporting the leadership of students and youth to make change in their communities, and organizing for racial, gender, health, and disability justice. Ze has worked at UW-Madison since 2016 and joined the LCICE team in 2019. Before moving to Madison, Jay worked in the nonprofit world in many roles, including as a sexuality educator, youth program manager, health advocate, and social justice educator/consultant. Ze is passionate about community care/mutual aid, building accomplices (not just allies), and centering health, healing, and pleasure in justice work.

Karin Silet

Position title: Learning Communities Facilitator

Email: karin.silet@wisc.edu

Karin Silet has worked at UW-Madison since 2005 focusing on curriculum development, mentoring research, and facilitating dialogue-based learning communities centered on understanding the impact of our social identities on our leadership practices. In addition to working specifically with faculty and staff who identify as white in the Leadership Community of Practice and with a cross-section of faculty and staff in the Leadership Institute, Karin also co-facilitates dialogue-based courses with undergraduate and graduate students in Student SEED (CP325) and Health Equity & Social Justice (SAS490).

Alice Traore

Position title: Learning Communities Facilitator

Email: alice.traore@wisc.edu

Alice Y Traore is a learning communities facilitator and curriculum designer for DDEEA’s Learning Communities for Institutional Change and Excellence. Alice has been an employee of the UW System since 2000–first at UW-Milwaukee and currently at UW-Madison. Within higher education, she has worked in student affairs, academic affairs and multicultural affairs. Participating in the following institutes has significantly influenced her current work: Social Justice Training Institute (SJTI), and the Midwest Academy (Organizing for Social Change) and the Equity and Justice Institute. Alice earned a master’s degree in creative writing from Illinois State University. Writing provided a platform for the exploration of race and gender; however, it was several years later that she began to pry at the mask she’s been socialized to wear as a cisgender Black woman in the U.S. As a learning communities facilitator, Alice’s goal is to develop curriculum that centers the experiences of marginalized individuals and assists them on a journey toward liberation—as she, herself, attempts to become a free Black woman.