Hello everyone! My name is Vallerie Matos, and I am very excited to be joining the Futures Initiative team as the podcast producer! I am really looking forward to helping broaden our reach and share all that we do at FI.

I am a writer from New York City and an English PhD Candidate at the CUNY Graduate Center with research interests in Sound Studies, Glossolalia, and Afro-diasporic literature and epistemologies. I am also an Adjunct Professor in both the English and Black & Latinx Studies departments at Baruch College. I hold an MA in literature from Hunter College and a BS from New York University. I recently served as Associate Director for Black & Latinx Publics at Baruch and the Mellon Foundation for two years, and prior to CUNY, I was a Program Director for an arts and social justice youth development program for Five years. I am a Literary Fellow with VONA Voices and Lambda Literary, Research Fellow with The Center of the Humanities’ Lost & Found archival initiative, Dissertation Fellow with The Institute for Research on the African Diaspora in the Americas and the Caribbean, and now a Graduate Center Futures Initiative Fellow.

I love all things related to thinking and producing sound, so I am thrilled to play a key role in FI’s new podcast series.