Skylar Jeffries graduated from New York University with a B.A. in Linguistics and Italian and an M.A. in Multilingual Multicultural Studies with dual certification in TESOL and Teaching Italian. During her graduate studies, she pursued international coursework and research in the Dominican Republic, Hong Kong, and mainland China, focusing on intercultural perspectives in teaching and learning.
She is currently Regional Director of Northeast School Partnerships for the High School Global Navigator Programs at CIEE (Council on International Educational Exchange), an international exchange nonprofit, where she builds collaborations with schools, districts, and educators to expand access to academically aligned study abroad programming for high school students. In this role, she works with schools from New Jersey to Maine to share programs for students and professional development opportunities for educators. She oversees more than $9M annually in scholarship funds stewarded by CIEE which make study abroad opportunities accessible to thousands of high school students.
Skylar served on the board of the New York City and Westchester chapter of the American Association of Teachers of Italian (AATI) from 2018-2025 and was Interim President from 2023-2025. Within the association, she organizes professional development, community engagement, and institutional collaborations for its members.
Previously, Skylar was an Italian and English teacher in the NYC Department of Education, where she also served as a teacher mentor and department lead, securing significant funding to support AP Italian at High School for Environmental Studies in Manhattan. Her earlier professional experience includes career advising at New York University’s Wasserman Center for Career Development, where she supported students in developing skills to enter into and succeed in global, multicultural professional environments.
Work for CID:
Skylar Jeffries was recently interviewed by Casey Man Kong Lum, Associate Director of the Center; the result will be published shortly.
Yizhe’s research interests include bilingual and multilingual language education, varieties of Chinese as heritage languages, translanguaging pedagogies, teaching Chinese as a foreign language, and technology-enhanced language education. More information can be found on her 
Gittins is a practitioner-scholar with over 20 years of leadership, programming, and analysis experience in the areas of peace, education, psychology, youth, and community development. He has lived, worked, and travelled in over 60 countries across 6 continents; taught in schools, colleges, and universities around the world; and trained thousands individuals and organisations on peace and social change-related issues. Other experience includes working in youth offending prisons; developing, launching, and overseeing a wide range of programmes and projects; and consultancy assignments for public, private, and non-profit organizations. He has received multiple awards for his work, including a Rotary Peace Fellowship, KAICIID Fellowship, and Kathryn Davis Fellowship for Peace. He is also a Positive Peace Activator and Global Peace Index Ambassador for the Institute for Economics and Peace.
She began her career as an English as a second/foreign language teacher. Besides teaching refugees, immigrants, and international students in Minnesota, she also taught conversational English classes in both China and South Korea for seven years. Her experience working with international students prompted her to return to graduate school to study intercultural communication. Research during her PhD program took her back to South Korea to collect narrative data exploring the intercultural relationships between native-English-speaking teachers and Korean students in a classroom setting. This branch of her research explores how the hegemony of English has impacted foreign language classrooms. Ideological beliefs attached to English influence how cross-cultural adaptation occurs in complex and uneven ways. She has also examined perceptions of agency of English speakers within the context of English hegemony. Another branch of Elizabeth’s research is focused on intercultural communication pedagogy. She employs qualitative research to study teacher identity and students’ descriptions of intercultural learning. Deeper intercultural learning occurs through acknowledgement of dialectical tensions as students navigate cultural differences and similarities.
Su-Ann holds a PhD in Intercultural Communication and Cross-cultural Psychology, as well as an Honours degree in Intercultural Communication, and Bachelor’s Degree in Organisational Communication from The University of Queensland, Australia.
He gained seven years of practical experience in Berlin (Germany) managing the – at that time – second largest project for integration assistants (Integrationslotsen) in Germany. With this practical backing, he commenced an academic career in teaching and research. He was a researcher at various universities (the Karlshochschule of Applied Sciences, the Hochschule Karlsruhe of Applied Sciences, the University of Landau, and the Johannes-Gutenberg University of Mainz/Germersheim) carrying out several applied research projects concerning questions of integration, participation and intercultural communication. The latest project is the 
He also completed the German Habilitation – the formal, second PhD which allows you to officially become a Professor – at the Friedrich-Schiller-University of Jena. He is also journalistically active and has written for the 
With an award-winning interdisciplinary background, Tomide examines globalization, cultural politics of taste, platformization, and political economy in postcolonial Nigerian visual cultures. His interdisciplinary works are widely published on topics such as identity, cross-cultural adaptation, embodiment, mis- and disinformation, intergroup communication, and global Black group vitality. His current research focuses on the narrative and perceptual shifts informed by the mainstreaming of African media products, specifically Afrobeats, and their implications for global Black relationalities.
Dr. Tosin Adebayo earned her Ph.D. in Communication from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee in 2020, where her doctoral dissertation on maternal mortality among Black women won the National Communication Association Gerald Miller Dissertation Award. She also received her M.A. in Communication from Western Illinois University and a B.A. in English from the University of Ibadan, Nigeria.
Center for Intercultural Dialogue 