JUST PERSPECTIVE - Key Persons
Angelina E. Castagno, Ph.D., is the Executive Director of Just Perspective, LLC, as well a Professor of Educational Leadership and Foundations at Northern Arizona University (NAU). She is the Director of the Institute for Native-serving Educators, where she leads professional development initiatives in Indigenous-serving schools and districts. She is a former Technical Assistance Specialist with the Midwest and Plains Equity Assistance Center, former Director of the Ethnic Studies Program at NAU, and has spent two decades researching and teaching in the areas of diversity and equity across the educational spectrum (early childhood through graduate education). Her expertise lies especially in the areas of race and Whiteness, as well as in American Indian education. She has given keynote presentations, facilitated community dialogues, and presented at various organizations and conferences on issues of diversity and equity. She has also served as lead program evaluator for multiple non-profit educational programs, district efforts, and federally-funded programs in both K12 and higher education settings.
Dr. Castagno has published in highly respected academic journals and regularly presents at national and international conferences. Her books include:
Postsecondary Education for American Indians and Alaska Natives: Higher Education for Nation Building and Self-Determination (co-authored with Brayboy, Fann, and Solyom)
Educated in Whiteness: Good Intentions and Diversity in Schools
The Anthropology of Education Policy: Ethnographic Inquiries into Policy as Sociocultural Process (co-edited with McCarty)
The Price of Nice: How Good Intentions Maintain Educational Inequity.
Since 2009, Dr. Castagno has been teaching graduate-level courses on racism and whiteness in U.S. schools at Northern Arizona University. Her students have been K12 teachers, principals, and district leaders, as well as postsecondary faculty, staff, and administrators. They often convey how unique, refreshing, and useful her teaching approach is for them in their professional spheres. And since 2014, Dr. Castagno has worked with diverse organizations and groups of individuals with the goal of advancing equity within their systems. She has a unique style that is simultaneously empathic and challenging, practical and theoretical.