Assistant Director of Public History and Programming
Will manages the HBCU Radio Preservation Project’s oral history program and helps lead its site visit strategy in coordination with community partners. He greatly values the opportunity to mentor and train early career professionals in the hands-on work of doing public history, as well as organizing conference presentations and workshops.
In addition to serving on the HBCU RPP, Will is completing a digital project for the Smithsonian Institution’s Anacostia Community Museum that maps neighborhood voices recorded as oral histories for three exhibitions developed in the 1970s. He recently co-curated ACM’s Washington, D.C. Women Speak project, which highlights archived stories of local women who lived and worked in the D.C. metro area from the 1960s to 2000s.
As a public historian, Will adheres to an ethic of shared authority that challenges audiences to consider how race, memory, and power mutually shape our world. He earned his Ph.D. in History from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee in 2020 and M.A. in Public History from American University in 2011.