Geert Dhondt
Geert Dhondt's teaching and research focuses on the economics of crime and justice. He is particularly interested in the relationship between race in the post-segregation era, the logic of neoliberal capitalism, and the criminal justice system. The National Institute of Justice awarded Geert a grant to study the empirical relationship between prison cycling and crime rates. Geert received a distinguished service award in 2012 and a distinguished teaching award in 2015 at John Jay College, City University of New York where he is an Assistant Professor in the Economics Department. He lives in Brooklyn with his wife and three children. In his free time he is a PTA Treasurer.
Crystal Endsley
Crystal Leigh Endsley, Ph D. is Assistant Professor of Africana Studies at John Jay College of Criminal Justice, City University of New York. where she was honored with the 2016 Distinguished Teaching Award. Crystal Leigh is an internationally renowned spoken word artist. Recognized by Cosmopolitan Magazine as a “Fun, Fearless Female,” and honored by George Mason University with the 2015 Sojourner Truth Award for her social justice work, Crystal Leigh is a poet and performer and professor, and works to serve her community as an artist, activist, and academic.
Two-time co-host of the Zanzibar International Film Festival Music and Performing Arts stage, Crystal Leigh has collaborated with communities in Tanzania since 2006. Her most recent scholarship-activism focuses on how spoken word poetry and performance can connect girls to each other globally, impact their communities, and inform government policy. Since 2015 Crystal Leigh has directed the creative performance of spoken word at the United Nations for International Day of the Girl program hosted at the UN Headquarters each year in the month of October. She is the co-chair of the Working Group on Girls, Girls Participation committee, where she trains high school girls for advocacy at the UN. She was a featured performer for the closing of the 61st United Nations Commission on the Status of Women – Youth Forum in March 2017.
Crystal Leigh’s first book, The Fifth Element: Social Justice Pedagogy Through Spoken Word Poetry was released in March 2016 by SUNY Press and explores spoken word poetry as a tool for social justice, critical feminist pedagogy, and new ways of teaching and learning. Her second co-authored book entitled Open Mic Night: College Programming that Champions Student Voice was published September 2017 and was awarded a 2018 Outstanding Book Award by Division B from the American Educational Research Association. Crystal Leigh’s scholarship has been published in Feminist Formations, Transformations, Journal of Black Masculinities, and Words, Beats, Life among others.
Shweta Jain
Shweta Jain is an Associate Professor in the Department of Mathematics and Computer Science at John Jay College of Criminal Justice, Graduate Faculty in the Digital Forensics and Cyber Security program and Doctoral faculty of Computer Science at the Graduate Center of CUNY. She is a senior member of IEEE and recipient of the 2014 IEEE Region1 award for Outstanding teaching. She was previously Assistant Professor at York College of CUNY from 2010 to 2016, Research Associate at WINLAB, Rutgers University from 2008 to 2010 and Senior Engineer at Staccato Communications from 2007-2008. Her research interests span various aspects of networks, including wireless, social, vehicular and future Internet. Her PH.D is from Stony Brook University, 2007.
Samantha Majic
Samantha Majic received her PhD in Government from Cornell University and is an associate professor of political science at John Jay College-CUNY. Her research lies in gender and American politics, with specific interests in sex work, civic engagement, and celebrities and politics. She is the author of Sex Work Politics: From Protest to Service Provision (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2014), co-editor (with Carisa Showden) of Negotiating Sex Work: Unintended Consequences of Policy and Activism (University of Minnesota Press, 2014), and co-author (with Carisa Showden) of Youth Who Trade Sex in the US: Agency, Intersectionality, and Vulnerability (Temple University Press, 2018). Her research has also appeared in numerous political science and gender studies journals. A Fellow of the American Association of University Women, Dr. Majic is also a member of the editorial boards for Perspectives on Politics, PS: Political Science and Politics, and Critical Policy Studies.
Emily McDonald
Emily Anne McDonald is a cultural anthropologist interested in embodiment, the politics of health and everyday experiences of risk. She finished her PhD at Rutgers University in 2011, her thesis addressing the emerging market in medical tourism/travel in Buenos Aires, Argentina. Her work was based on fifteen months of Fulbright and National Science Foundation-funded ethnographic research with patients, doctors, nurses, hospital administrators and government officials. After a year spent as a Postdoctoral Lecturer at the Princeton University Writing Program, she moved west to the Center for Tobacco Control Research and Education of the University of California, San Francisco where she spent two years as a postdoctoral fellow conducting ethnographic and qualitative research on electronic cigarettes and young adult smoking in New York City. Emily arrives at John Jay with a prestigious National Cancer Institute/NIH young investigator pilot grant to study marijuana and electronic cigarettes in the newly legalized context of Colorado.
Vijay Sampath
Dr. Vijay Sampath is Assistant Professor in the Department of Public Administration; he serves or has served as adjunct faculty at the Harvard Extension School, Pace University, and Rutgers University. Dr. Sampath received his Doctor of Professional Studies in Business with concentrations in Management and International Business from the Lubin School of Business, Pace University. In addition, Dr. Sampath received his MBA from Rutgers University and a bachelor’s degree in commerce from Sri Sathya Sai University, India. He is a CPA (Certified Public Accountant) and CFE (Certified Fraud Examiner).
Dr. Sampath’s current research focuses on organizational misconduct, corporate corruption, corporate social responsibility, corporate reputation and organizational stigma. He has presented papers in academic conferences on numerous occasions. Recently, one of his co-authored papers won best paper at the 2012 Academy of Management conference.
Dr. Sampath has extensive experience providing forensic accounting, litigation consulting, financial statement auditing and business consulting services. He has held senior executive positions in industry and public accounting firms including FTI Consulting, Deloitte, and PricewaterhouseCoopers. During his career, Dr. Sampath has led numerous complex financial investigations involving Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA) investigations, post-closing purchase price disputes, and other litigation matters involving white collar crime and bankruptcy proceedings.