Atlantic Black Box Program & Development Associate & WHERE Advisory Council Member & Logistics Coordinator

Erika most recently worked at the Catherine Cutler Institute at the University of Southern Maine in the Justice Policy and Child Welfare program areas after spending the years before that as a cook, a bookseller, and a farmworker. She holds an MA in U.S. History and a Graduate Certificate in Advanced Feminist Studies from the University of Massachusetts-Amherst. Her graduate research was located at the intersection of race, gender, rural political economy, and mass incarceration. For more than two decades, Erika has engaged in community organizing and education on social and racial justice issues. Her current focus is embodied practice as a capacity-building tool for anti-racism, decolonization, and collective healing. She is pursuing a Master of Divinity degree with a focus on chaplaincy in the Buddhism & Interreligious Engagement Program at Union Theological Seminary in the city of New York.

WHERE Evaluation Coordinator

Bio coming soon.

WHERE Communication Coordinator

Michele Christle is a writer whose work focuses on culture, ecology, and place. After serving in the Peace Corps in Cameroon, Michele earned an MFA in Creative Writing from UMass Amherst. Her writing has appeared in The Kenyon Review, Eater, Insider, Down East, and Cultural Survival Quarterly. Michele has 20 years’ experience working in communications, oral history, teaching, and journalism. In recent years, she’s worked with Maine Audubon, Out in the Open, and as a producer/facilitator for StoryCorps’ One Small Step program through WERU Community Radio. Currently, Michele works with Torchlight Media and Atlantic Black Box’s Walk for Historical and Ecological Recovery and serves on the Maine Community Foundation’s Waldo County Committee. The recipient of a Bodwell Fellowship and residencies at Hewnoaks and Shannaghe, Michele is developing a documentary (with filmmaker Eli Kao) and a book about eels.

WHERE Volunteer Coordinator

Erin works as a personal and professional coach, a dance teacher, and a playback improviser. After earning her Ph.D. in 2005 and teaching French for many years in colleges around the state of Maine, Erin realized that she was pursuing someone else’s dream job. Since 2021 Erin has found gratification working as an ontological coach, partnering with clients to connect with their purpose and improve their life satisfaction. Erin has also performed and conducted playback theatre with an ensemble on a monthly basis since 2008. Playback is a type of improvisation that aims to honor audience members’ spontaneously shared true stories using a full array of artistic embodied expression, including movement, narrative, and song. Two years ago, she also began performing solo playback in person and online every month. Erin is committed to doing better as a human through active anti-racist work and is honored to be serving as Volunteer Coordinator this year for WHERE.

Atlantic Black Box Founding Executive Director, WHERE Project Lead

Meadow Dibble, Ph.D. is a writer, organizer, and public memory advocate who has been facilitating complex, searching conversations about modes of historical recovery while developing sustained local engagement processes aimed at surfacing truth, fostering healing, and achieving justice. Originally from Cape Cod, Meadow lived for six years on Senegal’s Cape Verde peninsula, where she published a cultural magazine from 1996–2000 and coordinated foreign study programs. She received her Ph.D. from Brown University’s Department of French Studies and taught at Colby College from 2005–08. From 2019–2023, Meadow served as Visiting Scholar at Brown University’s Simmons Center for the Study of Slavery and Justice. In 2022-2023, she served as Co-Lead on the Place Justice initiative, carried out in partnership with the Permanent Commission on the Status of Racial, Indigenous, and Tribal Populations.

WHERE Advisory Council Member

James Eric Francis, Sr. is Penobscot Nation’s Director of Cultural and Historic Preservation, Tribal Historian, and Chair of Penobscot Tribal Rights and Resource Protection Board. As a historian, James studies the relationship between Maine Native Americans and the landscape. Prior to working at the Penobscot Nation, James worked for the Wabanaki Studies Commission, helping implement the new Maine Native American Studies Law into Maine schools. James co-produced a film, Invisible, which examines racism experienced by Native Americans in Maine and the Canadian Maritimes. James is on the Co-Chair of the Abbe Museum’s Board of Trustees, and Co-Director of Local Contexts, an initiative to support Native, First Nations, Aboriginal, and Indigenous communities in the management of their intellectual property and cultural heritage. James also serves on the UMaine’s Hudson Museum Advisory Board. James is a historical researcher, photographer, filmmaker, painter, and graphic artist.

WHERE Documentation Coordinator

Eli is a filmmaker and media educator based in midcoast Maine, where he grew up. Eli has worked mentoring citizen media-makers in the Boston area, and produced TV shows for viewers across the Asia-Pacific region. While living in Taiwan, he worked for one of Asia’s largest factual TV production companies, where he directed award-winning programs for Discovery Networks and the National Geographic Channel. More recently, he worked as a producer for Camden-based Compass Light Productions. He currently works independently and with community media center Torchlight Media. Eli attended UnionDocs' 2024 Summer Documentary Lab, and has received grants, including a 2023 National Endowment for the Arts grant through SPACE Gallery and a 2022 LEF Foundation Moving Image Fund early development grant for an ongoing project related to eugenics, nostalgia, and archives. Eli is developing a documentary on the multiplicity of relations surrounding the freshwater eel, along with writer Michele Christle. He serves on the board of Waterfall Arts and as co-chair of the Stories for Change working group of the Nature Based Education Consortium.

WHERE Lead & Creative Coordinator

Devon Kelley-Yurdin (they/them) serves as Lead & Creative Coordinator on ABB’s Walk for Historical and Ecological Recovery (WHERE) initiative. They are an an interdisciplinary artist, friend, and instigator of collective experiences living rurally in what is colonially known as Midcoast Maine. Devon’s introduction to ABB/WHERE was through their work with the In Kinship Collective, who was invited to co-produce a walk as part of the inaugural season in 2024. There was enough energy and alignment in the project and its unfolding that Devon also joined the WHERE team as a coordinator for the series. Their creative practice is devoted to expanding interpersonal and collective creative capacity, which is necessary for liberatory world-building. This devotion is expressed through traditional media such as printmaking, cut-paper, installation; design, illustration, and art direction; event production and facilitation; performance; education; and cultural organizing. They orient towards collaboration and interdependence, curiosity, deep care, queerness in all its forms, Jewish time, casual mysticism, connection to more-than-human neighbors, and beauty as a tool for accessibility.

WHERE Public History Coordinator + Atlantic Black Box Administrator

Lisa Simpson Lutts is Administrator at Atlantic Black Box. She recently retired from a 40-year career leading history museums in the Northeast, most recently the Castine Historical Society in Castine, ME. In 2020, Lisa became involved with ABB as a citizen historian researching, writing, and speaking about Castine’s hidden African American history and complicity with slavery through the maritime cotton and cod trades that brought great wealth to the town. Through her leadership at the Castine Historical Society, she brought this history to the public through a year-long lecture series, historic walking tours, and the creation of a five-week learning unit on Castine’s African American history for the local school. Lisa received her undergraduate degree in Art History from the University of Tennessee and a masters degree in Art History and Museum Studies from George Washington University.

WHERE Education Coordinator

Savannah Mirisola-Sullivan is an artist, community member, and educator in Portland with nearly two decades of public school teaching experience. Earning her MEd from the University of Illinois Chicago and working in Chicago Public Schools, she deepened her belief in the capacity of neighborhood public schools and organized against encroaching privatization policies, including voucher programs and school closures. Since returning home to what is now called Maine, she has been teaching in Portland Public Schools (PPS) at the upper-elementary level for the past eight years. During her time in PPS, she collaborated to develop place and project-based units centered around student agency, empowerment, and social justice. As her schools’ equity leader, she led staff-wide training around creating inclusive classrooms for LGBTQIA+ youth, engaging in difficult conversations, and interrupting bias. She had the enormous privilege to work with folks across Maine in the creation of the state’s first K-12 Wabanaki Studies curriculum, thanks to Fiona Hopper. Her proudest work has been in creating joyful classroom communities that give young people the safety to be their truest selves.

ABB Board Member & WHERE Advisory Council Member

Adilah Muhammad is the Founder and Executive Director of The Third Place—a cross-sector network that connects Black professionals, students, and entrepreneurs to social, career, and economic opportunities. Prior to founding The Third Place, Muhammad worked as an independent strategic planning and research consultant for over fifteen years.  In this capacity, she specialized in organizational development for ethnic and community-based organizations, municipalities, and network-driven nonprofits. Adilah currently serves as board chairperson for the Maine Community Foundation, board director for the Portland Regional Chamber of Commerce, member of the Lewiston Economic Development Council, Good Shepherd Food Equity Collaborative, and as a Corporator of Androscoggin Bank. She was selected as a 2021 Mainebiz Woman to Watch and chosen as a 2022 Mainer of the Year by Maine Magazine. She received her B.A. from DePauw University and M.A. from the USM -Muskie School of Public Service.

WHERE Advisory Council Member

Mihku Paul is a Wolastoqey elder with a background in Human Development and Communication. A writer and visual artist, Mihku has spent decades presenting curriculum enrichment to Portland Public School students and engaging in activism related to the waters and natural ecologies. Her poetry has been published internationally and translated to French and Spanish. She lives and works in Portland.