About Us

Who We Are

Our unique collective began with us collaborating as “differently different” graduate students at The Ohio State University (USA) in 2000. For the last two decades, we have developed a relation-based ethical approach as collaborators, co-conspirators, and close friends. Project Ilumina emerged from our commitment to do equity, diversity, and inclusion differently. Our relation-based ethical approach is organic, client centered, and effective for sustainable change. Both rule breakers and makers, we pursue ways to successfully navigate and reimagine challenges. Plus, we each bring 20+ years of expertise to Project Ilumina, as educators and researchers, authors and editors, activists and administrators, and directors of grant-funded projects.

Our Team

Roland Sintos Coloma

Steph (Daza) Curley

Jeong-eun Rhee

Binaya Subedi

Sharon Subreenduth

Roland Sintos Coloma

I am a mission-driven change agent who works with individuals, organizations, and institutions to fulfill their goals. I am a strategic thinker and collaborator who is comfortable taking risks, working out of the box, and taking paths less traveled. As a queer man of color from an immigrant and working-class family, I foreground difference and intersectionality as key resources and frames for transformative and justice work. Born in the Philippines and raised in California, I have worked and lived in the U.S. Midwest and Toronto, Canada. Currently a professor of education, I was a former high school English teacher, community organizer, and university administrator. History, pop culture, urban vibes, traveling, and eclectic food nourish my mind, soul, and tummy.

Steph (Daza) Curley

I have lived and worked in four countries and four US states. As an adoptee of color with uncertain origins, and a queer woman married to cisgender man, I could never imagine security in any particular difference or place. Tellingly, when my son was younger, he read a book about a homesick boy and asked me, “Can a house be sick?” To him, “homesick” as a concept did not make sense. He had learned “home” as a verb, always in-the-making, not a fixed place. Similarly, I am a systems-thinker. I bring expertise in research, management, editorial, and learning and development within corporate, education, and non-profit/NGO sectors. I support highly active people and teams end-to-end to produce quality content, experiences, and outcomes, against deadlines. As a research methodologist, I leverage quantitative data and qualitative approaches to help design, develop, execute, evaluate, and enable iterative processes for long-term goals. As an EDI&B subject specialist, I bring expertise in policy, practice, and theories of social, tech, and eco-justice. Recognized for “doing difference differently”, I have earned promotions, awards, and funding in every role, including over $800,000 from the National Science Foundation for diversifying STEM education and careers. Broadly, I aim to enable problem solvers for more just and sustainable futures. I research and write about AGI, institutions, and ed and career futures. For joy and peace, I walk Alaska, the family labrador, and practice and teach yoga. An empty nester in summer 2022, I currently live in Manchester, UK, and spend time in Dublin, Ireland, and California and Ohio, USA.

Jeong-eun Rhee

As an interdisciplinary cultural researcher and educator, I am committed to developing transnational, intergenerational, and decolonial feminist knowledge projects. Since my migration from Seoul, Korea in 1992, I have worked in West Virginia, Ohio, Minnesota and New York in the U.S. Through these geo-political and cultural moves, I have opened up myself to possibilities of community building across differences. My expertise includes participatory action research, qualitative research, culturally relevant and sustaining education, and global/international education. I value body-mind/spirit integrated, learner-centered, and community-based healing, knowledge, and approaches.

Binaya Subedi

I am an immigrant. I was born in Kathmandu, Nepal. I travel often to Nepal for research and community work. My current work involves working with Bhutanese-Nepali speaking community and I am involved in language and cultural revitalization projects. I have been studying the growth and changes within an immigrant populated city and how immigrants are redefining notions of community. I am also a youth coach soccer and follow the world of international soccer. I have worked within various universities for more than 15 years. I study and teach courses on race, migration, and critical global consciousness.

Sharon Subreenduth

Growing up in South Africa under apartheid as a student activist and teacher, has guided my approach and practice to social justice and equity, and has ensured that central to my social justice work is to address the de/humanizing aspect of in/equity. Traversing geo-political, ideological, multiple ‘borders’ within and outside of the US, I am centrally concerned with decolonizing research and building diverse communities of practice through critical engaged inquiry that focuses on anti-oppressive schooling, curriculum, pedagogy, and identity that is cognizant of socially responsible research within global-local educational contexts. My strong interdisciplinary grant scholarship, and the relational aspect of my work, focusing on blurring power relations and engaging intersectionality, has produced strong partnerships with international educators, higher education, governmental and community based organizations from over 40 developing and/or post-colonial countries. As a transnational woman of color, my biography intervenes in binary discourse, practices and offers a more nuanced intersectional understanding of equity, diversity and inclusive excellence.

Our Team

Roland Sintos Coloma

Steph (Daza) Curley

I am an adoptee of color and uncertain origins. For me, the self could not be rooted, or fixed, but is always being made in relation with other people and worlds. In this way, binaries and nouns can break down. In fact, my son once had to ask, “what does it mean to be homesick?”, while reading a story about a young person who was. In addition to the US, particularly California, Michigan, Ohio, and Texas, I have lived and worked in Bolivia, Colombia, and the UK. I bring expertise in crisis and change management; locally led culturally responsive processes; and the education sector within and beyond the US. As a curiosity-driven professional, I bring expertise in developing and managing people, projects and programs, broadly aimed at producing future problem solvers for sustainable, small ‘d’, democratic futures. I find joy working directly and collectively with people, teams, organizations, and institutions to develop and operationalize vision, talent, and strategy. As a researcher, editor, and leader with an eclectic background in co-counselling, somatics, and creative arts, I leverage data-driven research, embodied soft skills, and interpersonal intelligence to produce and deliver high quality work against deadlines. Recognized for “doing difference differently”, I am a DEI subject-specialist who has earned nearly $1 million in funding, including over $800,000 from the National Science Foundation for diversifying STEM education and careers. Currently, I am researching and writing about institutions and AI.