Join Columbia College Women for Heritage Chats, a space for women to recognize and celebrate the many contributions, cultures, histories and experiences of the Black community. All alumni are invited to participate.

Panelists

• Courtenay Barton CC’05, Director of Grantmaking and Evaluation, Climate Justice Alliance
  
  

• LaToya Tavernier CC’05, Educational Specialist, Massachusetts Department of Elementary and Secondary Education; Podcast Host, “Figure Out Your Life with Toya T”
  
  Moderator
• Claire Gibson CC’06, Attorney, Day Pitney LLP

Courtenay Barton CC’05 is the director of UNITE-EJ, a grantmaking initiative spearheaded by the Climate Justice Alliance. Previously, she served as program director for arts and culture and racial equity initiatives at the Cleveland Foundation, the world’s first community foundation, where she also created the Cleveland Black Futures Fund. Barton has held leadership roles in the Allstate Foundation, the Brooklyn College Foundation and New York City’s public television station, Thirteen/WNET. She earned her bachelor’s in English, creative writing, and African American studies at Columbia and her master’s in public administration from Baruch College. She is working towards a professional doctorate in philanthropic leadership at Indiana University. Barton is a proud board member of National Urban Fellows, a public service career acceleration program for women and people of color.

LaToya Tavernier CC’05 is an educator, sociologist and the host of “Figure Out Your Life with Toya T,” a podcast that tries to find answers to life issues, large and small, from making friends as an adult to dealing with burnout. She has experience teaching sociology and criminology in higher education as well as college and career-readiness at a charter high school in the Boston area. Currently, Tavernier is an educational specialist at the Massachusetts Department of Elementary and Secondary Education, where she provides direct and ongoing support to school districts to assist them in the development, implementation and continual improvement of high-quality systems, structures, and programs for college and career readiness in Massachusetts. She earned her bachelor’s in psychology at Columbia and her Ph.D. in sociology and Africana studies from the CUNY Graduate Center. Tavernier is a proud child of immigrants from the Caribbean island of Dominica and an avid traveler who has visited six of the seven continents.

Claire Gibson CC’06 is an intellectual property attorney at Day Pitney, where she handles domestic and international trademark prosecution, enforcement and licensing as well as all aspects of copyright law. She serves as the chair of the Trademark Committee of the IP Section of the New York State Bar Association and a board member of the National Conference of Women’s Bar Associations. Gibson holds experience from the Office of the General Counsel at JPMorganChase and the legal departments of DreamWorks Classics and NBC Universal. She earned her bachelor’s in political science and sociology at Columbia and her J.D. in intellectual property law from Brooklyn Law School. She mentors young women attorneys and contributes to the Military Spouse Bar. Gibson was born in New York and raised on the island of Barbados.