Core Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning in Libraries Interest Group

The AI Literacy Center at Oregon State University is pleased to announce the first event in a winter-term speaker series, hosted and coordinated by Critical AI Literacy Fellow Dr. Anna Guasco, an assistant professor of Marine Studies at OSU. The series is made possible by the OSU Libraries' Gray Family Fund.

     Abre' Conner, Esq. is the Director of the Center for Environmental and Climate Justice and oversees the strategy and collaboration across the NAACP to dismantle environmental racism. She has taught Education Law and was faculty in the Environmental Policy and Management Program at the University of California-Davis.

     A native of Lakeland, FL, Abre' served as the Directing Attorney of Health at the Law Foundation of Silicon Valley where she led the litigation, direct legal services work, and advocacy regarding health equity and the social determinants of health that impact historically excluded communities across the Silicon Valley. Before joining the Law Foundation, Abre' was a staff attorney with the ACLU Foundation of Northern California, where she advocated for the civil rights and liberties of Central Valley and Northern California residents, including an emphasis on issues that impact people of color in rural communities such as environmental justice. As a staff attorney at the Center on Race, Poverty, and the Environment in Delano, CA, Abre' primarily worked with migrant farmworkers and in unincorporated communities. She has worked at numerous civil rights entities including the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, the U.S. Department of Education Office of Civil Rights, and Capitol Hill. She was also an associate in the White House Office of Presidential Personnel in the Obama Administration. Abre' served as the elected Assembly Speaker for the American Bar Association Young Lawyers Division, the chief policy officer for the Division, and was an appointed member of the ABA's Commission on Youth at Risk Advisory Board and Children's Rights Litigation Working Group. Under her leadership, the Division adopted a resolution declaring racism as a public health crisis which is now ABA policy. She currently sits on the ABA's Board of Governors, Earthjustice's Board of Trustees, and was appointed to the EPA's first HBCU-MSI Advisory Council.

     A graduate of American University, Washington College of Law, and the University of Florida, Abre' has been named a top 40 under 40 Nation's Best Advocate by the National Bar Association, top 100 leader by Fresno Black Chamber of Commerce, top 40 On the Rise Attorneys by the American Bar Association Young Lawyers Division, Community Champion by Fresno Building Healthy Communities, 40 under 40 alumni by the University of Florida, 40 under 40 Young, Gifted, and Green recipient, and has been featured in the New York Times' The Daily, Essence, Forbes Magazine, American Bar Association Journal, Zeta Phi Beta Sorority Incorporated's National Magazine, The Archon, and Cosmopolitan Magazine.