Highlander Announces New Staff!

Highlander is excited to introduce our new Development & Communications Team. Please join us in welcoming Jardana Peacock and Marquez Rhyne by making a tax-deductible contribution to Highlander today, knowing that your generosity helps sustain Highlander’s critical efforts to continuing supporting grassroots people and communities working for change in the South and Appalachia.

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Jardana Peacock incorporates a social justice analysis and grassroots and cultural organizing philosophies into her development work with community groups. Most recently Peacock served as the Community Education Coordinator for the Anne Braden Institute for Social Justice Research at the University of Louisville. She has a M.A. in Pan African Studies from the University of Louisville (2008). Her thesis is titled, “Geographies of Mentorship: Black Women and the Civil Rights Movement, a case study of Ella Baker and Septima Clark,” and focused on the mentoring philosophies and participatory leadership styles of Black women in the Civil Rights Movement. Peacock organizes around issues of economic human rights, art and social change, anti-racism, intergenerational movement building, youth leadership, queer rights and spirituality/health. She is a founding creator, performer and director of S.H.E.! a feminist choreo-poetry group and led a project for the Kentucky Foundation for Women facilitating art making with families of the incarcerated.

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Marquez Rhyne has worked as a nonprofit administrator serving as the Managing Director of Jump-Start Performance Co. (San Antonio, TX), The Carpetbag Theatre (Knoxville, TN), and Operations/Education Director for the Bijou Theatre (Knoxville, TN.)  In these roles, Rhyne held responsibility for grant writing, cultivation of individual donors, and oversight of resource development including planning, acquisition, evaluation, financial tracking and reporting. He served in multiple capacities including Board Chair for the Executive Committee of Alternate ROOTS, a regional organization of cultural workers in the U.S. South committed in social and economic justice and protection of the natural environment.  Rhyne has served as an independent consultant for diversity training, workforce development, and cultural facilitation for such organizations as Seton Homes and St. PJ’s Children’s Homes in San Antonio, TX; Brushy Fork Institute in Berea, KY; Tennessee Department of Transportation; Leadership Knoxville; and the Highlander Center prior to joining the staff.

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