The African American Female Professor Award Association (AAFPAA) has honored Forest Park educator Dr. Sonji Johnson-Anderson with the 2026 Inspiration Award. The award letter from founder and chairperson Traci Talbert states:
It is my honor to inform you that you have been selected as a 2026 Inspiration Award recipient. This recognition reflects your extraordinary leadership, scholarship, and unwavering commitment to advancing equity, belonging, and student success in higher education.
Your work reaches far beyond any single title, embodying the power of scholarship, advocacy, and healing in service to the students and communities you serve. You earned your Ph.D. in Teacher Education and School Improvement from the University of Massachusetts Amherst in 2018, following your Ed.S. in 2016, and went on to complete postdoctoral work at UMass Amherst. As Director of the STEM AP Ambassadors Program from 2017 to 2021, you led a team whose work resulted in the first edition of “Empowering Underrepresented Students in Science: STEM Students Speak.” Your research — sitting at the intersection of Black Feminist Epistemology, Critical Race Theory, and Performance Ethnography — centers the experiences of students and families marginalized within public and educational institutions.
You carry that same commitment across classrooms and continents, having taught in K-12 and higher education settings in Western Massachusetts, New York City, and Jamaica, and currently lecturing in world literature at Westfield State University. As Co-Executive Director and Director of Educational Initiatives for the Crossing the Waters Institute, you lead the development of educational programming in the United States and South Africa focused on healing the wounds of slavery and fostering intercultural understanding, including organizing international conferences and webinars. Your recent months in South Africa, and your preparation for an upcoming trip to Benin, extend that work into a truly global practice of education and healing.
This is the very spirit of the Inspiration Award: leadership that transforms access into opportunity, and advocacy into lasting institutional change.
Dr. Johnson will be honored at the following event:
10th Annual AAFPAA Crown & Gown Gala
Crowned in Courage: Black Women Leading Change with Power and Purpose
Saturday, November 7, 2026 | Doors 5:00 PM • Program 6:00 PM • Dinner & Dancing 7:15 PM
Sheraton Hotel | One Monarch Place, Springfield, MA 01144
This year’s celebration marks a decade of honoring African American women in the professoriate, and we are especially proud that the evening will feature a very special guest: award-winning journalist Nikole Hannah-Jones, Pulitzer Prize-winning creator of The 1619 Project and Knight Chair in Race and Journalism at Howard University. Rather than a traditional keynote, Nikole will join us for a moderated, interview-style conversation — a centerpiece of this year’s program and a fitting complement to the courage we are gathering to honor in you and our other distinguished honorees and scholarship recipients.
As we celebrate this milestone year, tickets for the evening are $75.00 per person, including any guests you’d like to bring. This year, we’re asking all attendees to purchase tickets so that as much of the evening’s proceeds as possible can go directly toward our scholarship fund and programming. We’re grateful for your understanding, and we would love to have you surrounded by the people who matter most to you as we celebrate your achievement.
You can read more about the event here.
