Dr. Sumner has been a successful urban and suburban public school teacher and leader for over ten years. While born and raised in urban Boston, she graduated from a suburban school system via the METCO program (Metropolitan Council for Educational Opportunity); the longest running voluntary desegregation program in America.

Dr. Sumner graduated from Spelman College Phi Beta Kappa with departmental honors. As the feature of the documentary film “Far From Home”, and author of the TedTalk "How America's Public Schools Keep Kids in Poverty" she is invited frequently to public speaking and consulting engagements facilitating difficult conversations about race, education, gender and equity. Dr.Sumner is the sole facilitator for the RACE (Race Achievement Culture and Equity) professional development series and has been a mentor in various youth programs throughout the Greater Boston Area. Dr. Sumner’s doctoral research was a Critical Black Feminist Autobiography that examined the lived experiences of a participant in METCO and calls for further work to be done in the socio-emotional, mental and racial identity development of Black individuals matriculating predominantly white institutions.

Going from being one of a few Blacks in her school to learning at a historically Black college to teaching in underserved and predominantly Black and Latino neighborhoods of Boston, Kandice has spent a lifetime traversing the lines of race, class and gender.

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