Service

Dedicated Community Builder

In addition to research and teaching, Cera has a passion for student support and administrative service. For over five years, as a Fellow for Yale’s Office for Graduate Student Development & Diversity, Cera has (among other activities) been engaged in and developed programming for the recruitment and retention of underrepresented graduate students. Separately, they co-led the Yale graduate school’s Peer Orientation Mentor program, ensuring that 33 mentors and approximately 700 incoming graduate students had crucial information about the campus and local community. Cera also served the Yale Prison Education Initiative by building out an associate degree for incarcerated students and by writing an advising proposal that helped secure a $1.5 million grant to support the degree. These experiences have provided Cera with the administrative savvy needed to support students outside of the classroom through careful program design.

Beyond the university, Cera facilitates community conversations about U.S. Black art, African American history, Black queer feminism(s), power, privilege, and liberation. They have facilitated such dialogues for the Black Infinity Collective, the Long Wharf Theatre, and the California Conference for Equality and Justice.