Keynote Speakers

We are excited to welcome our keynote speakers: Adeola Oni-Orisan, MD PhD, Joelle Abi-Rached, MD MSc PhD, and the Formerly Incarcerated People’s Performance Project. More information on their talks and other speakers will come in our program.

Adeola Oni-Orisan, MD PhD

Adeola Oni-Orisan, MD, PhD, is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Family and Community Medicine at UC Davis. Jointly trained as a family physician and medical anthropologist, her research also engages critical race theory, Black feminist studies, and science and technology studies to examine how ideas about Blackness, gender, religion, and reproductive health are reinforced, deployed and resisted in struggles for health and well-being. Clinically, she provides comprehensive primary, prenatal, and obstetric care, with a focus on marginalized populations. Dr. Oni-Orisan earned her PhD in Medical Anthropology from the joint program at UC San Francisco and UC Berkeley and her MD from Harvard Medical School. She is co-director of the Center for Health Action and Social Medicine at UC Davis, and also co-director of The Collaboratory for Black Feminist Health and Healing. 

Formerly Incarcerated People’s Performance Project

Tony Cyprien is a founding member of FIPPP, the Formerly Incarcerated People’s Performing Project (FIPPP).  Tony has performed in three FIPPP festivals, FIPPP’s Solo Sunday Salons, and in 2025 featured his own full-length show Jackie in a FIPPP Solo Showcase. In January 2026, at the celebratory finale of FIPPP’s Company-in-Residence status with the Berkeley Repertory Theater, Tony was the closer on Berkeley Rep’s famous Roda Stage. Tony was born and raised in Watts, South Central Los Angeles, by his mother and grandmother, with the neighborhood gang members also playing a big role. He matriculated through the Los Angeles County juvenile halls and county camps, into the California Youth Authority, and ultimately state prison. He was incarcerated from 13 years old to 43, except for a total of 11 months of freedom as a teenager. He was released 15 years ago in 2011 after spending 26 years and eight days incarcerated -- and lives to tell about it.

Mark McGoldrick has been a Co-Director of the Formerly Incarcerated People’s Performance Project (FIPPP.org) since 2021. That same year, Mark retired as an attorney for the Alameda County Office of the Public Defender, after serving for 27 years. As a public defender, he was stationed at times in every court in the county, juvenile and adult, representing people charged with misdemeanors and felonies, everything from driving without a license to capital murder. At the time of his retirement, he was the Supervising Attorney for the Homicide Unit. At FIPPP, his work combines two of his passions: criminal justice advocacy and solo performance. At FIPPP, he gets to help formerly-incarcerated people bring stories from their lives to the stage. These often include traumatic events in childhood that led toward initial incarceration, the realities of living within modern American prisons, and the challenges of reintegrating into society post release. One thing he loves about FIPPP, it’s like hanging out with his old public defender clients — but to make art, not triage punishment.

Joelle Abi-Rached, MD Msc PhD

Joelle M. Abi-Rached, MD, MSc, PhD, is Associate Professor of Medicine at the Faculty of Medicine at the American University of Beirut, with a secondary appointment in the Department of History and Archaeology. She is the Founding Director of the Program on Medical History, Ethics & Politics at AUB’s Faculty of Medicine and an Associate in theDepartment of the History of Science at Harvard University. Abi-Rached’s training spans medicine, philosophy, public policy, and the history of science. An award-winning educator, she has taught at Harvard and Columbia University and now teaches at AUB. She is the author of ʿAṣfūriyyeh: A History of Madness, Modernity, and War in the Middle East (MIT Press, 2020) and, with Nikolas Rose, Neuro: The New Brain Sciences and the Management of the Mind (Princeton University Press, 2013). She is also co-editor of the forthcoming Lebanon: Anatomy of a Collapse (under contract with Hurst Publishers). She earned her MD from the American University of Beirut, an MSc in Philosophy and Public Policy from the London School of Economics, and a PhD in the History of Science from Harvard University.