× Laurel C. Sneed
Executive Director

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Laurel Crone Sneed is Co-Founder/Executive Director of the Crafting Freedom Institute. She has directed 20 offerings of the Crafting Freedom Workshops. Sneed received a Masters in Educational Media and Instructional Design from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and has worked as an educational media producer and instructional designer in education as well as business/ industry since 1975. For the past twenty years her work has been in the field of African American history education with a special focus on educational media, materials, and teacher professional development. In 2003 she created an interactive application entitled: "Exploring the World of Thomas Day" that teaches youth how to do historical research. It was the first "smart game" funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH). It received an Award of Excellence from Technology and Learning magazine as well as other national and international awards. Sneed is also an independent scholar whose 1995 research under the direction of historian, John Hope Franklin (1918-2009), discovered the origins of free black furniture maker Thomas Day (1801–ca. 1861.) She has lectured about and published scholarly articles on Day including most recently an article for American Furniture journal entitled "The Missing Chapter in the History of Thomas Day" co-written with Patricia Dane Rogers, former Washington Post writer and independent Thomas Day scholar.

× Charles D. Sneed
Assistant Director

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Charles D. Sneed is the co-founder of the Crafting Freedom Institute and assistant director. He has been a classroom teacher at the elementary and secondary levels and holds a B.A. in Economics from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and a Master's Degree in Family and Consumer Science from North Carolina Central University. Prior to working with the Crafting Freedom Institute, he worked in sales and marketing and was also an award-winning journalist for the Carolina Financial Times and the Wilmington Star News. He is currently interim Treasurer and in this capacity is responsible for all internal accounting. He works closely with the organization's Certified Public Accountant on financial matters pertaining to grants and operations.

× Elsabet Fisseha
Administrator & Workshop Assistant Director

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Elsabet Fisseha began working with the Thomas Day Education Project/Apprend Foundation, the precursor of the Crafting Freedom Institute when she was still a college student at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in the 1990s. Over the years she has taken on more and more responsibilities including becoming part-time office administrator and Assistant Director of the Crafting Freedom Workshops. In this capacity she oversees workshops recruitment, registration, participant accommodations, meals, and participant/sub-contractor payroll. She also works very closely with Laurel and Charles Sneed and the board of directors on the management of all aspects of the workshops and on the administration of all grants received.

× Elsabet Fisseha
Board of Directors

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Elsabet Fisseha began working with the Thomas Day Education Project/Apprend Foundation, the precursor of the Crafting Freedom Institute when she was still a college student at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in the 1990s. Over the years she has taken on more and more responsibilities including becoming part-time office administrator and Assistant Director of the Crafting Freedom Workshops. In this capacity she oversees workshops recruitment, registration, participant accommodations, meals, and participant/sub-contractor payroll. She also works very closely with Laurel and Charles Sneed and the board of directors on the management of all aspects of the workshops and on the administration of all grants received.

× Beverly J. McNeill
Board of Directors, Chair

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Beverly J. McNeill is a veteran K-12 teacher with 30+ years of experience. She received her B.A. from Duke University and her Masters in Education from Syracuse University. She became involved with the organization twenty years ago as a "Thomas Day fellow" in the first series of teacher workshops offered. She has been a teacher mentor during the teacher workshops ever since. McNeill also developed lesson plans for the Crafting Freedom Materials Project and has been a presenter at numerous workshops. She also served as chair of the board of directors from 2006-2017.

× Patricia Dane Rogers
Board of Directors

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Patricia Rogers is a former Washington Post reporter and columnist with a focus on design, architecture and the decorative arts. Now an independent writer, she published the first national newspaper article about Thomas Day in The Post in 1997, "Carved in History, Thomas Day: A Success in an Unlikely Time and Place." The story's lead was her discovery and identification of Thomas Day's Bible. She has been researching Day ever since. Rogers co-authored the publication, "The Hidden History of Thomas Day" sponsored by the North Carolina Humanities Council in Yanceyville, North Carolina in the summer of 2009.

× Michele Ware
Board of Directors (Secretary)

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Michele Ware is Associate Professor in the Department of Language and Literature at North Carolina Central University (NCCU) where she has served as department chair. She received her doctorate from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in English literature. She has been a scholar presenter at the national Crafting Freedom Workshops for over a decade and created instructional material for the Crafting Freedom Materials project. In 2007-2008 she served as assistant director of the Crafting Freedom workshops. She also serves as Secretary for the Board of Directors.

× William Andrews
Scholar Advisor

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William L. Andrews is the E. Maynard Adams Professor of English and Comparative Literature and Senior Associate Dean, College of Arts and Sciences at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He is series editor of North American Slave Narratives, Beginnings to 1920 a complete digitized library of autobiographies and biographies of North American slaves and ex-slaves, funded by the NEH. He served as a scholar advisor to the Crafting Freedom Materials Project. He is a frequent presenter at Crafting Freedom Workshops.

× Jerome Bias
Artisan Advisor

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Jerome Bias is a traditional furniture maker following in the footsteps of NC furniture maker Thomas Day (1801-ca1860). Bias gives presentations and demonstrations about traditional cabinetmaking at schools, museums and other locations and is a frequent presenter at the Crafting Freedom Workshops.

× Vanessa Richmond Graves
Educator Advisor

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Vanessa Richmond Graves is a retired K-12 teacher with 30+ years of experience in the classroom. She currently serves as chairperson of the board of directors of the Thomas Day House/Union Tavern, Inc., the organization that restored the Union Tavern which Thomas Day acquired in 1848 and converted into his shop and home. In 1998 she participated in the first series of teacher workshops offered in three North Carolina counties by the Thomas Day Education Project, the predecessor of the Apprend Foundation and Crafting Freedom Institute. She has been a valued teacher mentor and presenter for the Crafting Freedom Workshops since 2003 and also served on the board of directors.

× Reginald F. Hildebrand
Scholar Advisor

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REGINALD F. HILDEBRAND served as Professor of African American Studies and History at Williams College in Williamstown, Massachusetts and at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He is author of The Times were Strange and Stirring: Methodist Preachers and the Crisis of Emancipation (Duke University Press, 1995), and is currently working on a book with the working title, "'The Cleverest Document Issued This Century': Abraham Lincoln, the Emancipation Proclamations, and the Meanings of Freedom." In 2012, he was chosen to receive the Tanner Faculty Award for Excellence in Undergraduate Teaching at UNC - Chapel Hill. He is a former co-chair of the North Carolina Freedom Monument Project and a former trustee of the North Carolina Humanities Council. Hildebrand received his BA and MA from Howard University and his PhD from Princeton University. He is a long-time presenter at the Crafting Freedom workshops.

× Nellie Chubbs Miles
Artisan Advisor

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Nellie "Chubbs" Miles, is a traditional seamstress and dress designer. She grew up in the 1940s and 50s on several tobacco farms in rural Person County, NC. She learned to sew from her mother and grand–mother and became an accomplished seamstress. For many years she owned a dress-making and alterations shop in Yanceyville, NC. At the Crafting Freedom workshops she demonstrates traditional sewing techniques and makes a presentation about her life as a tobacco sharecropper's daughter during the Jim Crow era.

× Patricia Dane Rogers
Scholar Advisor

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Patricia Rogers is a former Washington Post reporter and columnist with a focus on design, architecture and the decorative arts. Now an independent writer, she published the first national newspaper article about Thomas Day in The Post in 1997, "Carved in History, Thomas Day: A Success in an Unlikely Time and Place." The story's lead was her discovery and identification of Thomas Day's Bible. She has been researching Day ever since. Rogers co-authored the publication, "The Hidden History of Thomas Day" sponsored by the North Carolina Humanities Council in Yanceyville, North Carolina in the summer of 2009.

× Peter Wood
Scholar Advisor

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Peter H. Wood is professor emeritus at Duke University where he taught American history for over 30 years. Wood graduated from Harvard College in 1964 and spent two years at Oxford University on a Rhodes scholarship. His first book, Black Majority: Negroes in Colonial South Carolina from 1670 through the Stono Rebellion (Knopf, 1974) was nominated for the National Book Award and won the Beveridge Prize of the American Historical Association. Wood is co-author, with Elizabeth Fenn, of Natives and Newcomers (UNC Press, 1983), a brief history of early North Carolina which won the American Historical Association's Robinson Prize. He has been a scholar advisor to the Crafting Freedon Institute since its inception as The Thomas Day Education Project and has been a regular presenter at the Crafting Freedom workshops.

× Patricia King-Butler
Educator Advisor

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Patricia King-Butler is Executive Director of the Sankofa Institute for Higher Achieve-ment based in Teaneck, NJ, her home for 43 years. The Sankofa Institute consults with nonprofits, institutions of higher education, schools and other constituencies around issues of education achievement for underserved students. She currently chairs the Enslaved Af-rican Memorial Committee (EAMC), which is creating a "Memorial on the Municipal Green" in Teaneck to honor the enslaved Africans who constructed many of the buildings in Bergen County and throughout NJ. King-Butler holds a B.A. in International Relations with a minor in Spanish Literature from Tufts University and a Masters in Education Ad-ministration and Supervision from Pace University. She has served on the Apprend/ Craft-ing Freedom Institute board for 9 years.
Patricia’s career has spanned over 30 years in the field of higher education where she was employed at Pace University and later Long Island University as a Higher Ed administrator. As an advocate and passionate fighter for educational reform in public schools, she was ac-tively engaged with the Teaneck public school system in her volunteer role as President of the PTO Council for many years. Patricia was also the founder of Concerned Parents for Reform (CPR), and used her experiences and platform in higher education to actively en-gage parents to become involved in the local public schools. For several years, Patricia has served as an Advisory Board member to the Teaneck Township Youth Advisory Council.
In 2009, Patricia founded The Sankofa Institute for Higher Achievement, a community based organization that provides consultation and advisement to nonprofits, institutions of higher education, schools and various constituencies around issues of education achieve-ment for underserved students and their families. The organization also creates and devel-ops cultural arts programming, and cultural curriculum related to the African American ex-perience and the Diaspora. For the past nine years, Patricia has been on the Board of Direc-tors for the Apprend Foundation, whose mission is to disseminate knowledge and to ad-vance research in African American history and culture, as well as, to disseminate knowledge of other marginalized groups.
Her numerous awards include among others, The National Endowment for the Arts Thom-as Day fellowship grant, a Certificate of Commendation from the Office of the Bergen Coun-ty Sheriff, a Certificate of Special Congressional Recognition from former New Jersey Con-gressman Steve Rothman. Most recently, Patricia led a group of fifty three educators from the tristate area on an island wide tour of Cuba. She is an active member of the Schom-burg Center for Research in Black Culture and the National Museum of African American History and Culture.
Patricia currently serves as the chair of the Enslaved African Memorial Committee (EAMC), a community based 501c3 organization whose mission is to create a Memorial on the Mu-nicipal Green in Teaneck NJ. This memorial seeks to commemorate the enslaved Africans who built much of Bergen County, and the state of New Jersey, but have never received recognition.
Patricia is a proud mother of three amazing children who continue to motivate, ignite and inspire her to continue her service to the community on behalf of young people and their families.