Honorary Board

Vikas Saini, MD is president of the Lown Institute. He is a clinical cardiologist trained by Dr. Bernard Lown at Harvard, where he has taught and done research. Dr. Saini leads the Institute’s signature project, the Lown Institute Hospitals Index, the first ranking to measure hospital social responsibility. In his role at the Lown Institute since 2012, Dr. Saini led the development of the Right Care series of papers published by The Lancet in 2017; convened six national conferences attracting more than 200 attendees annually and featuring world-renowned leaders in health care; and guided other Lown Institute projects such as the “Shkreli Awards.” He is also a founder and Co-Chair of the Right Care Alliance, a grassroots network of clinicians, patient activists, and community leaders organizing to put patients, not profits, at the heart of health care. Dr. Saini is a board-certified doctor of Cardiovascular Disease, Internal Medicine, and Nuclear Cardiology, and has served on the faculty of Harvard Medical School and the Harvard School of Public Health.

ALBA was saddened to learn of the passing of our honorary board member Jim Skillman and we extend our deepest sympathies to his family and all who loved him. Jim Skillman was a social justice activist/organizer from Atlanta, Georgia. He served as a coordinator with the Georgia Peace and Justice Coalition, the Atlanta Jobs with Justice Organizing Committee, and as a member of the Atlanta chapter of Veterans for Peace and the Committees of Correspondence for Democracy and Socialism.

Antonio Muñoz Molina is a Spanish writer and, since 1995, a full member of the Royal Spanish Academy. He studied art history at the University of Granada and journalism in Madrid. He began writing in the 1980s and his first published book, El Robinsón urbano, a collection of his journalistic work, was published in 1984. His columns have regularly appeared in El País and Die Welt.

Robin D.G. Kelley is the Gary B. Nash Professor of American History at UCLA. His books include the prize-winning Thelonious Monk: The Life and Times of an American Original (Free Press, 2009); Africa Speaks, America Answers: Modern Jazz in Revolutionary Times (Harvard Press, 2012); Yo' Mama's DisFunktional!: Fighting the Culture Wars in Urban America (Beacon Press, 1997); Race Rebels: Culture, Politics, and the Black Working Class (Free Press, 1994); and Freedom Dreams: The Black Radical Imagination (Beacon Press, 2002). He also edited (with Franklin Rosemont) Black, Brown, and Beige: Surrealist Writings from Africa and the African Diaspora (University of Texas Press, 2009), recipient of an American Book Award, and (with Stephen Tuck) The Other Special Relationship: Race, Rights and Riots in Britain and the United States (New York: Palgrave, 2015). Kelley's essays have appeared in several anthologies and publications, including The Nation, Monthly Review, The Voice Literary Supplement, New York Times (Arts and Leisure), Counterpunch, Black Music Research Journal, Callaloo, Black Renaissance/Renaissance Noir, Social Text, Boston Review, American Historical Review, Journal of American History, and Souls, to name a few.