Posse Mentors
Posse Mentors support the Posse scholars on campus, motivate them towards graduation, and connect them to appropriate campus resources. Mentors interact with scholars at weekly student meetings and one-on-one meetings during their first and second years, and they continue to serve as a resource for the third and fourth years.
Interested in becoming a mentor?
Become a Mentor
Meet Our Mentors
Emma Y. Bernard (Duncliffe)
Vanderbilt Posse 36, New York Black
Assistant Director of Employer Relations and Recruiting, Career Management Center Owen Graduate School of Management
Emma is a Long Island, NY native who came to Nashville by way of the Midwest. Emma attended The Ohio State University with a B.A. in New Media and Communication Technology and went on to attend Peabody College at Vanderbilt University with her Master’s in Higher Education Administration.
Prior to her role at Owen, she worked in the Office of Student Organizations, Leadership, and Service at Vanderbilt, connecting with non-profit organizations in Nashville to create sustainable partnerships. She joined the Owen Career Management Center team in June 2022 and serves as the Assistant Director of Employer Relations and Recruiting, helping companies recruit MBA and Specialized Masters’ talent.
During her time at Ohio State, Emma was in a scholars’ program centered around community service and leadership. Her involvement in this program is what sparked her interest in working with college students, and she is excited to serve as a Posse mentor and support first year students.
Outside of her roles at Vanderbilt, Emma is an avid home chef, and loves trying new recipes. She loves to travel, explore national parks, and spend quality time with her friends and family.
Sidney Marshall
Vanderbilt Posse 36, New York Gold
Program Coordinator, Bishop Joseph Johnson Black Cultural Center, Student Affairs
Sidney Marshall is a Program Coordinator in Student Affairs at Vanderbilt University. A proud Jamaican, she moved to the U.S. to take up a Track and Field scholarship at Clemson University—a journey that deeply shaped who she is as a person and professional. Her campus and community involvement sparked a passion for Higher Education and nonprofit work, leading her to earn a master’s in public policy and administration from the University of Tennessee-Knoxville.
Sidney is committed to creating affirming spaces where all students—domestic, international, and athletes—feel supported and celebrated. A self-described “multipotentialite”, she thrives across multiple passions: she’s a certified dance fitness instructor, TEFL-certified, and the founder of a mentorship program for international student-athletes.
Kaadia Montgomery
Vanderbilt Posse 36, Houston
Student Activities Officer K.C. Potter Center, Student Affairs
Outside of serving as a dedicated Posse mentor, Kaadia works as a program strategist with over six years of experience in K–12 and higher education. She specializes in creating inclusive, student-centered programs, developing scalable training content, and leading initiatives that advance equity and belonging.
She’s passionate about empowering learners, cultivating community partnerships, and designing systems that foster growth and access. Whether facilitating workshops, collaborating across teams, or mentoring emerging leaders, she brings creativity, intention, and a deep commitment to transformative education and leadership development.
Antonella Valdivia
Vanderbilt Posse 35, New York Black
Assistant Director of Program Management at Vanderbilt Career Center, Career Advancement and Engagement
Brianna “Antonella” Valdivia (or Anto for short) was born and raised in Miami, Florida and is a graduate of Peabody College Master’s program in the Higher Education Administration program at Vanderbilt University.
As a first generation, Latina, she is passionate about helping undergraduate students of underrepresented populations gain access and succeed in their higher education experience. She loves mentoring others and creating experiences that students can develop, grow and feel empowered from. Her interests in higher education include student affairs, education policy, and career services. She is also a scholar-practitioner and is currently pursuing her Ed.D. at Vanderbilt Peabody College in Higher Education Leadership and Policy.
In her free time, she enjoys dancing, going on walks, playing pickleball, watching Netflix and visiting Miami to see family!
ReChard Peel
Vanderbilt Posse 35, New York Gold
Director, Bishop Joseph Johnson Black Cultural Center, Student Affairs
Dr. ReChard L. Peel Jr is an experienced higher education professional with nearly a decade of experience supporting and creating initiatives for underrepresented students in higher education. He has been at Vanderbilt for 7 years and served as a Posse Mentor for 4 years (VPs 32 and 35).
Professionally at Vanderbilt, he has held roles Program Coordinator in the Student Center for Social Justice and Identity (SCSJI), Assistant Director of the Bishop Joseph Johnson Black Cultural Center (BCC), and now Director of the BCC.
Outside of these professional roles, he performs spoken word, does photography, and enjoys serving his community in various ways.
David Carlone
Vanderbilt Posse 35, Houston
Professor of the Practice, Department of Human and Organizational Development Program Director, Community Development and Action
Professor David Carlone’s research interests lie at the intersection of human communication, organization theory, and power/politics. He studies the communicative and cultural foundations for, and implications of, new economy forms of organization and work, such as flat and team-based organizations. He has experience teaching service-learning courses and working with community partners to ensure robust learning experiences for students.
Professor Carlone’s current teaching responsibilities lie with HOD core courses. He has experience teaching service-learning courses and working with community partners to ensure robust learning experiences for students.
Jaden Royal-Boatner
Vanderbilt Posse 34, New York
Student Activities Officer
Jaden Royal-Boatner started at Vanderbilt in 2023. Originally from Ohio, she’s a double Buckeye with bachelor’s and master’s degrees from The Ohio State University.
With a lifelong love for event planning and creating memorable experiences, Jaden is passionate about helping students bring their ideas to life and build community through impactful programming. At Vanderbilt, she oversees the Vanderbilt Programming Board and serves as a Posse Scholar advisor, mentoring students and supporting vibrant campus engagement.
When not on campus, she enjoys exploring Nashville, traveling, and spending time with her husband, family, and her dog, Tulip.
Celina Callahan-Kapoor
Vanderbilt Posse 33, New York
Senior Lecturer of Medicine Health and Society
Celina Callahan-Kapoor’s research considers how identity and belonging are formed through ongoing interactions between popular media, expert knowledge, and bodies. Her dissertation, Disidentification with Diabetes: Diabetic Publics in the US/Mexico Borderlands, focused on the depiction of the “diabetes epidemic” in the south Texas/Mexico borderlands, a region where the rates of diagnosed type-2 diabetes are estimated to be between 15% and 35% of the population.
Specifically, she focused on how the local Mexican-American population responded to the depiction of their region as “the fattest” and the “the most obese” in the US. She traced people’s responses to a documentary about their region, Diabetesville, USA; a reality television show Supersize vs. Superskinny; to Gallup Polls; and to epidemiological findings that pinned “fatness” and “obesity” to “Mexican culture.” She found that although these multiple forms of media were circulated in attempts to help people recognize their risk of diabetes, they had the opposite effect: whether or not they were diagnosed with diabetes, people interpreted the media as depicting others.
Her most recent publication, Chronic Subjunctivity, or, How Physicians Use Diabetes and Insomnia to Manage Futures in the United States, addresses the issue of prognostication, or predictions of the future, in allopathic medicine. She is beginning work on her book, tentatively entitled, Humiliation of the Particular: Publicity and the Ever-Present Body as Text.
At MHS, Callahan-Kapoor teaches Politics of Health, Theories of the Body, and one upper-level seminar per year. In all of her classes, students engage in collaborative knowledge production, such as online encyclopedias and nontraditional products, such as video papers.