Sewell to speak on Aug. 3

Rhonda Sewell, who is the Toledo Museum of Art’s inaugural Director of Belonging & Community Engagement, will be our next speaker starting at noon on Thursday, Aug. 3.

The session will take place in the executive conference room on the second floor of The Blade building.

A former reporter for The Blade, Rhonda will address issues of diversity and inclusion in her role as well as discuss ways we can better cover our stories and represent our communities.

At the museum, she is charged with overseeing governmental affairs; operationalizing DEAI (diversity, equity, access, and inclusion) guiding principles, and serving as the objective lead in launching an inaugural Community Gallery which debuted in February 2023.

Prior to her new role at the Museum, Rhonda served as Director of Governmental and External Affairs for the Toledo Lucas County Public Library, where she worked with legislators as well as community stakeholders in the area of library funding, advocacy, and systems change.

Rhonda is most known in northwest Ohio for her 18-year career as a journalist for The Blade, where she worked for the Features Department and on the City Desk. Rhonda has also served as an adjunct instructor in ethnic studies and in mass communications at Bowling Green State University.

In 2012, Rhonda founded Real Men READ-y, an ongoing mentoring and early literacy program operated by Read for Literacy, Inc., designed for underrepresented African American boys in kindergarten and first grade.

Rhonda is the President of The Arts Commission Board, where she has already served a six-year term. She holds the distinction of being the first POC (person of color) to serve in this role in the Commission’s 60-plus-year history. She serves on a variety of other boards.

Rhonda holds a Bachelor of Arts in Journalism from Michigan State University and completed Graduate Studies in International Journalism at the City University of London in England.

She resides in Toledo’s Lowertown with her 8-year-old rescue dog Oliver Gavin, a mixed terrier her family adopted at nine weeks. Rhonda is the proud mother of adult fraternal twin daughters, age 23, Savannah Rose, a graduate of The Ohio State University in pre-veterinary studies/animal bio-science, and Sarah Ann, a graduate of Ohio Wesleyan University in health and human kinetics/nutrition with a focus on food policy.

Rhonda is working on a personal project to write a biography and children’s book on her late cousin Willa B. Brown (1906-1992), who was the first Black woman in American history to receive a commercial pilot’s license. Brown was also the first African American officer of the Civil Air Patrol.