Meet our Staff

Charlotte Keniston
charlotte.keniston@umbc.edu

Charlotte Keniston, Director

Charlotte came to Baltimore in 2011 to participate in Peaceworker and pursue an MFA in Intermedia and Digital Arts at UMBC, where she completed a thesis on the intersection of art, food systems, and social justice. She remained in Baltimore as an Open Society Institute Fellow and later ran community food programs at Paul’s Place, a non-profit in Southwest Baltimore. As a Peace Corps Volunteer, Charlotte served in San Sebastián Huehuetenango, Guatemala from 2008-2010, helping to form women’s groups organized around gender equity and rural community development. Charlotte has taught classes at UMBC in Food Systems, Photography, and Public Art in the Visual Arts and Interdisciplinary Studies programs, as well as Digital Storytelling and Research Methods in the Community Leadership Masters and Certificate Programs. She completed her doctoral degree in Language, Literacy, and Culture, studying participatory visual research methods and social change in 2024. Charlotte helps to organize the UMBC campus Digital Storytelling initiatives and is active in the International Digital Storytelling community. She lives in NW Baltimore County with her partner and their two children, cat, and 5 lively hens.

Joby Taylor
joby.taylor@umbc.edu

Joby Taylor, Associate Vice Provost and Advisor to Peaceworker

Joby came to Baltimore as a Peaceworker Fellow himself in 1999 and liked the program and the city so much that he has proudly stayed on, becoming program director in 2003. In 2023 Joby transitioned to co-leadership of The Shriver Center; he remains a close advisor to the Peaceworker program and mentor to Peaceworker fellows.

Joby was born and raised in Miami, Oklahoma, a small town that is also home to eight Native American nations. He served as a Peace Corps Volunteer in Gabon, Africa (91-93) helping build an elementary school in the village of Seka Seka, and, as all RPCVs soon find, he learned much more than he gave along the way. Joby’s involvement in service and service-learning has included other construction projects in the U.S. and the Caribbean, but also much work with youth, particularly at-risk and special needs youth. Academically Joby received his BA in Philosophy, an MA in Religious Studies, and completed his Ph.D. in the Interdisciplinary Language Literacy and Culture program. His dissertation is titled: Metaphors We Serve By: Critical and Constructive Play with the Discourses on Service. Joby lives in Baltimore City with his wife Beth and their two girls, Isabel and Katherine.