Mission, Board, and Staff

Our Mission

The Royall House Association explores the meanings of freedom and independence before, during, and since the American Revolution, in the context of a household of wealthy Loyalists and enslaved Africans.

The Board and Staff

Executive Director

Kyera Singleton is the Executive Director of the Royall House and Slave Quarters. She is also a PhD Candidate at the University of Michigan-Ann Arbor in the Department of American Culture. For the 2021-2022 academic year, Kyera Singleton is an American Democracy Fellow, in the Charles Warren Center, at Harvard University. She has held prestigious academic fellowships from the Beinecke Foundation, the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, Emory University’s James Weldon Johnson Institute for the Study of Race and Difference, and the American Association of University Women (AAUW).

From 2018 through 2019, Kyera served as the Humanity in Action Policy Fellow for the ACLU of Georgia. As a policy fellow, she focused on mass incarceration, reproductive justice, and voting rights. She created the ACLU-GA’s first podcast series “Examining Justice” in order to highlight the voices of both community activists and policy makers in the fight for racial, gender, and transformative justice.

As a public history scholar, Kyera recently served as an advisor on the Boston Art Commission’s Recontextualization Subcommittee for the bronze Emancipation Group Statue. She is also a member of the Board of Public Humanities Fellows at Brown University, which brings together a collection of museum leaders from Rhode Island, Massachusetts, and Connecticut.

Education Coordinator

As the organization’s Education Coordinator, Toni Waldron serves as lead museum teacher for all on-site and off-site school programs. An experienced educator and community justice organizer, Toni has worked collaboratively and in dialogue with co-conspirators and has sought opportunities to build a better world with youth for over fifteen years. Her work has included organizing educational summits and launching the first city-wide annual Juneteenth festival and celebration in Gloucester, Massachusetts.

Born and raised in London, England, Toni brings her unique perspectives as a multiracial, multiethnic immigrant to her work. She is a Backyard Growers board member and a member of the Cape Ann Museum’s Community Engagement Committee. A graduate of the Gallatin School of Individualized Studies at NYU, Toni received her Master of Arts in Educational Studies from Tufts University.

Board Officers

  • Peter Gittleman, President and Treasurer, Historic New England
  • Penny Outlaw, Vice President, HR Executive
  • Cutty Thomas, Assistant Treasurer, WithumSmith+Brown, Certified Public Accountants and Consultants
  • Jennifer Pustz, Recording Secretary, Tufts University
  • Gracelaw Simmons, Communications Secretary, Community Volunteer

Board of Directors

  • Michael Baenen, Community Volunteer
  • Barbara Berenson, Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court (ret.)
  • Anne Donaghy, Community Volunteer
  • Amanda Hadad, Community Volunteer
  • Margen Kelsey, Community Volunteer
  • Lucia Marconi, Boston Museum of Fine Arts
  • Mary McNeil, Tufts University
  • Mary Kathryn Lee, University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine
  • Collins Warren, Museum & Collector Resources

Honorary Director

  • Julia Royall

Academic Advisory Council

  • Rachelle V. Browne, Esq., Associate General Counsel, Smithsonian Institution (ret.)
  • Alexandra Chan, Archaeologist / Author
  • Steven Cohen, Department of Education, American Studies Program, Tufts University
  • Rachel Fletcher, Upper Housatonic Valley African American Trail
  • Frances Jones-Sneed, Department of History, Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts
  • Joanne Pope Melish, Department of History, University of Kentucky
  • Margot Minardi, Department of History, Reed College
  • Margaret Vetare, the Frances Lehman Loeb Art Center, Vassar College