Diedre Badejo Diedre Badejo holds a doctorate in comparative literature and a master's in African Area Studies specializing in West African theatre, oral traditions and history (UCLA), and a bachelor's degree in English and African American literature (USC). She serves on several academic and national boards, and is an active writer, speaker, and editor. Dr. Badejo has developed leadership workshops for academic department chairs and the African Leadership Institute (Ohio), as well as curriculum and assessment workshops for university and academic units. Diedre has published and presented in the United States, Africa, Asia, the Caribbean, and Europe on such diverse topics as literacy and development, African American theatre, African culture and historiography, and Women's leadership. She’s an American Council on Education Fellow (06-07), and was a Fulbright Senior Research Scholar at the University of Ghana's Institute of African Studies, Rockefeller Fellow at Brown University, and Senior Editor and Head of the Editorial Department at Ahmadu Bello University Press in Nigeria. Diedre also worked as a docudrama researcher and editor for CBS-TV in Los Angeles. In 2012-13, Diedre served as content expert and advisor for the Osun Osogbo segment of the six-part PBS Series titled, "Sacred Journeys," which aired in December 2014. Diedre grew up in an extended family network, and has always loved writing poetry and short stories, a passion which grew during her undergraduate career. While in graduate school, she developed another passion for scholarly research, writing, and storytelling. The intersection of these passions led to her work in West Africa on oral traditions and histories, and ultimately to her book, Osun Seegesi: The Elegant Deity of Wealth, Power, and Femininity (1996). In 2008, she published "The African Union," for the Chelsea House Series on Global Organizations edited by Peggy Kahn. In 2011, she published a chapter titled, "Osun: Yoruba Goddess in Nigeria and the African Diaspora," for Goddesses in World Culture edited by Patricia Monaghan for Praeger.