Our Team
Martha Ramos Duffer, Psy.D.,
Psychologist, Speaker, Consultant
Martha Ramos Duffer is a licensed clinical psychologist, motivational speaker, trainer, executive coach, and organizational consultant who has spent the past twenty years working with local, regional, and national leaders and organizations. At 12 years old, equally fascinated, confused, and enamored of humans, she declared she would get a doctorate degree in psychology to unravel the mystery. Despite going on to do so, much to her initial dismay and subsequent delight, the mystery and wonder live on. Inspired by the evolving fields of neuropsychology, behavioral economics, and interpersonal neurobiology along with decades of working with people through her private practice; on university campuses as a professor, consultant, and student-group advisor; in communities of color as Executive Director of a community-based organization; and, within organizations as a consultant, Martha saw the need for personal and organizational change processes that brought together contemporary and ancestral wisdom of people and communities and synthesized scientific inquiry and knowledge on human minds and behavior, leadership, organizational development, and systemic inequities. This led to the formation of Quantum Possibilities, an organizational growth consulting firm that applies contemporary research, as well as Racial Equity, Wellness, and Appreciative Inquiry frameworks to support people and organizations to grow and thrive. Martha loves to see people and organizations expand into possibilities they had stopped daring to dream. She flourishes most when curled up with a book, splashing in the ocean, traveling with friends, or watching the wildflowers bloom in Austin, Texas, which she now calls home.
Wendy Martinez,
Operations and Communications Magic Maker
Wendy Martinez brings expertise in communications, project management, systems development, and operations. Wendy grew up between Santa Ana, California and El Paso, Texas where she became passionate about economic injustice and the impact this has on people’s development and opportunities. With a fierce commitment to grow she left her familiar and moved to Austin to pursue a degree in Communications recognizing that language and design were powerful avenues to create connections and approaches that could make a meaningful difference.
Starting as a student employee at St. Edwards University, she realized she was passionate about creating opportunities for students and employees to excel and succeed in educational environments as a pathway to fully expressing themselves and being positioned to offer their skills to efforts that help create the world they want to live in.
Music and dancing are a rich source of joy and connection in her life and she is looking forward to being a part of musical collaborations, including throwing down some beats with her partner. She also loves birds in their natural habitat, pop culture, art and design, her two cats, cooking and cooking shows, PBS programming, films by Pedro Almodovar, popcorn and her two sweet nephews and new step-grandbaby.
She currently serves as an Assistant Director of Systems and Operations in the Office of Admission at St. Edward’s University and has joined Quantum Possibilities as a way to further create opportunities that support people and organizations in flourishing.
Nicole Burrowes, Ph.D.
Trainer, Consultant Facilitator
Nicole Burrowes is an historian, educator, facilitator, trainer and consultant based in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. She is currently faculty in the Department of History at Rutgers University, focusing on African American, Caribbean and Latin American Studies.
She is deeply interested in the historical roots of inequity and social movements. She has served as a trainer and facilitator around social justice and related issues including: history of social justice movements; racial equity, leadership development, gender justice, organizing against police brutality, intimate partner violence, education justice, collective process, community organizing 101, grant-writing, and diversity in academia. In the non-profit sector, academia, and philanthropy, she served in various capacities that spanned research, strategic communications, community organizing, and organizational development. Positions she has held include Director of Finance and Special Projects for Firelight Media; Assistant Director for the Schomburg Humanities Summer Institute at the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture; Communications and Outreach Manager at the Funders Collaborative on Youth Organizing; National Staff and Knowledge Development Manager at LISTEN, Inc.; and Community Outreach Manager for the NY office of the Children’s Defense Fund. She also co-founded two organizations, Sista II Sista/Hermana a Hermana Freedom School for Young Women of Color in Brooklyn, NY and the Youth Education Alliance in Washington, DC.
Nicole has taught multimedia courses on the Civil Rights and Black Power movements; race and film; social movements in the Caribbean; race and empire in Latin America; and she expanded the community internship program for Black Studies at the University of Texas, Austin. She has several publications including: “Building the World We Want to See: A Herstory of Sista II Sista and the Fight Against State and Interpersonal Violence;” “Freedom Summer and its Legacies in the Classroom;” “Andaiye: Caribbean Radicalism and a Black Woman’s Critical Imprint;” and “Remembering Walter Rodney.” She has co-written articles that appear in The Color of Violence: The INCITE Anthology, and Beyond the Non-Profit Industrial Complex published by South End and Duke University Presses.
Finally, Nicole has won several fellowships to support her scholarship on social movements. In 2020, She was awarded fellowships from the American Council of Learned Societies and the Woodrow Wilson Research Foundation. She was a Presidential Postdoctoral Fellow at Brown University, and she was awarded dissertation fellowships in the Carter G. Woodson Institute for African American and African Studies at the University of Virginia and in African and African Diaspora Studies at the University of Texas, Austin. Prior to her work in academia, she was named: a Social Justice Fellow by the Open Society Foundations; a Union Square awardee; and as one of “21 New Yorkers to Look Out for in the 21stCentury” by the Daily News. She earned her PhD and MA in History from the City University of New York Graduate Center; a graduate certificate from the Institute for Historical Documentary Filmmaking at George Washington University; and a BA in History and Urban Studies from New York University.