BIOGRAPHY:  Sonia L. Walker

Sonia L. Walker was born in Buffalo , NY in 1961. She is the third child of Samuel S. Walker, Sr. and Georgie Stokes Walker. She attended the Campus School / College Learning Laboratory through eighth grade and then was graduated from City Honors High School . After graduating from Syracuse University in 1983 with majors in Biology and Anthropology, she entered the Peace Corps and worked as a volunteer Rural Fisheries Extension Agent in the former Zaire ( Democratic Republic of the Congo ) for two years.

Keenly interested in learning more about the cultures of Africa and the field of International Development, Sonia served as a summer volunteer group leader to programs in Kenya and Cote d'Ivoire with Operation Crossroads Africa. Sonia received an Under-represented Minority Fellowship to pursue her graduate studies and completed a masters program in Anthropology at SUNY Buffalo in 1989. Later that year she began a yearlong International Development Internship with Operation Crossroads Africa and Africare and coordinated a pilot River Blindness Prevention Program in Kwara State , Nigeria . Sonia also volunteered as a summer area representative with Global Exchange Study Associates in Ghana and the Gambia . 

Sonia worked at the Buffalo Museum of Science for four years as the Associate Director for Project TEAM. TEAM provided elementary school teachers with the opportunity to bring hands-on, inquiry-based science into their classrooms. After leaving the museum Sonia worked as a Consultant with Inverness Research Associates and evaluated the use of Project TEAM and Object Lessons in the Buffalo Public Schools. Through visits to elementary classrooms she discovered an interest in elementary education. In 1999 she completed her certification requirements in elementary education at the SUC at Buffalo and was the first recipient of the Norma Munger Sutter Award for Excellence in Student Teaching. She currently teaches fourth grade at Futures Academy in Buffalo .

Sonia's interests include: maintaining her knowledge of the Tshiluba language, playing with her godchildren and great nephews, and genealogy. Since 1995 she has worked with her sister Sandra to research their ancestors who lived primarily in Abbeville and Edgefield Counties of South Carolina . They have succeeded in identifying their enslaved ancestors back to 1800. Sonia is a co-founder of the Buffalo Genealogical Society of the African Diaspora (BGSAD) and maintains three genealogically-oriented web pages. In 1997 she published a compilation of data from the 1860 Slave Schedule and Population Schedule of the Abbeville Co, SC Federal Census. She presented family history research at the annual meeting of the Afro-American Historical Association of the Niagara Frontier in 1998, and now serves on the board of the organization. As an educator, one of her goals is to help her students develop a keen interest in history where they can see themselves as tomorrow's history-makers.