Erica Handy
Brand Ambassador for WIF’s
Entrée to Black Paris Cultural Awareness Program
Erica Handy reached out to WIF in April 2023 to express interest in volunteering for our ADCI Paris group. Her undying passion for travel and study abroad and for Paris led to her becoming the first brand ambassador for our Entrée to Black Paris Cultural Awareness program.
Erica Handy is passionate about history, language, and culture, especially as they pertain to the African Diaspora. She is a strong advocate for African Americans learning languages, traveling and studying abroad.
Handy designs cultural, educational, and global learning experiences that help people connect more deeply with history, place, and the world around them. With a B.A. in Foreign Languages with a concentration in French and a minor in Spanish from Jackson State University and a professional background spanning museum education, cultural programming, historical interpretation, and heritage tourism, she is committed to creating meaningful travel experiences for diverse audiences.
Her approach to curating African diaspora-inspired Parisian itineraries is rooted in connection, curiosity, and cultural understanding.
Handy was formerly employed at the International Museum of Muslim Cultures in Jackson, MS. She began as an intern, then served as an executive assistant and Director of Historical and Cultural Tours. In this post, she educated thousands over a ten-year period on the literate culture of Timbuktu through the museum’s premier exhibit, The Legacy of Timbuktu: Wonders of the Written Word.
In 2015, she participated in a Human Diversity and Social Justice Abroad program in Paris through Jackson State University. Her coursework focused on value systems and cultural anomalies, which provided a framework for understanding how race, class, gender, ethnicity, religion and privilege affect immigrants in France.
This course immersed Handy in experiences that allowed her to witness a Paris many visitors never get to see, and the working class neighborhoods of Belleville, la Goutte d’Or and Saint-Denis became her classroom.
Places of interest visited included:
- A Tunisian community center in Belleville where immigrants shared their stories including their struggles and triumphs while living in Paris
- L’Institut des Cultures d’Islam (Institute of Islamic Cultures)
Institute of Islamic Cultures
- “Little India” and Temple Ganesh, a Hindu temple
- Musée national de l’histoire de l’immigration (National Museum of the History of Immigration) and the Buddhist temple in the neighboring Bois de Vincennes
National Museum of the History of Immigration
- Notre Dame Cathedral and the Mèmorial des Martyrs de la Deportation, the underground memorial dedicated to French citizens deported to Nazi concentration camps
- Père Lachaise Cemetery and its memorials to Auschwitz, Dachau and the French Resistance
- Grande Mosquée de Paris (Grand Mosque).
Grand Mosque of Paris
Handy described this as an amazing study abroad experience that allowed her to move beyond traditional tourist areas and see the real, everyday Paris that most people miss out on and that’s worth sharing.
Her belief that art, history, and global experiences have the power to transform how we see ourselves and each other aligns perfectly with WIF’s belief that travel is one of the two most powerful avenues to building well-rounded, open-minded, critically-thinking youth.
Currently residing in Mobile, AL, Handy is connecting WIF to local and regional schools, businesses, and organizations that can benefit from ETBP Cultural Awareness activities, projects, and programs.
