Erin Hatton is the Secretary/Treasurer of Grace and Race Ministries. She received her B.A. from Duke University where she participated in an intensive, honors program called Diversity and Identity which consisted of a semester-long series of seminars on critical race theory and writing courses that elicited verbal and written expression on personal experiences with racial identity and understanding the racial background of others. The program evoked candid commentary on racial dynamics and comprehensive discussions among program participants, who were required, under the program’s design, to live together, study, take courses, complete team projects and eat meals together, daily.
Erin’s involvement in the Diversity and Identity study program developed into an insatiable interest in race relations that was perpetuated by her Sociology major and Cultural Anthropology minor, both of which focused almost exclusively on the origins and effects of racial divisions. Her coursework covered various seminars and writings on how and why people respond to race the way they do and the role of the media in depicting minority groups.
Erin is a graduate of the University of Maryland School of Law where she completed elective courses in entertainment law and seminars that addressed the role of race in landmark cases regarding citizenship, the Jim Crow south, and the U.S. Supreme Court’s historical record of addressing the issue of race. Erin’s work experience includes the litigation team in the Corporate Legal department of Discovery Communications, in Silver Spring, MD, which is the #1 non-fiction telecommunications company in the world. Presently, Erin drafts and negotiates production agreements for the Business Affairs & Programming Legal Department of Discovery Communications, primarily for the Planet Green network, TLC, and Animal Planet Network.