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Robin Reshard

Robin Reshard

  • Community Advocate

Biography

Robin Reshard advocates for and creates stories and content about African Americans’ experiences, history, and development in the American visual and vocal conversation. She works in the community through the Kukua Institute, a nonprofit organization located in Historic Belmont DeVilliers with a vision to discover, grow, share, and celebrate African Americans' stories through art, history, science, and technology.

Developing projects for print, broadcast, and programs, her work has included producing and hosting television projects such as “Inside Voices TV,” “The Pensacola Network Show,” “Connecting the Community,” and “Heard.” Her documentary “Belmont DeVilliers: The Making of a Neighborhood” has been seen and heard on public television, in public spaces and public conversations. She has written two books, has contributed research and stories to other books including "By Hands Now Known" (W. W. Norton, 2022) and the upcoming book "Have
Horn, Will Travel: A Biography of Herman Junior Cook." Robin has also consulted on historical documentaries and has written and edited historically focused articles for newspapers including “Righting the Past,” a collaborative, community-based project that shares overlooked
stories of Northwest Florida’s African-American community through writing or rewriting obituaries.

Past exhibits that she has created include “Belmont DeVilliers: Decades;” “Unity on the Blocks: A Retrospective of the People, Places, and Collective Power of the Historical Belmont DeVilliers Neighborhood;” and “Words and Deeds: Conveying the Stories of Early African American Land Deals.” An opera, Viola!, about the first known African American-owned hospital in Pensacola, is currently being written. Two song cycles of Viola! have been publicly performed with opera singers from the New York Metropolitan Opera and First Coast Opera.

Robin currently serves on the boards of the West Florida Public Library Board of Governance; Lakeview Center, an affiliate of LifeView Group; and the Kukua Institute. She has previously served as chair of the board and a board member of the Florida Folklife Council and Visit Pensacola and has served as an advisory or board member of Voices of Pensacola Advisory Council, Pensacola Community Action Network, and many others. Robin’s other work includes committees with the University of West Florida, Pensacola State College, School District of Escambia County, Board of County Commissioners, City of Pensacola, and the West Florida Regional Library. She earned a Master of Science in Community Economic Development from Southern New Hampshire University.

Honored with numerous community awards, Robin is grateful to the people on whose shoulders she stands to continue the important work of valuing everyone’s story. For her work around connecting people through community dialogue, she was named in 2017 as one of
52 exceptional people nationwide for USA Today Network’s “We Are One Nation” project.

Robin is married to Lloyd Reshard, CEO of Cognitive Big Data Systems, and they have three beautiful, smart, productive, and kind adult children.