Sheila S Walker, PhD is a cultural anthropologist, writer, documentary filmmaker  and the Executive Director of Global African Diaspora, a non-profit organization  that creates and shares with the public information about the African Diaspora. She  has done field research, lectured, consulted, and organized and participated in intellectual and cultural events in most of Africa and the Global African Diaspora.  Relevant works include the edited volumes African Roots/American Cultures: Africa in the Creation of the Americas and Conocimiento desde adentro: Los afrosudamericanos hablan de sus pueblos y sus historias (in Spanish and  Portuguese); and the documentaries Scattered Africa: Faces and Voices of the  African Diaspora, Slave Routes: A Global Vision with Georges Collinet for the  UNESCO Slave Route Project, and Familiar Faces/Unexpected Places: A Global African Diaspora.

Familiar Faces was shown at the United Nations in 2018 for the International Decade for People of African Descent, and was sent for showing at UN Information Centers in Africa, the Americas, Asia and the Pacific, and Europe.
She was a professor of Anthropology and Director of the Center for African and African American Studies at the University of Texas at Austin, then a Distinguished Visiting Professor, Professor of Anthropology, and Director of the African Diaspora and the World Program at Spelman College, holding endowed chairs at both institutions.