Brigid Bello
Racial Equity Fellow
- What do you do at CEI?
I am one of four Fellows in CEI’s inaugural Fellowship cohort. - What did you do prior to CEI?
Before CEI I worked in the tech industry for the better part of a decade doing just about everything in Customer Relations (people management, project management, success coaching, direct client support, etc). I’ve also been working towards my Masters in Social Work and will be finishing up grad school next year. - Why do you do this work?
There’s a Toni Morrison quote that I think about every time I’m asked this question: “If you are free, you need to free somebody else. If you have some power, then your job is to empower somebody else.” As a queer, Black, biracial cis woman who identifies as mentally ill and neurodivergent, and as someone who grew up comfortably middle class in a stable household and who currently has most of my needs met on a day to day basis, figuring out how to leverage my various privileged identities while holding space for my marginalized, racialized existence is something that I am always working on. My ultimate goal is to do liberation work in tandem with mental health counseling. I want to provide trauma-informed therapy services that acknowledge how systems like capitalism and white supremacy impact our well-being. Basically, I want to help individuals heal, cope, and thrive in spite of the oppressive conditions that we live under, while also actively working to change those conditions at the structural level. - What do you believe?
“It is our duty to fight for our freedom.
It is our duty to win.
We must love each other and support each other.
We have nothing to lose but our chains.”
– Assata Shakur - What is a question that guides your work?
What do we need and how can I help?