What do you do at CEI?

I joined CEI as a member of its inaugural 2-year DEI Fellowship program. As a fellow I have the unique opportunity of supporting CEI’s facilitation teams with thought partnership and strategic project management support. 

What did you do prior to CEI?

Prior to joining CEI I was an international development professional with finance, program management, and operations expertise. My professional background has also spanned across several different sectors including social justice, peacebuilding, communications and social services. 

Why do you do this work?

I do this work because I want Black professionals to leave DEI spaces empowered in their racial identity, equipped with the tools to recognize and decenter whiteness and white supremacist culture, and connected to systems and networks that advance the cause of racial justice and liberation.

I am deeply invested in hope as an ancestral and historical belief in Black people’s collective wisdom, strength, and power to liberate ourselves by any means necessary. 

What do you believe?

I believe that this work must not be conceptualized as insurmountable.

What is a question that guides your work?

When all is said and done, how will those that I’ve served remember me? How can I live into a legacy that inspires a lasting spirit of agitation and resistance and a deep reverence for the collective power of community?

Quote

“If there is no struggle, there is no progress. Those who profess to favor freedom, and yet depreciate agitation, are men who want crops without plowing up the ground. They want rain without thunder and lightning. They want the ocean without the awful roar of its many waters. This struggle may be a moral one; or it may be a physical one; or it may be both moral and physical; but it must be a struggle. Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will.” – Frederick Douglass