Fostering Change in the Communities We Call Home

The Story

Kristian Contreras – an amalgamation of harsh consonants, lullabies whispered in Spanglish, and my father’s weathered hands. My name is made of simmering curry, the One Train, and wallets full of last month’s bills. I come from red, white, and blue birthdays, burned concón the color of my skin, moth-eaten pashminas stowed away among Christmas lights, and the lilt of my mother’s colonized tongue. 

Through my training as both a diversity, equity, and inclusion administrator and interdisciplinary education scholar, I became an alchemist. I learned to reframe assigned deficits into cultural capital, develop curriculum and workshops rooted in liberatory scholarship, culled the magic embedded in the work of community organizers, and turned inwards to follow the compass of accountability. 

A Brooklynite at heart, I carry a love of my multi-ethnic culture and community as the foundation of my life and work. Whether I am developing co-curricular experiences, shaping learning outcomes, leveraging my training as a Black feminist scholar, or weaving together the work of luminaries, I always return to the socio-political realities tied to my identity as a cisgender woman of color. How can I do the work with intention and care? How does my lens as an Afro-Dominican-Guyanese daughter of immigrants shepherd the interventions I dream of as I make sense of the margins?

When I am not falling in love with Black feminist literature or pretending to be an Ivy Park ambassador, I can be found lost in a romance novel, investing in my eyebrow maintenance, or asking myself "What Would Janet Mock Do"? As I daydream and create, I remain inspired by community building, baby animals, the freedom of a library card, carnelian adornments, my loves, and surpassing the limitations often associated with marginality.

Kristian Contreras, PhD

transforming feminist daydreams into liberatory realities

transforming feminist daydreams into liberatory realities

transforming feminist daydreams into liberatory realities

transforming feminist daydreams into liberatory realities

transforming feminist daydreams into liberatory realities

transforming feminist daydreams into liberatory realities

transforming feminist daydreams into liberatory realities

transforming feminist daydreams into liberatory realities

Our Values

Featured
Equity
Equity

An unwavering commitment to definition ourselves beyond systems of oppression and fostering interventions that break down the barriers that keep those systems in place

Radical Joy
Radical Joy

An embrace of adrienne maree brown’s concept of pleasure activism where social justice work can be a joyous and restorative assertion of our full selves

The Collective
The Collective

A deep love for and alignment with the people, histories, and stories of kinship that live in the communities we call home. Power to the collective, all ways always.

Circular Memory
Circular Memory

A reverence for Indigenous philosophy that grounds us in place and space; an infinite thread of connection between what is possible and what has been in my efforts to do this work with an ethic of care.

Current Things I’m Loving