Jeanelle Austin

Jeanelle is the Executive Director of Rise and Remember (formerly known as the George Floyd Global Memorial) a nonprofit created to promote equity and social justice after George Floyd's murder. She has over fifteen years of experience in facilitating group conversations on race, designing racism and multicultural educational programs, mentoring individuals, and supporting institutional leadership as they think through strategies to take diversity and inclusion seriously. She has more than 20 years of public speaking experience, which includes sermons, class lectures, conference panels, workshops, poetry, and dramatic readings. She is a recorded poetry artist. As a child, Jeanelle grew up bicultural. She was distinctly formed by both her black family, church, and neighborhood and her white, Christian, private schools. At the age of 13, she began traveling internationally. By age 18, she had traveled to Mexico, South Africa, Botswana, Zambia, Zimbabwe, England, Kenya, and the Dominican Republic (in that order). These cross-cultural experiences made her reflect on what it meant to be black in America. Jeanelle holds an MDiv in Christian Ethics and an MA in Intercultural Studies with additional training in sociology.