Design Justice Steering Committee
The DJN is guided by a Steering Committee. The Steering Committee sets high level strategy, determines the overall network structure, approves the budget, maintains information about the DJN’s structure, and reviews and approves new Local Nodes and Working Groups.
Current Steering Committee Members
Wesley Taylor
WESLEY TAYLOR is a print maker, graphic designer, musician, animator, educator, mentor, and curator. He roots his practice in performance and social justice. His work combines, oscillates between, and blurs these different disciplines. His work is multi-disciplinary as well as anti-disciplinary. Wesley’s individual practice is inextricably linked to his collective practice, yet his collective practice is not just one collective: it is a constellation of collectives he has helped form for over 20 years. Those collectives include: Complex Movements, Talking Dolls Detroit, Design Justice Network, and Big Models. His work is inspired by elder knowledge, complex science, 90s underground hip hop, punk aesthetics, and science fiction. He creates work in partnership with social justice movements. He is currently an assistant professor at Virginia Commonwealth University in the Department of Graphic Design and the Art Foundation Program. emergencemedia.org.
Sasha Costanza-Chock
SASHA COSTANZA-CHOCK is a scholar, activist, designer, and media-maker whose work focuses on networked social movements, transformative media organizing, and design justice. They are a Faculty Associate at the Berkman-Klein Center for Internet & Society at Harvard University, creator of the MIT Codesign Studio (codesign.mit.edu), and a board member of Allied Media Projects. Sasha’s newest book, Design Justice: Community-Led Practices to Build the Worlds We Need, is now available from the MIT Press.
You can find more of Sasha's work at schock.cc.
Nour Arafat
Nour is an artist, writer, designer, and community organizer focused on projects dedicated to future building that explore and advance more liberated ways of being.
As a designer, her work engages with creative community spaces in Chicago, Detroit, and beyond. She has been self-publishing zines and books of poetry since 2014 and recently published an art book, "Desire/Memory." While pursuing her MSE in Biomedical Engineering at the University of Michigan, she started organizing and hosting events in Detroit.
After moving to Chicago in 2015 to work as an engineer, she helped co-found Aywa, a Chicago-based SWANA community Space. Since the organization's inception, she has helped co-organize dance parties, film screenings, poetry nights open night's and creative workshops. She is currently one of the facilitators for the Design Justice Network Chicago node.
Boaz Sender
Boaz Sender (he/him) is the founding principal of Bocoup, an inclusive technology consulting firm. Along with running Bocoup day-to-day, Boaz contributes to other projects related to art, technology, and social justice including Design Justice, StopLAPDSyping, and the Processing Foundation.
Photo by Kathy Pham
Elena Silvestrini
Elena Silvestrini (she/her) is group facilitator, project manager and process designer. Elena focuses on justice-oriented participation methodologies and training implementation. Her work engages with intersectional feminist approaches to power, technology, group facilitation and design processes.
She is based in Rome (Italy) and currently sits on the Design Justice Steering Committee.
She is currently Project Manager & Researcher at Lisbon Council think tank and has spent the last few years as Facilitation and Training Lead at Platoniq Creatividad y Democracia, a Spanish community-centred organisation working on co-design, participation and technopolitics (technology for bottom-up political action).
She has been the curator of the Social Justice & Technology series of events at the 2023 Pisa Internet Festival and has been a 2021 Fellow at NewNew, running the Radia training project for women’s aid centres on the dual role of tech in domestic abuse. Since 2015 Elena has been part of Chayn Italia, a collective project fighting gender based violence through critical engagement with technology, collaborative practices and capacity building.
Steering Committee Alumnx
Una Lee
UNA LEE is a founder of the Design Justice Network, and served on the Steering Committee from 2016 to 2021. In 2015, prior to the formation of the Network, she instigated the creation of the Design Justice Principles, on which DJN was founded. Una has contributed to DJN in numerous ways — coordinating the 2016 Network Gathering; supporting the publication of zines through writing, editing and design; facilitating the website redesign process; providing graphic and web design; initiating the vision and mission creation process for the network; and providing leadership through participation in the Steering Committee.
Outside of DJN, Una is the Creative Director of And Also Too, Design Director at Allied Media Projects, and Director of the Consentful Tech Project.
Victoria Barnett
Victoria served on the Steering Committee from 2016 to 2020, when she transitioned to a part-time contract staff. You can read more about her on the Staff page, or her website: victoriabarnett.com.
Denise
Shanté Brown
Denise Shanté is a sober, queer and disabled holistic design strategist, intuitive writer and creative co-conspirator. Her heartwork lies in designing liberatory spaces and experiences where people can nurture their dreams for care, healing and justice into existence.
Serving on the Steering Committee from 2020-2022, Denise Shanté contributed to DJN through the co-creation and facilitation of strategy gatherings; supporting the shaping and writing of the mission and vision for the network; initiating quarterly network pauses for rest; providing guidance for strategic planning that aligns with the natural cycles and seasons; and leading the formation of the first DJN Care Circle sessions for design justice practitioners.
While transitioning from her role as Steering Committee member, Denise Shanté will continue her collaboration with the network to increase the focus on care and deepen the relationship between healing justice and design justice.
In addition to DJN, Denise Shanté is also a published writer of words, maker of booze-free herbal cocktails through Liberatory Libations, Weaver at the Center for Liberatory Practice & Poetry, and the Founding Director of Black Womxn Flourish.
You can connect with her work at deniseshantebrown.com.
How to join the DJN Steering Committee
Steering Committee members are long-time participants in the network who have played an active role in its formation and taken part in facilitation roles in Local Nodes or Working Groups. New Steering Committee members are approved by consensus of the existing Steering Committee. If you'd like to join, get in touch with the existing members!
Our Decision-Making Process
Throughout the DJN, we use informal consensus when possible. If we get stuck, we start by revisiting the Design Justice Network Principlesand try again for informal consensus. If we're still stuck, then we switch to formal consensus process.
As the network grows, our Steering Committee will revisit our shared decision-making process as needed. We are also inspired by the AORTA Cooperative's guide to anti-oppressive facilitation for democratic process.
We also recognize that as we’ve grown from a small circle, into a larger over 500-member based organization (in about 5 years), that we do not have (and did not start with) any community guidelines, and so we will start by adopting these from the Allied Media Projects and AMC: https://amc.alliedmedia.org/how-to-virtual-amc/community-agreements. We would like to revise these to make them specific to DJN in the future, and would love if any DJN members are interested in such a process, to reach out (potentially creating a small working group that could take this on)!