About Dr. A. Breeze Harper

​

Dr. Harper has a PhD in the social sciences, with emphasis in intersectionality, anti-racism and racial-gender inclusion/equity. She holds a MA in Educational Technologies (emphasis in racial-gender inclusion/equity in technology) from Harvard University, where she received the Dean’s Award for her masters thesis work on how racial-gender privilege operates in cyberspace forums. She earned her BA in feminist geography from Dartmouth College and received the Innovative Thesis award for her work on heterosexism in rural geographies. She has 15+ years career experience as a diversity, equity, and inclusion expert, ranging from curriculum development, to conference planning, to research and reporting, to publishing books and articles, to workshop design and facilitation, to recruitment and retention, to critical content editing, to strategic consulting. 

​

Dr. Harper is the co-founder of an innovative inclusion, diversity, and equity consulting firm called Critical Diversity Solutions. They merge critical theory and methods + human centered storytelling + action planning and metrics. She also recently founded Black Zephyr, Inc in order to focus on Afrofuturism and Black Reparative Justice as an equity catalyst.

 

Dr. Harper created and edited the ground-breaking anthology, Sistah Vegan: Black Women Vegans Speak On Food, Identity, Health, and Society. Her most recently published book, Scars: A Black Lesbian Experience in Rural White New England (Brill 2014) interrogates how systems of oppression and power impact the life of the only Black teenager living in an all white and working class rural New England town.

​

In 2025, Dr. Harper’s latest second novel, Seeds of Sankofa, will be published. Listen to her Farm Sanctuary Inaugural address about her latest novel, racism in the food system, writing black food futures through Afro-futurism, and why we should be saying 'food apartheid' vs. 'food desert'.

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

Critical Race Feminist Analysis of Food, Ethical Consumption, and Sustainability

 

Dr. Harper has been invited to deliver workshops, keynote addresses, and lectures at universities, businesses, and non-profits throughout North America. Her talks explore how and why people have unique relationships to food and wellness, sustainability, and ethical consumption and how these relationships are impacted by race, socio-economic class, gender, sexuality and physical abilities.

 

Dr. Harper has also participated in panels and joint presentations with other food and social justice leaders such as prominent vegan chef and activist Bryant Terry (Afro-Vegan, Vegan Soul Kitchen and The Inspired Vegan), food justice activist Lauren Ornelas (Food Empowerment Project), Raj Patel (author of Stuffed and Starved: The Hidden Battle for the World Food System), sociologist Alison Alkon (Black, White and Green: Farmers Markets, Race, and the Green Economy), Julie Cummins (Center for Urban Education for Sustainable Agriculture), Decolonial Food for Thought blogger Claudia Serrato and community advocate and food entrepreneur Brahm Ahmadi (People's Community Market, Oakland, CA).

 

One of her most popular talks took place at Whidbey Institute in 2016, called Uprooting White Fragility in the Ethical Foodscape . It has been shown in universities, community organizations, and other spaces to inspire dialog and actions plans around operationalizing anti-racism and gaining literacy around how systemic racism and anti-Blackness operate in even the most "ethical" and "well-intended" spaces. She recently gave the keynote talk at Flee Retreat 2019, a Chairman Mom organized event. Entitled, "Anti-Racism in the Workplace: How White Women Can Be Allies to Nonwhite Women of Color," Harper received a standing ovation and piqued the interests of some of Silicon Valley's brightest womxn leaders to collaborate with Dr. Harper to help them or their organizations with inclusion, diversity, and equity. 

​

Sistah Vegan Project 

 

Building on the Sistah Vegan book's favorable reception, Harper created The Sistah Vegan Project website, a blog through which she writes candidly about her life as a vegan black woman in the United States. The Sistah Vegan Project continues to expand. She engages with issues such as politics, economics, healthcare, motherhood, education, systemic racism, privilege, and foodie culture to name a few. She has been greatly influenced by Black Marxism, decolonial world systems theory, Black feminism, and critical race studies.

Harper has developed online classes, seminars, conferences and other materials for the popular site to support the community.

 

In 2015, Dr. Harper organized the highly successful conference Vegan Praxis of Black Lives Matter .

 

Watch her 2016 Whidbey Institute Keynote Address Below:

 

 

 

 

 

​