Ignite your capacity to create more equity in the world.
Kumi Cultural is a consultancy that advances enduring ecosystems for equity and justice. We support people in igniting, kindling, and sustaining their intersectional equity praxis in the cultural and philanthropic sectors.
Kumi Cultural works with clients who are dedicated to strengthening their equity knowledge and practice, and who dream of just futures.
Kumi Cultural is founded on the belief that equity work must be intersectional in order to be effective and sustainable, and Michele brings years of experience working on projects and initiatives advancing social justice in a variety of contexts.
Kumi Cultural offers process design, facilitation, political education, capacity building, organizational development, field building, and liberatory coaching services tailored to context and client needs.
ku·mee kuhl·chr·uhl
Meaning “long-lasting beauty,” Kumi is our founder’s Japanese name, and it forms the core of our practice’s identity.
“Kumi” (written in Japanese as 久美) signifies our commitment to just futures for Black, Indigenous, Chicanx, Latinx, Pacific Islander, South Asian, East Asian, Southeast Asian, Southwest Asian, Middle Eastern, North African, and other people of color and to the inherent and undisputed value of our many identities, sensibilities, and aesthetics.
The inclusion of “Cultural” signifies our commitment to culture, in both an artistic and ecological sense, in how we work and who we work with.
Meet Michele
Michele Kumi Baer (she/they) is a facilitator, educator, cultural organizer, and grantmaker grounded in intersectional anti-racist knowledge and practice. Michele is the founder and principal of Kumi Cultural.
Photo by Shruti Parekh.
Core Values
Courage
Compassion
Curiosity
Endurance
Emergence
Reciprocity
“This capacity to always begin anew,
to make,
to reconstruct,
and to not spoil,
to refuse to bureaucratize the mind,
to understand
and to live life as a process—live to become...”
-Paulo Freire