Charlene A. Carruthers

Charlene A. Carruthers (she/her) is a writer, filmmaker, community organizer, and Black
Studies PhD candidate at Northwestern University. A practitioner of telling more
complete stories, her work interrogates Black governance, Black and Indigenous
relationality, and Black feminist abolitionist geographies. She is a 2020 Marguerite
Casey Presidential Freedom Scholar and Mellon Interdisciplinary Cluster Fellow in
Gender and Sexuality Studies. Her work spans more than 15 years of community
organizing across racial, gender, and economic justice movements. Charlene wrote and
directed The Funnel, a short film, which received the Queer Black Voices Award at
PRISM, the 35th Annual Austin Gay and Lesbian International Film Festival (aGLIFF).
 

As the founding national director of Black Youth Project 100 (BYP100), she worked
alongside young Black activists to build a national member-led organization dedicated
to creating justice and freedom for all Black people. Her work has been covered in
several publications including the New York Times, the Washington Post, Chicago
Reader, The Nation, Ebony, and Essence Magazines. She has appeared on CNN,
Democracy Now!, BBC and MSNBC. The Chicago native has also written for
theRoot.com, CRISIS Magazine, Teen Vogue, Truthout, Colorlines, and the Boston
Review. She is recognized as one of the top 10 most influential African Americans by
The Root 100, one of Ebony Magazine's "Woke 100," an Emerging Power Player in
Chicago Magazine, and is the 2017 recipient of the YWCA's Dr. Dorothy I. Height
Award.
 

A committed educator, Charlene is also a highly sought-after speaker at various
institutions including Wellesley College, Shaw University, Princeton University,
Northwestern University, and her alma mater Illinois Wesleyan University. Charlene
earned a Master of Social Work from the Brown School at Washington University in St.
Louis, MO. She is the author of the bestselling book, Unapologetic: A Black, Queer, and
Feminist Mandate for Radical Movements.