Michele Kumi Baer

Michele Kumi Baer (she/they) is a social justice practitioner, facilitator, and educator working to advance intersectional anti-racist knowledge and practice in the nonprofit sector. Her career is focused on building and sustaining the principles, policies, and practices we need in order to realize more just futures for our communities. 

Michele is skilled at building and sustaining shared understanding and engaged discussions among diverse stakeholders. They engage in facilitation, coaching, process design, and applied learning practices to cultivate affirmative learning spaces, promote dialogue and action, propel organizational development, and strategically enable nonprofits, funders, and networks to create and embody more equitable and just practices. They are frequently speaking and facilitating trainings on racial equity and other topics, with much of their work happening within and adjacent to the cultural and philanthropic sectors.  

Michele directs her own consulting practice, called Kumi Cultural; works part-time stewarding the Cultural New Deal; serves as an advisor for the New England Foundation for the Arts’ National Dance Project; and coaches working artists as a part of the MAP Fund’s Scaffolding for Practicing Artists (SPA) Program. She is on the board of Versa-Style Dance Company and engaged in Japanese American progressive organizing spaces in Los Angeles. Most recently, Michele was at Race Forward as the first program director to develop the organization’s strategy and portfolio of work advancing racial equity in and racial justice through philanthropy. 

Throughout their career, Michele has worked in programming, advocacy, research, capacity building, and communications roles to advance racial justice, gender justice, and disability justice at and through nonprofits large and small. Previous posts include work at Race Forward, The New York Community Trust, Columbia University, Dance/NYC, and the Global Fund for Women. 

Michele has also worked in a consultative and/or advisory capacity with a variety of nonprofit and government organizations, providing input and guidance on their grantmaking, programming, and communications work. This includes previous work with National Endowment for the Arts, Harlem Arts Festival, Staten Island Arts, and Dance Caribbean Collective. 

Born and raised on the ancestral and unceded lands of the Ohlone people—what people also currently refer to as the San Francisco Bay Area—Michele is a mixed race, East Asian, cisgender, and non-disabled woman. She is a proud Yonsei (fourth generation Japanese American) who has both Japanese and mixed European ancestry. It was learning about their family’s incarceration during World War II that propelled Michele into critical inquiry at a young age.  

A lifelong dancer, Michele’s sensibilities as a mover and choreographer shape how she strategizes, facilitates, and collaborates. She has committed to dee

Photo by Shruti Parekh

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