Ashara Ekundayo is a Detroit-born, Oakland-based inter-disciplinary independent curator, artist, creative industries entrepreneur and organizer working internationally across cultural, spiritual, civic, and social innovation spaces. Through her company AECreative Consulting Partners and her cross-sector projects, she places artists and cultural production as essential in equitable design practices, real estate development, and movement-building. Additionally, her worldview offers an Afrofuturist, intersectional framework to the public sector that centers the lives, traditions and expertise of Black womxn of the African Diaspora. Her current platform and forthcoming book, “Artist As First Responder\\\" amplify the work of artists who \\\"respond first\\\" in both catastrophe and celebration. Ashara is also the co-founder of See Black Women, a movement of artists, activists, curators and writers raised on black feminist theory free from stereotypical tropes of black women countering narratives that undermine the expression of our diversity.