About Michele
Michele Kumi Baer (she/they) is a social justice practitioner, working in modalities of process design, facilitation, education, organizational change, and coaching. Michele’s career is focused on igniting, kindling, and sustaining people’s knowledge and capacity to practice equity and liberation in their lives. Michele is the founder and principal of Kumi Cultural.
Photo by Shruti Parekh.
Image description: A mixed race East Asian woman with light, freckled skin, and short, black hair looks diagonally off frame to the right with a determined gaze. Behind her are trees and other plants that are out of focus.
Michele is skilled at building and sustaining processes and programs that center and engage a diverse group of participants. With clients and colleagues, they 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 on the road speaking and facilitating workshops and retreats for professionals in the cultural and philanthropic sectors.
Active in the nonprofit field, Michele regularly contributes to cultural policy coalitions and serves on grants and fellowships panels. Past panel service includes the National Endowment for the Arts, the National Dance Project, the California Creative Corps Artist Fellowship, and the Constellations Culture Change Fund. She is currently on the board of Versa-Style Dance Company and a member of Women of Color in the Arts and Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders in Philanthropy. Recently, Michele was on the advisory board of The Weavers Project and the steering committee for the Cultural New Deal.
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. Michele worked 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. Other posts include work at The New York Community Trust, Columbia University, Dance/NYC, and the Global Fund for Women.
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 been committed to deep study of dance traditions from West Africa (Mandé & Malinke), Brazil, and Haiti for over 16 years.
They have a Bachelors from Brown University and a Masters from Columbia University.
Michele is currently based on Tovaangar, the ancestral, current, and future lands of the Tongva people, which people also currently refer to as Los Angeles.
People reading this may also enjoy knowing that Michele is a Capricorn Sun, Pisces Moon, and Aries Ascendant.