I am Diana (she/her), a mother, artist, facilitator, strategist, coach, organizer, and organizational change consultant who works nationally and internationally in diverse contexts – including government, social services, Jewish organizations, legal and political advocacy, arts and culture, education, grass roots community groups, and faith communities – to cultivate individual and group transformation for equity, belonging, and justice. I focus on understanding and dismantling racism, antisemitism, and interconnected forms of oppression in our ways of seeing, being, and knowing, and in strategy, organizational structure, and policy.
I am moved by a vision of an interconnected, healthy, and just society, one free from the violence, dehumanization, and inequity. My goal is for the organizations and individuals I support to develop and internalize an authentic practice of equity and belonging.
I am a white, Jewish, queer woman of Venezuelan and European descent. I am the daughter of an immigrant and granddaughter of a refugee. I was born and raised in the Boston area (Algonquin, Massachusett), live in Seattle (Coast Salish and unceded Duwamish) and work across the U.S. and with partners internationally. Me encanta hablar el Español.
Photograph by Alex Garland
I give thanks to those who have guided, challenged, shaped, and held me in my journey:
The surviving artists and organizers of Las Siluetas Desaparecidas-Detenidas (1982) in Buenos Aires, Argentina, who I got to learn from in 1998. Your courageous and unifying leadership to help topple the dictatorship showed me the power of art to transform society.
The young women and non-binary young people jailed at Remann Hall/Pierce County Juvenile Detention Center and in the post-release program, Arts Connect, where I worked as a teaching artist and program manager from 2003 – 2011. Your creativity, voice, truth, and power are in my heart always and still move me each and every day.
My truly incredible team and collaborators at the City of Seattle Race and Social Justice Initiative (RSJI) between 2012 - 2021 and all of the many Black, Indigenous and People of Color (BIPOC) and white people I have known and worked with who have helped me hold myself to account by calling me in (and sometimes out) and showing me what it means to organize for racial justice in service to community as a white-bodied person.
The University of Washington School of Social Work, where I met life-long collaborators, friends and mentors who pushed me and offered me a way into deeper, more self-aware, more connected work.
Scott Winn, who first organized me into antiracism work and helped me begin to form my own identity as a white person showing up for racial justice.
My Seattle Jewish organizing community and my national Jewish organizing community, including the Tzedek Lab Network, whose wisdom, resourcefulness, connection to history and ancestral resilience, and insistence on seeing and being with our grief and our joy — on loving our people — buoys me day after day.
My beloved friends, collaborators and teachers, with whom I have talked, cried and laughed through fears and joys, experiences of injustice, stories of our ancestors, spiritual awakenings, organizing strategies, and endless returns to our shared conviction for transformation. You have helped me stay real and stay in it, day after day, year after year.
My ancestors: Oma Jean and Papa Manny, who taught me so much about just about everything and helped me cultivate an inner sense of safety and calm; Abuelo Gerzon/Julio/George, whose life experiences in Belarus and Venezuela (what I know and what I don’t know) continue to guide my commitment to healing and justice; Grandma Dotty, my name sake, who I never met, but whose love and pain have shaped me; and Aunt Jeanne, whose independence and worldly spirit remind me to just go for it. Every day, I feel for each of you and find you at my back.
My parents, siblings, niblings, cousins, aunt, and uncles: Thank you for always giving me space to go far and to return.
My partner: Thank you for continuing to evolve with me as we create and re-create our lives together.
My child: Thank you for always bringing me back to the present moment and simultaneously pulling me toward a world that you and all future generations deserve.