Closing Key Note Speaker
Kesho Y. Scott, PhD
 Dr. Kesho Y. Scott is Chair of the Board of Directors of the FRÉ Foundation, a nonprofit bipartisan public education organization. The Fré Foundation is dedicated to educating across generations to inspire democracy, engage equality and celebrate difference. Its unlearning racism training, software development and human rights framework:
- Fosters high school students’ self-awareness and civic participation
- Helps preserve Native American language and culture
- Facilitates Head Start teachers, families and children’s multicultural literacy
She is an internationally-renowned Cultural Competency Trainer, an Associate Professor of American Studies and Sociology at Grinnell College, and an award-winning writer. Kesho is a founding member of International Capacity Building Services, a cultural competency training team that specializes in facilitating both “unlearning isms” and human rights workshops as well various seminars and training programs that have been successfully adapted for audiences throughout the United States and abroad. In over two decades of developing unlearning racism work, Kesho has led hundreds of professional and community-based workshops; she has been keynote speaker for national conferences as well as a participant on several dozen national and local radio debates, discussions and public service announcements. Grounded in this extensive experience, Kesho developed an “affirmative duty” technique for facilitating unlearning racism workshops. It is a method that helps shift participants’ awareness, commitment and skill-set toward being actively and personally anti-racist and anti-sexist, rather than remaining merely passive observers.
Kesho’s breadth of expertise has led her to the international lecture circuit as a sought-after keynote speaker. Her work and unique methodology has also attracted media attention including appearances on the Oprah Winfrey Show, Sonya Live and CNN. Kesho, an accomplished writer, has won an American Book Award (for Tight Spaces, 1988) and a Human Rights Award (for The Habit of Survival: Black Women in America, 1991). Currently, Kesho is completing her next book entitled, Stop Hurting Others and Yourself, which outlines the unlearning racism process and includes her personal notes from the “field” for challenging individual and institutional practices of intolerance and “isms.” Moreover, she is editing her love story manuscript, a work of historical fiction about two “freedom fighters” who met in Ghana in the 1970’s, then reunited after 25 years of complete separation. In 2001, Kesho won a Fulbright Fellowship to teach research and write in Addis Abba, Ethiopia. Kesho has a Ph.D. in American Studies from the University of Iowa and an M.A in Sociology from the University of Detroit.
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