Principal, Lead Weaver & Facilitator - Blair

Blair (they/she) is a Black transfemme facilitator, artist, and health/healing practitioner deeply rooted in the marshes and forests of the Chesapeake, on Piscataway land in Baltimore, MD. 

Blair has led city and statewide advocacy efforts around ending youth homelessness, designed large-scale conferences and events centering joy and critical consciousness raising for LGBTQ youth and young adults, facilitated race equity trainings for major institutions, and advised national philanthropic initiatives around HIV prevention and care.  Over the past ten years she grew and led two major youth organizations in Baltimore – the STAR TRACK Adolescent Health Program and the Youth Empowered Society. 

In 2014, she was recognized as one of the 100 Black LGBTQ/SGL Emerging Leaders to Watch by the National Black Justice Coalition.  In 2016 they were selected as a Gardarev Center Fellow to engage in work at the intersections of social justice and the creative arts; and Blair received a two-year international Open Society Foundations New Executives Fund Fellowship in 2018.  Their participatory grant making experience includes ViiV Healthcare’s Accelerate Initiative in 2017 and BMore Invested in 2020.

A trained death doula and emergent strategist, Blair often accompanies organizational leaders to move through the ongoing cycle of death and rebirth in their work, inviting change as abundant, necessary, and grounded in the earth wisdom and seasonal shifts present all around us.  Currently, she is a founding member of the Rooted Collective; provides adaptive consulting, coaching, and multidisciplinary healing through Alight Alchemy; and was most recently the Senior Program Manager of Fiscal Sponsorship at The Praxis Project, a movement support intermediary weaving and amplifying the community power building work of over 150 BIPOC-led health & racial justice organizations across the country

Over the past several years, Blair has been building relationships and participating in farming immersions with BIPOC and LGBTQ land stewards, learning lessons around trust and alignment, moving through conflict, and the ancestral healing that land offers us. She’s slowly co-developing the capacity and infrastructure to be able to support and sustain a collective Black LGBTQ farm and housing project that would provide care infrastructure for Black queer and trans organizers, healers, cultural workers, and community members.

who are you accountable to, and where are you growing?

Communities of accountability and continued learning are critical for anyone invested in individual and collective transformation. Right now, my accountability communities are the Rooted Collective and the Therapy that Liberates Community. They are places I go to grow, to be stretched, to unlearn, and to practice.

I’m most curious about spaces for rest and reflection that center Black queer and trans activists and organizers, the indigenous gender systems that speak to our necessity and inherent divinity, the healing power within our (re)connection to land and ancestry, and documenting how communities are practicing liberation. I’m engaged in my own healing through dance, creative writing, ritual, and collaborative storytelling.  

on conflict practice and fiscal sponsorship

on land justice and community building

on queer and trans organizing in Baltimore