FOR URBAN NATIVES BY URBAN NATIVES

Katt Ramos has been learning from, contributing to and teaching about social, racial and environmental movement work for over two decades on the east and west coast in a number of different capacities. Previously, Katt was helping develop curriculum for community driven planning with Deep Seeded Strategies based in the NACRP community driven planning framework. They previously completed an interim Program Director role with Communities for a Better Environment in Richmond, California, after nearly three years as the Managing Director of Richmond Our Power Coalition. They are a certified yoga instructor, massage therapist and reiki practitioner. Born and raised in Newark, NJ, Katt has experienced and been witness to many of the inequities navigated by our most undervalued and underserved communities. They have been a grassroots community organizer, with a focus on mentorship of youth and developing decolonized curricula for education cooperatives for most of their adult life. As a single mother to a teenager, it has been their principal goal to help create the environment where he and all the community he engages can have access to basic needs like clean water. Katt was a member of Newark Water Coalition (NWC) and played a core role in Urban Cooperative Enterprise Legal Center (UCELC), leading education sessions on alternative economic models and cooperatives, covid know your rights training for workers as well as the coordination of water distribution hubs. After moving to the Bay area, Katt joined the Richmond Our Power cohort, where they were tasked with co-creating plans and solutions with members of each of the coalition’s 9 organizations in order to move the Just Transition based projects forward with support and funding. Katt continued this work within CBE and currently utilizes their experience in the healing arts to help reimagine spaces with their community to practice transformative principles to guide their process. Their commitment to community activation, democratic collective power, and building community deeply grounded in transformative justice and mutual aid continues to drive the work they are dedicated to doing.

Marianne Zhetot Kwe Almero is a Pilipina and Bodéwadmi kwe who earned her Bachelor’s degree from UC Berkeley, where she researched art-therapy as treatment for PTSD in collectivist societies. In 2024 she graduated from Columbia School of Social Work where she received her MSW. She is now a licensed LMSW in New Jersey and New York state. Since 2019, Marianne has worked in the mental health field as a strong means of support for participants ranging from children to elders struggling with addiction, self-harm, trauma, suicide attempts and ideation, eating disorders, mood dysregulation, psychosis, and other challenges surrounding mental health.Since 2022, Marianne has used these experiences in the realm of mental health to support the Urban Native community in New York City, providing behavioral health therapy and advocacy services. With the understanding of the relationship between mental health and oppressive systems that marginalize Indigenous communities, Marianne also engages in social justice advocacy to fight for collective liberation and the decolonization of oppressive institutions.Marianne is currently the Community Wellness Specialist at Urban Indigenous Collective, where she is developing and stewarding programming on direct-care mental health services, traditional wellness services, MMIP, and community wellness initiatives. On her free days, you can find Marianne participating in local social justice initiatives, supporting local drag artists, exploring new music, foraging, and spending time with her loved ones, especially her cat Chadwick.

 Austin is a member of the Chicoran Shakori tribe of South Carolina. Austin is descended from Indigenous and white sharecroppers on his mother’s side, and New York City Italian-American settlers on his father’s side. As part of the Great Migration of the 60s, Austin’s ancestors walked away from sharecropping alongside other peoples of color by migrating to the northeast “for the good union jobs”. Growing up as a Two-Spirit urban native in the Simsbury area of Hartford, Austin has found himself at powerful intersections between the forces of Technology and Globalization. During and after pursuing his degree in Technology and Globalization at NYU Gallatin, Austin continued to enhance his Product Design skills as the Chicoran Shakori Tribal Web Developer and the Lead Product Designer at Up2Code, ZED Aerospace, and Blue World Inc. While pursuing his degree at Gallatin, Austin worked for Apple at one of their HQ locations, and observed the structural changes presently roiling the global economy firsthand. Finding himself at another powerful global crossroads, Austin is currently focused on the intersections between Indigenous communities, Sustainability, and Product Design.