Carmen Brewton Denison, Executive Director
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Carmen Brewton Denison is writer, artist, educator, and activist residing in Portland, Oregon. She serves as the Executive Director at the racial and education justice non-profit organization Coalition for Racial and Educational Justice, fka, Campus Compact of Oregon. In this role, she leads the development and implementation of racial justice programming in partnership with 2- and 4-year colleges and universities, K-12 schools, and government, non-profit entities, and grassroots initiatives across Oregon and the west coast. With this, she coordinates, designs, and facilitates CCOR community accountability and collaboration and institutional equity initiatives with campus and community partners across the country.
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Beginning her career as a visual artist, Carmen's early work drew heavily upon histories of social intervention, global anti-colonial and anti-racist movements, and Black Queer Feminist critique. Carmen's practice led to the co-founding of the Creative Activism Lab in 2013 with an Innovation Award from the Pacific Northwest College of Art. From there, she went on to work with the Portland Community College Community-Based Learning department to support community engagement methodologies that center on critical race theory and community wisdom. During this time, Carmen also led and coordinated post-secondary access programming that centered on the lived experience of BIPoC youth and students.
Since then, Carmen has worked on collaborative projects focused on housing and houselessness, prison abolition, international feminisms, BIPoC and LGBTQAI2S+ youth, and students. As a teacher and facilitator, Carmen designed and implemented interdisciplinary and socially engaged curriculum as a faculty in Marylhurst University's art department. There she taught critical theory and interdisciplinary thesis research and writing, and a course on politics, aesthetics, and narrative. Following that, she taught critical race theory with a specific focus on Black, Queer, and Indigenous feminisms at the Pacific Northwest College of Art's Hallie Ford School of Graduate Studies.
As a faculty at Portland State University, Carmen has taught Black Liberation/Black Civil Rights and the counternarrative portion of Racial Equity in Oregon. This class examines the consequences of racist legislation on BIPoC communities across the state. From time to time, Carmen moderates conversations about power, positionality, and narrative and writes social and aesthetic criticism.
As a leader, Carmen loves to design and build new things in collaboration with her community. Recently, she taught American Identities, a counternarrative history course, at Coffee Creek Correctional Facility as a faculty in Portland State University's Higher Ed in Prison Program, a collaborator of CoREJ. She is currently supporting the development of Oregon's Project Rebound pilot, which is a collaboration with the community-led CalState model.
Independent of her role as an executive, Carmen has worked on worked on research projects focused on Indigenous pedagogies and climate justice movements in Oahu, Hawaii, and transnational Black organizing in New Orleans, Louisiana. Carmen is a fellow with Oregon Health Authority Life Sustaining Practices initiative, where she works with local organizers and advocates addressing the impacts of anti-Blackness on youth in the educational system and the normalized violence of 'schooling.' Carmen's current research is focused on Southern biocultural restoration and marronage theory and praxis.
Finally, Carmen sits on the Oregon Department of Education's Black Student Success Plan Advisory with Black educators across Oregon.
Since then, Carmen has worked on collaborative projects focused on housing and houselessness, prison abolition, international feminisms, BIPoC and LGBTQAI2S+ youth, and students. As a teacher and facilitator, Carmen designed and implemented interdisciplinary and socially engaged curriculum as a faculty in Marylhurst University's art department. There she taught critical theory and interdisciplinary thesis research and writing, and a course on politics, aesthetics, and narrative. Following that, she taught critical race theory with a specific focus on Black, Queer, and Indigenous feminisms at the Pacific Northwest College of Art's Hallie Ford School of Graduate Studies.
As a faculty at Portland State University, Carmen has taught Black Liberation/Black Civil Rights and the counternarrative portion of Racial Equity in Oregon. This class examines the consequences of racist legislation on BIPoC communities across the state. From time to time, Carmen moderates conversations about power, positionality, and narrative and writes social and aesthetic criticism.
As a leader, Carmen loves to design and build new things in collaboration with her community. Recently, she taught American Identities, a counternarrative history course, at Coffee Creek Correctional Facility as a faculty in Portland State University's Higher Ed in Prison Program, a collaborator of CoREJ. She is currently supporting the development of Oregon's Project Rebound pilot, which is a collaboration with the community-led CalState model.
Independent of her role as an executive, Carmen has worked on worked on research projects focused on Indigenous pedagogies and climate justice movements in Oahu, Hawaii, and transnational Black organizing in New Orleans, Louisiana. Carmen is a fellow with Oregon Health Authority Life Sustaining Practices initiative, where she works with local organizers and advocates addressing the impacts of anti-Blackness on youth in the educational system and the normalized violence of 'schooling.' Carmen's current research is focused on Southern biocultural restoration and marronage theory and praxis.
Finally, Carmen sits on the Oregon Department of Education's Black Student Success Plan Advisory with Black educators across Oregon.