Bio
Tessa Hicks Peterson is a scholar activist, teacher, writer, facilitator, mother, and dancer. She is an ever-evolving human trying to practice what she preaches and ground herself in beloved community wherever possible but most tenderly with her beautiful family in their home in the foothills of Los Angeles.
Regarding titles and credentials… She is Assistant Vice President of Community Engagement and Professor of Urban Studies at Pitzer College. Her duties since she arrived at Pitzer in 2006 have included teaching and administration, including directing the Community Engagement Center (CEC), Critical Action + Social Advocacy (CASA), Office for Consortial Academic Collaboration (OCAC) and Inside-Out Prison Exchange Program. From 1998-2005, Tessa worked with communities throughout Los Angeles on human relations and civil rights issues, ranging from the Associate Director at the Anti-Defamation League, Youth Programs Director at the National Conference for Community and Justice, and Health and Life Skills Director at the Boys and Girls Club. She has a Masters and PhD in Cultural Studies from Claremont Graduate University and a BA in Psychology, with focuses in Sociology and Spanish from UC Santa Cruz.
Tessa teaches classes and facilitates trainings on issues ranging from anti-bias education and social justice to empowerment through movement, mindfulness, and art. Her scholarship centers on transformative movement organizing and healing justice, community-based education and research, trauma-informed and equity-centered critical pedagogy, social change theories and movements, decolonization and indigenous knowledge, and prison education and abolition. Tessa spends most of her work advancing community-campus partnerships for social change and is a board member of Bringing Theory to Practice and Starting Over, Inc. Tessa’s ultimate work in the world is to engage with, teach about, learn from and better connect healing*arts*education*justice.
Tessa Hicks Peterson 