Tema Okun has spent over 35 years working with and for organizations, schools, and community-based institutions as a trainer, facilitator, and coach focused on issues of racial justice and equity. For over six years, Dr. Okun worked with the Teach.Equity.Now. collaborative which houses the Teaching for Equity Fellows Program currently offered at Duke University in Durham, NC. The program works with faculty seeking to develop stronger skills both teaching about race and racism and across lines of race, class, and gender. She currently facilitates, consults, coaches, and offers talks for and with leaders and organizations nationwide.

Tema was a member of the Educational Leadership faculty at National Louis University in Chicago and has taught undergraduate, master’s, and doctoral level students in educational leadership and education. She is the author of the award-winning The Emperor Has No Clothes: Teaching About Race and Racism to People Who Don’t Want to Know (2010, IAP) and the widely used article White Supremacy Culture. She has published a revised version of this article on an extended and expanded website at www.whitesupremacyculture.info

Tema is a member of the Bhumisphara Sangha under the leadership of Lama Rod Owens. She is an artist, a poet, and a writer. She lives in Carrboro NC where she is fortunate to reside among beloved community. Her current project is deepening her ability to love her neighbor as herself. She is finding the instruction easy and the follow through challenging, given how we live in a culture that is afraid to help us do either or both.