Amrita Kumar-Ratta (she/her) is a researcher, storyteller, educator, and mobilizer. She is a PhD Candidate in Human Geography at the University of Toronto and is cross-affiliated with the Dalla Lana School of Public Health and the Munk School of Global Affairs and Public Policy. She is also the Founder & Creator of Shades of Brown Girl, a global multimedia platform for creative storytelling and community healing for South Asian women. In her life and work, Amrita is dedicated to understanding and creatively unravelling the multiple relationships between bodies, borders, and poetics. Specifically, she focuses her work on themes of intersectional feminism and gender justice; migration, mobility, and the diasporic experience; and sustainable organizational & community development. Her soul purpose is in catalyzing transformative change & individual/collective healing through creative/arts-based/community-engaged storytelling.
Her zones of genius centre on equity related to building community knowledge, collaborative learning design, integrative multi-modal analysis & synthesis. She does this by distilling big/abstract ideas, engaging different audiences, weaving scholar-activist webs, creating and nurturing partnerships/ collaborations/ relationships, holding space and mobilizing community, nurturing creativity and belonging. Amrita has worked with numerous organizations across Canada, the United States, India, Kenya, and Thailand, including but not limited to the Regional Diversity Roundtable of Peel, the Ward Museum, the Wellesley Institute, Amnesty International Canada, the United Nations Development Programme, the Mosaic Institute, the Centre for Social Innovation, and the Toronto and York Region Labour Council. She is currently an active member of numerous planning committees, advisory groups, and community initiatives in the Greater Toronto Area and beyond. Poetry and performance are artistic practices that sustain her; she is trained in theatre and in classical and contemporary forms of dance, including the North Indian form of Kathak and Brazilian Zouk.
